We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kristy Cronister. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kristy below.
Hi Kristy, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
My confidence has been developed through overcoming adversity and intentionally challenging myself for as long as I can remember. I’ve always chosen the path of most resistance and set goals that truly challenged me. When we choose to put ourselves in situations that make us uncomfortable and force us to question our abilities, we give ourselves an opportunity to develop confidence even when we fail. The simple act of facing our fears, taking on challenges, and growing from that experience develops our self esteem.
In 2020 when my husband and I decided to start Kansas Built Fitness I had no experience in business or even a previous desire to be an entrepreneur. I had no concrete reason to be confident in my ability to start a business and yet I had zero doubt in my ability to face this challenge successfully. I had confidence in my ability to learn, to adapt, to be resourceful, and to be gritty enough to make it work. That confidence came from a track record of taking on challenges I wasn’t ready for and overcoming obstacles to success. Just four years prior I made a career change from nursing to personal training with no experience in the industry and no guarantee of success. There was nothing easy about that transition, but the work ethic, passion, and persistence it took to create a successful second career in personal training developed a solid foundation of confidence that I had what it took to be successful in any endeavor that truly mattered to me.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
As a fitness professional what I do is help others discover what really matters to them, how they define health, and how to establish habits that create a healthy lifestyle they can be proud of. This process is incredibly challenging and requires long term commitment and dedication by the fitness professional and the client, but being a part of something so deeply transformative is the most incredible reward. Kansas Built Fitness and our dedicated fitness professionals truly change the lives of our clients and we take great pride in how we take care of each and every person who comes into our business. Since we opened in 2020 we have had a 3000 square foot private personal training and group fitness studio and have been able to grow our community substantially. We could not be more excited to be expanding to a 12,000 square foot gym and wellness center this fall. This tremendous growth will allow us to hire more fitness professionals, expand the offerings for our current clients, open our community to a larger number of people, and ultimately change more lives for the better.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Resilience, self-awareness, and self-discipline have made all the difference in my life and are all skills that anybody can develop. Resilience can only exist in the aftermath of an event or circumstance that causes pain, hardship, or difficulty in your life. The best way to become resilient is to continuously put yourself in situations that risk setback. There is often an association made between resilience and “bouncing back” or survival, but true resilience requires you to become an entirely different person than you were before that difficult event or circumstance occurred. It requires growth and change that is much deeper than just surviving an event. That growth and change requires a deep self-awareness; the simple willingness to ask yourself tough questions, to face your weaknesses and get deeply honest with yourself. The last skill, self-discipline, is probably the hardest to develop because it requires us to recognize that every single action we take or don’t take either cultivates discipline or destroys it and our confidence in the process. The best way to develop self-discipline is to keep the promises you make to yourself no matter how small or insignificant those promises feel.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard is my favorite personal development book and I have read and recommended it dozens of times. Burchard has studied high performers from every walk of life and translated that research into six clear and concise habits as well as how to implement them into your daily life.
One of these six habits is to generate energy and Burchard makes an observation in regards to this that completely changed how I view my life. To paraphrase his work, as human beings we have the ability to create or generate our own emotions regardless of our circumstances. It is our responsibility to identify the emotions we want to experience in life and then generate those emotions through our habits. Most people spend their lives thinking they have no control over their feelings and allowing their feelings to rule their thoughts and behaviors instead of using their thoughts and behaviors to control their feelings. This simple shift in mindset and habit development will completely change your life for the better.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.kansasbuiltfitness.com
- Instagram: @heartlandstrongmom
