Perspective by Bahram Akradi

When I was studying engineering in college, I learned that every material has a stress point.

Outside of establishing the vision for Life Time Fitness, and guiding the company toward it, one of the activities I enjoy most is being a pilot.

Over the past several years I’ve gradually been making changes in the area of green living.

A few weeks back, we gathered a group of Life Time Fitness leaders for a corporate retreat and brainstorming session.

This time of year, a lot of us start thinking about the big changes we want to make in our lives over the course of the next 12 months.

If you build it, he will come. That line, made legendary by the 1989 film Field of Dreams, still resonates with a lot of people. I think that’s because it says everything about what we instinctively know to be true about pursuing our own dreams.

When we think of champions, we think of people who have accomplished things beyond the bounds of accepted belief or expectation. While such feats might require tremendous strength or ingenuity, in many cases there’s another underlying requirement: courage.

For far too long now, the pursuit of fitness has been equated with individual achievement. In the media and general culture, fitness has typically been about performance (who can go farthest, fastest), or it’s been about possession – washboard abs and seductive good looks. The body as object.

I just realized that this year marks my 30-year fitness anniversary. I was 13 when I started working out and I’ve been doing it ever since, studying and experimenting with all sorts of different sports and fitness techniques along the way.

Left to my own devices, I’m a person who takes things on. Challenges, projects, ideas, stuff – I love experiencing and discovering all kinds of things.

Spring is the season of new projects and brave commitments. It’s a time when many people decide they are ready to take on big changes. Just having a couple more hours of daylight can be enough to flood our bodies with the desire to tackle new challenges and convince us to set a new plan in motion.

When I travel outside the country, I am regularly reminded of how many people are struggling with immense problems and living in great need, without basic necessities like food, shelter and freedom. I am also reminded, at these times, by how blessed many of us are to be facing lesser struggles.

It’s resolutions season again – a time of review and reflection, and for many, a time of frustration. We may find ourselves facing some of the same issues we faced last year and the year before. And not all of them have improved with age.

Every once in a while, we come up with a slogan or motto that helps articulate our organization’s philosophy. Earlier this year, we introduced one such slogan: “Grow Forward.”