When you were a teenager, being sixty was grandfatherly and eighty, ancient. We create our stories about aging all our lives and they’re almost always wrong. All the data supports that you can’t stop physically aging, but you can literally slow down your body's normal biological decay.
I work with people who want to change their stories to better serve them into their eighties and beyond… folks that believe that aging doesn’t mean you have to feel or act old. It means squeezing the juice out of every day by staying fit, keeping active and having meaningful interactions no matter your age.
You have the opportunity to make the most out of every day in front of you by developing new life habits around Fitness, Nourishment and Engagement. All you have to do is want it and be willing to work for it… pretty much like anything else in life.
How Do I Know This?
This coaching offer came from the lessons I learned from pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I remember thinking that, “Sometimes you have to try something just because you might fail,” believing that if I want to grow, failing is not a bad thing, it’s part of the learning process.
So I set off to ride my bicycle across the country - 4000 miles, solo, at age sixty.
That’s when it became abundantly clear that my own stories weren’t serving me, and that they were the only thing keeping my body from doing what I needed it to do. Having eight hours a day for seventy-eight days to think about it made me realize that there was no real basis for the stories I’ve created about myself. So I decided to create new ones.
I learned that we are the stories we tell ourselves. And those stories define who we are today and how we choose to potentially live our lives.
And I realized that you don’t have to ride your bike across the country, run a marathon or do any wild and crazy endurance event to realize the changes I did… you just have to open your mind to getting out of your comfort zone and changing your stories.
The Mind-Body Connection.
During those 78 days alone on the road I learned a lot about myself and from the people I met along the way. And do you know what was the most common remark I heard everywhere I traveled? “Wow, I really admire what you’re doing, but I could never do that.”
So I told folks some of the things I was learning along the way… like how I discovered that my body was more capable than I ever thought it was. I shared how I experienced the tangible connection between mind and body every day - because that’s the key to endurance cycling.
When you’re six hours into an eight hour ride, and you start feeling it in your legs, the key is to daydream - to put your mind somewhere other than on the bike. Then, whether it’s 30 minutes or maybe an hour later, the thought strikes you that, “Hey, I don’t even feel my legs at all,” and that’s when the pain returns with a vengeance, and you start the process all over again.
Endurance cycling is all mental, and so are the stories that we sometimes let guide our lives.
Have you ever jumped to conclusions without having all of the information?
Or said no to an opportunity without truly considering it… because that’s just not you?
Do any of your relationships suffer from false assumptions and unnecessary guessing games?
If so, you're not alone.
We’ve all made up life-limiting stories about ourselves and we may not even know how they came about. But the good news… we can change them. We can decide our future and live it on our terms.
- Experience
What does the coaching experience look like for you?
When it comes to improving our fitness, our relationship with food and how we engage in the world, our stories have led us to create habits. In a nutshell, we’re going to visualize your future lifestyle, set goals to achieve it, develop an accountability and support system, plan out a timeline, and make it happen.
Although we’re going to work on all three areas (fitness, nutrition, engagement) concurrently, we’re going to kickstart the Fitness module first, because staying fit will give you more energy to do the rest, and as you’ll experience along the way, it feels good to be strong… and know that you’re getting stronger every day. It changes everything.
When it comes to food, we’re going to assess your diet and develop a nutrition based plan that you can happily live with. Weight loss isn’t the primary goal, but it goes with the territory. You won’t have to give up everything you crave, you just have to create more balance around it.
For instance, I eat 21 meals a week and I stick to my “clean eating” plan at least 18 of those meals, which allows me to reward myself regularly, so I don’t feel like I’ve given up what I love the most and quit - but that doesn’t mean going crazy with all you can eat buffets every weekend… its still about moderation.
To further develop how we engage in the world, we’ll develop an ongoing cognitive approach to life that will exercise your mind in a much more fulfilling way than puzzles or brain teasers. And then we’ll look at the benefits of community connection and why and how it will add years to your life. We’ll talk about how you interact with others, both your close relationships and everyday public interactions… and look at opportunities to improve every interaction you have.
It’s a kind process centered on your specific needs and desires. Everything we do will be based on what you really want for yourself, and every goal you set will be doable… but it will take work and discipline.
- Coaching Approach
Generally, coaching is about defining, setting, achieving goals and discovering and evolving the behaviors you’ll need to do so. By listening, asking questions and challenging assumptions, I’ll help you develop accountability, structure and commitment.
It’s also an opportunity for cognitive, moral and social development.
When I listen to you, it’s not just about the content of what you are saying, it's also about how you make sense of the world. I listen to learn about how you decipher the world.
A fellow coach/teacher of mine shared, “Development is not a race to the finish line. It is the journey of our lives. The way we come to see and re-see the world around us.”
As I work with clients to achieve goals, I also strive to help them discover how their connected to systems around them, how to see multiple perspectives and how to discover their own growth edges so that they may continually, “Come to see and re-see the world around them.”
And this begins with self-compassion, or mindfulness - the ability to focus on the present and be non-judgmental about your feelings, thoughts and sensations... and the acceptance of your own challenges with kindness and understanding.
- My Ride Across America
Feel free to take a look at my blog posts from the road when I crossed the country in 2015, at age sixty.
Joel Kampf
I wear a few hats from living a diverse life. I grew up in Hollywood on the periphery of the film business - worked in studios during high school, earned a degree in film, worked on movies, for producers and for a personal management and PR firm… and then I needed a change. A year later, I found myself teaching elementary school on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Lame Deer, Montana… culturally shocked, down to my socks.
After fifteen years of teaching, I moved back into marketing as a direct response copywriter and brand strategist. While working with organizations, I saw a need and became a business and executive coach. Then I rode my bike across the country when I turned sixty and everything changed. I learned that I was capable of so much more than I thought, and only my preconceived stories were holding me back. So I took the lessons I learned on the ride and started doing the work offered on this site.
Today, I need to do good work - work that helps others make the most of their lives as they age…. and I use the connective tissue of everything I do to make it so. If I had to pick one belief of mine that serves me the most, it’s that life is not a dress rehearsal and we only have one shot at it. I’m going squeeze the juice out of every day and help others to do the same. Hopefully, it’s contagious.
