Whilst writing yesterday’s blog, I remembered the only time in my life that I’ve been accused of being racist.
Although I will cover in a few days the danger of considering ourselves “not racist”.
Looking back now, I’ve got to say that my parents were pretty progressive for a farming family in rural Derbyshire in the 80s.
It wasn’t unusual back then for people to make comments or jokes about people of different skin colour, race or nationality that really wouldn’t fly today.
But my parents never did and my sister and I were always bought up to be accepting and open minded.
I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned in these blogs before that I remember people at school saying “Don’t tell Hally racist jokes, he doesn’t find them funny”.
But I was accused of racism once.
In 2002.
I was in my first job in the Fitness Industry at Fitness First Derby.
At some point somebody reported that their wallet had been taken from the changing room.
And the Club Manager asked me to check people’s bags on leaving.
Which I then did.
One guy got very upset about this.
He was black and felt that I had picked him out because of that.
He left before I could explain.
When he next came in, I went to have a chat with him to explain the situation.
But he actually immediately apologised having realised what had happened.
And he explained that he was very upset that day because his sister had died.
And I learned a couple of important lessons that day.
Firstly, how easy it is for us to reach a conclusion about something, which would probably be different if we had all the information.
Like how it can be easy to think that we “can’t lose weight no matter what we do”………
When we don’t have accurate information about our energy requirements and usage.
Or how easy it can be to think that we don’t have time for something or are “too busy”……..
Without actually taking an accurate record of how we currently assign our time and using that as a basis for reassigning some of it.
It’s often a case of “we don’t know what we don’t know”.
And these blogs are, in part, designed to help us ask those different questions that might just lead us to some better answers.
Much love,
Jon ‘The wallet was never found’ Hall
P.S. I know I said I learnt two lessons that day. I’ll cover the next one tomorrow.
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
