Day 114: Louise Steinbach
“I think it’s all in the energy that we give each other and that we open ourselves up to be able to depend on each other, because we can’t go through this whole thing alone. This whole thing, life or health or anything in life, you cannot be by yourself. There’s others that you have to depend on, and sometimes they depend on you.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Louise, for agreeing to be part of a project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Louise Steinbach: Well, my name is Louise Steinbach, and I live in Crystal Lake, Illinois, and I’m a fitness instructor along with many other kind of hobbies, jobs that I do.
Toni: Well thank you. I want to ask you about that great word about inspiration. When you think about inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?
Louise: Well, the people that I really think that I have an effect on would be the people that I have in my fitness classes and, obviously, that is the closest touch that I have with people that need inspiration. I mean, I have several people, whether they be male or female that are looking to change their lives in a more positive, as far as health aspect, a more positive direction.
I have the direct ability to do that for them, to help them do that, to at least give them the inspiration to do it for themselves. Sometimes they think that I’m doing it for them, and they come to realize that there is nothing that I can do for them that they cannot do for themselves. That comes through, I think, inspiration.
Toni: Can you give an example, Louise, of how you do that in this fitness classes? Is it leading the class? It is leading by example? Just a brief example of how that happens between you and the people that are taking a class from you.
Louise: Well, I think it’s leading by example, and it’s also a little bit more of a one-on-one, like “You can do this.” There are some people that get stuck, or they get frustrated and they confide in me that they feel very inadequate. My information or my story that I tell them is that, you know, I was over 300 pounds when I started, and I felt very inadequate. I felt very stuck.
Being that weight going into a health club was very intimidating for me, and I soon realized that that was why that health club was there. It was there for people like me, not for the little girl in the spandex. It was there for people like me who needed to lose major amounts of weight, or somebody that needs to lose 20 pounds. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about the health and wellness and not about what you look like in your workout outfit.
When people know that that’s what I’m there for and I’m not judging them, they become a lot more inspired to do what they need to do.
Toni: Well, that leads us beautifully into the second question which is, what do you do in order to help explore the potential in others, and what I’m hearing that you do is provide that gentle nudge or that kick in the butt with whoever’s in front of you with those personal consultations. Is that right?
Louise: Right, right. You know, sometimes it is a kick in a butt, sometimes it’s a wakeup, and sometimes it is kind of a little … you kind of have to take them by the hand and really lead them gently down the path. You kind of have to know who you’re dealing with in order to do that, you know?
Some people don’t respond to that kick in the butt. They get … you kick them way out of the gym and they never want to come back. There’s other people that that’s what really inspires them. That’s what turns them into a machine. When you say “Listen, when you are 45, you are going to drop dead of a heart attack unless you lose this weight.” Sometimes that is the wakeup call that some people need. Other people can’t handle that. They kind of retreat.
You have to be able to read your clients and know what it is that will turn them on. Sometimes you don’t know until it happens, until all of a sudden it happens and you can see it. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it in the way that they practice. You can see it in the way that they … their commitment level. All of that comes together really beautifully and doesn’t happen in everybody. You have to know that as a trainer and as a teacher.
You have to know that you cannot save everybody. That’s kind of a hard lesson to learn, that everybody … right on this day, not everybody that walks in front of you is meant to be saved.
Toni: Really, because it’s like you said earlier, it really has to come from them. You’re the facilitator.
Louise: It has to come from them. It’s like quitting smoking or becoming sober or anything, which I’ve done both of. I know that there are difficult obstacles to overcome, and those obstacles are normally within yourself. They are something that you turn on in your brain.
Toni: Louise, when you think about the word inspiration for you, what do you need to be inspired?
Louise: Well, you know, for me, my big kick was from my doctor that said, you know, “You better know where your kids are going, because by the time you’re 40 you’re not going to be here.” And that was when I was 34/35 years old. So by the time I was 37, I was really making sure that I was taking care of everything that I needed to do to lose weight to become healthy to not have that hanging over my head, like “When am I going to drop dead? When’s my heart going to give out?” It wasn’t easy decisions that I had to make. I did a lot of things, but bottom line is I had to lose weight, and that’s what I did. It all comes from within.
Toni: Your inspiration came from your doctor saying “You know what? You gotta get it together, because if you don’t, you’re not going to be around.”
Louise: Right.
Toni: So what inspires you today? You’ve walked this walk, you’ve been on this journey, you’ve accomplished these things that you’ve spoken about in a very personal manner. So when you reach a point now, Louise, when you know that you’re running low and you’re seeking inspiration, what do you reach for?
Louise: You know, it’s funny, because now that I’ve gone through inspiring … and I hate to use that word like this big inspiration, sometimes it’s just something that you say or something that people look at you and they go “You were 300 pounds? Okay, so I can do it.” Then it’s kind of going back to those people and seeing them, watching them, and going …
Earlier in the year I had a major surgery. I had a broken neck, and I kind of laid here in my pity party and I gained 20 pounds. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do the exercises that I always was doing. I fell off the bandwagon as far as my nutrition. I had all of these people that were calling me and saying “Don’t worry about it, you’re going to get back on that horse and you’re going to be our leader again, and you’re going to be the person that trains us.” And I knew that I had to go back to that.
I knew that that was where I had to be, so I eventually had to just pick myself up and say “Okay, that’s enough. It may be painful; I’m going to have to go through pain again. I’m going to learn how to run again, and I’m going to have to learn how to do all these things that I already knew.” But I knew that I could do it because I’ve done it once, and I had all these people that were kind of depending on me to show them that whatever happens, there are things that you can overcome.
Toni: Louise, were they depending on you or were they championing you?
Louise: You know, I think a little bit of both. To me, I felt like they were championing me, but I also felt like I was the one that led them through, it came from … it’s hard to explain it, because I was the one that they were looking to when they were going through it. And how horrible would that be if I just said “Well, sorry guys, I’m giving up,” you know? I can’t do that. That’s not right for me, it’s not right for my body, and it’s not right to show other people that I’ve helped through that hard time that if you hit another time … you know, we’re all going to have hard times. We all are going to fall off the wagon. We’re all going to have slip-ups. It’s kind of the nature of the beast.
This is just my opportunity to be able to show them that, yeah, things happen, but you gotta get yourself up, wipe yourself off, and move on. That’s just kind of what I’m trying to do now. And I’m still going through it. I’m still working at this. It’s something that will be a lifelong thing.
That’s one thing that I learned from having my broken neck is that I thought I had it licked, I thought I was done. I work out every day, I do all these things. This thing was thrown into my life and it may have been … if you believe in kind of divine intervention, it was kind of that. It was kind of God saying “You know what? You might be getting a little big for your britches,” you know?
Toni: But did it have to be a broken neck?
Louise: Well for me, you know how stubborn I am.
Toni: My goodness. There could have been more of a gentle nudge there.
Louise: He probably did give me other gentle nudges, I just didn’t allow him to show me.
Toni: Well, Louise, the final question here as far as the four is what do you need to continue to explore your own potential, and that can be personally or professionally. Are you continuously exploring your own potential and what do you do to do that?
Louise: I think that your potential, your personal potential, is only as big or as small as you allow it to be. My mom … I left a big corporation about 15 years ago, and I was having a really hard time leaving this job. My mom said to me, “You know, if you plan on having 20 careers in your life, you’re never going to look back and say ‘Oh, I should have done this, or I should have done that.’”
Plan on having those 20 careers. Plan on being a painter and a dancer and a corporate higher-up. Do all these things. What’s wrong with that? You don’t have to stay at one point in your life and just stay there. I think that people that are in that one point in their life sometimes becomes a little stagnant and maybe even complacent. It doesn’t have to be like that. You can learn so many different things, and you can learn it until the end of your life.
Toni: Is that what you’re doing now?
Louise: Well, yeah, I think so. Right in the middle of going back to school is when I broke my neck, so I’m planning on going back to school again in the spring and hopefully — I’m sorry, the fall — so hopefully that will come about, and I will be able to do that. I’m trying to get my nutrition degree so that I can offer the people that I train even more information and more direction, and it’s good for myself. It’s good for my kids. It’s good for my family on a bigger scale.
And I think that as I get older, I am more concerned about the kids that are coming up. We have a huge obesity problem in children, in children under the age of 13; this isn’t teenagers. These are small kids. That’s something that I’d like to explore in the future is kind of concentrate on the children that need some direction.
Toni: Well, based on the information that you’ve given in this interview with how you started your own fitness journey and there was a message that I heard in this interview, and you said it early on, which is what you do for others with inspiration and helping others explore their potential is you’ve helped to turn them on; and that’s what you can do. You helped to turn them on.
And then what I heard as far as you seeking your own inspiration when you went through your own trauma with your health is that you needed to be turned back on so that you could reciprocate that for others to continue to turn them on, and that’s what I heard in this interview.
Louise: Absolutely.
Toni: That’s what you do. That’s what’s been done for you. And as far as exploring your potential, I heard that maybe you’ll be turning children on in order to not maybe go through some of the challenges that you went through. For me, that was a really loud common theme through your interview, and I can only imagine what you must do for others when they’re in your presence, so thank you.
Louise: I think it’s all in the energy that we give each other and that we open ourselves up to be able to depend on each other, because we can’t go through this whole thing alone. This whole thing, life or health or anything in life, you cannot be by yourself. There’s others that you have to depend on, and sometimes they depend on you.
Toni: Absolutely! Couldn’t have said it better myself. Louise, thank you so very much for your candid interview, and I really appreciate the time you’ve given to the Get Inspired! Project.
Louise: Thank you.
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For more information about Louise Steinbach: weezie1629@sbcglobal.net
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