M.E PUBLISHER’S LETTER
XPAND YOUR VIEW
I
’ve been privileged to be able to travel
extensively throughout my life, and the
one thing that never ceases to surprise
me is how travel can broaden the mind.
When you’re exposed to one place, one city,
one suburb and the same urban fabric for too
long, you become restricted in many ways, no
matter how much you’ve travelled in the past.
Your views become narrowed and your opinions
quick and sharp.
When this happens you tend to become
conditioned to one routine and one way of
seeing the things around you. This limits your
ability to look beyond a great many things in
your life and you slowly become closed off to
what really lies beyond your line of sight.
Travelling to unknown places and
experiencing diverse cultures removes these
blinkers, which expands your view and
perceptions, as it forces you to look at how
others live and see that there’s more to the
world than your own personal perspective.
It also gets you to think, which is what’s
most important. While it’s cool to see and
experience things you’ve only ever seen on TV,
read about in books or seen in magazines, the
experience of learning far outweighs visiting
any monument, witnessing a feat of human
engineering or indulging in the fame created by
popular media or movies.
The day you tell yourself you know enough
or you can’t learn anymore is the day you stop
growing as a person. Period. Over the years
I’ve worked on my ability to keep my eyes
and mind open and receptive to seeing new
things. I always aim to not accept everything I
see at face value until I can really understand
someone, something or a situation as the truth
might be completely opposite to what I initially
saw in front of me.
In so doing I’ve come to understand the same
about bodybuilding. If you took all the top pro
athletes in the world, stood them in one long
line, and asked them the same questions I
can guarantee you that you’ll get a different
answer from each of them as to what works
best for them in the sport and as individuals.
So what’s my point? Well, it’s simple; there is
more than one way to do things in this sport.
Whether it’s gaining size, getting shredded or
simply living a fit lifestyle, if you ask 12 people
their advice, you’ll probably get 12 different
responses. The key, however, is that if you
listen to those same 12 people very carefully
you’ll pick up some consistencies in what they
all tell you.
What I would like you to take from this
publisher’s letter is this: my maths teacher
in high school always had a brilliant way of
describing the perfect way to do equations.
He would say, “When you see a paragraph full
of text and numbers just take the meat and
throw the bones away”. Apart from the fact
that bodybuilders tend to eat a lot of meat,
what he was really trying to say is you need to
take the important points and disregard the
rest. And that’s the beauty of life and learning.
Continually expand your horizons and world
view by learning to take the important points
from the information you’re exposed to, then
harness and use them, and disregard the rest
of the info that doesn’t apply to you. It’s not
relevant.
It’s been an incredible year for South
African bodybuilding a nd I’m still as proud
as ever to work in such a passionate, diverse
and incredible sport with such remarkable
people. I’m also excited as there’s so much in
the pipeline for next year. The few like-minded
individuals who drive the progress of this
sport each year are all fully motivated to take it
one step further, which is why I can guarantee
you that we will keep growing as a sport. I for
one am ready to take 2015 by the horns, and
promise to continue promoting more of SA’s
finest talents in all the magazines I publish. I’d
like to take this opportunity to humbly thank
each and every one of you for continuing to
support our efforts in promoting this great
sport, and for helping to take bodybuilding
and fitness to new levels in SA. I’m honoured
and privileged to be able to do what I do.
Enjoy issue 68 and all the best for 2015!
Andrew
Editor-In-Chief
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