Everyone gets lazy from time to time. We make excuses to avoid going to the gym and keeping up with a good exercise regime. Maybe you went to bed too late last night, maybe you have too much work to do today. We have used every excuse in the books on ourselves and most of the time, we believe them. We convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing. After a while, we look back and haven’t stepped foot inside the gym for two weeks. Our diet has turned to crap and we are gone far beyond the time for excuses. One man’s story has given us the required kick to get exercising again, perhaps it will do the same for you.
Ian Morris from the United Kingdom loves keeping active. He is one man who never made excuses to avoid going to the gym. He loved exercising and would do it no matter what obstacle tried to get in his way. Then his life took a strange twist when an accident occurred. Ian was born with a condition that meant he was slowly losing his eyesight. By the time he reached his mid-20s, he was diagnosed with having no useful sight left. He was blind.
For someone who loved keeping fit as much as Ian, his degrading eyesight was a hard pill to swallow. Not only this but in his early 20s, he was involved in a car crash that nearly killed him. He survived to lose his eyesight only a few years later. It seemed like life was dealing Ian a pretty bad hand. Ian had no direction after he lost eyesight. He knew the life he had previously lived was over and felt that he would never exercise again. However, he soon heard about a blind cricket team in the city where he lived. He joined the cricket team and was amazed to learn that he could still not only participate in sport but compete.
The team gave Ian the confidence to try and get more of his old life back. He joined a gym in his local area and he and his guide dog started to go regularly. Ian has never looked back and never used his eyesight as an excuse not to go to the gym. He and his dog, Millsey, love going to the gym every day. When Millsey is in his harness then people are very respectful, they understand that the dog is working. When Ian is exercising and Millsey is on a break, everyone at the gym loves to say hello, and Millsey loves it too. He often spends time at the reception desk hanging out with the staff and greeting clients.
Ian is incredibly grateful to have Millsey in his life. He says the combination of Millsey and advances in technology have meant that there is very little in life he is not capable of doing. He says with Millsey in one hand and his mobile phone in the other he can visit anywhere he likes. He uses voice commands on his mobile phone and PC to ensure that he can access anything he needs.
Ian says that his physically active life is key to him keeping mentally healthy as well. He wants to spread a message that disability should never be a barrier to participation. When he first lost his sight he thought many doors were now shut to him, but this was wrong. All doors remain open, you just have to get through them in a slightly different way. Ian’s story should be taken as a lesson to us all. Ian is doing more with his four senses than many of us achieve with our five. We have to stop letting excuses get in our way and start achieving more.
