My Lifetime Lesson

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August 6, 2012 by thomasjoeakins

I am the Operations Manager of World Gym in Honolulu Hawaii. We are currently opening TWO brand new locations on the island. For the past week we have been moving our old gym to the brand new facility in Honolulu. Just imagine how hard it is to move an entire 22,000 square foot gym…INSANE!

This post is entirely dedicated to a member of our gym named Clayton. When we are about to move I created a “List of Names” members who wanted to make some money for helping us with the move. Their was ONLY 6 names total and Clayton was one of them.

The reason why so few people signed up is OBVIOUS…it was going to be HARD WORK! Imagine trying to move an entire gym with THOOOOUSANDS of pounds of exercise equipment.

This is what Clayton signed up for and he was the oldest out of everyone that signed up for the move. Everyone else was in their 20’s and 30’s but Clayton was in his 50’s.

Not only was Clayton the oldest but he was also the HARDEST WORKING, PUT IN THE MOST TIME, NEVER COMPLAINED, and the thing that struck me the MOST was…HE DID NOT WANT ANYTHING IN RETURN! He said he was just volunteering his time. That’s right, we even tried to give him money but he refused to take it. All he said was “I am just volunteering my time to help out.” I am not doing it for the money!

Clayton worked 6 out of the 7 days we moved and put in between 5-8 hrs everyday! This INSPIRED me and I had to ask him why he was volunteering. He told me that he sets aside a whole week to volunteer and teach High School students about financial planning. Clayton is a financial adviser and every year he teaches them how to prepare themselves financially when they start working and making money. This year fell through so it gave him a free week to volunteer his time elsewhere. I asked him “Why do you volunteer your time?” He said “When you get older you start thinking about what really matters. It’s a good thing to volunteer your time, money isn’t everything he said, not too much of it and not to little…just enough to live happy.”

I learned so much this past week just watching this man WORK his ASS off and not expect ANYTHING in return. It’s HUMBLING and INSPIRING!

It’s true that when you give you receive just as much, if not more. We are going to give Clayton
a LIFETIME membership to our gym…this is the least we could do for this AMAZING man!