A few years ago, Mike Jaber had lost his father and lost all hope. He was lost, unmotivated and unhappy. Then he joined a company that changed his life and began a mission to change others’ as well.
We ask our customers: What does #UFCGYM mean to you? To be honest I am not sure I can put into words what UFC GYM means to me, but I will give it a try.
Staring at the gym sign early one morning before the sun came up, before opening the gym for the day, it brought tears to my eye as I thought about what this sign stands for.
I gave up everything and sacrificed a lot to open this gym. It took more than a year and a half to turn a dream into reality and get the facility open. I would be lying if I said it was easy, because trust me, at times during the process I didn’t think it would happen, but I kept after it because I didn’t have another choice.
This gym has been a blessing in many ways. My goal was to open a judge-free zone gym, an environment with nothing but positive energy, with good people. A gym for people to train at and feel at home every time they walk through the doors. I am so thankful for the team that made all of this possible. I got lucky with the best group of people, who I consider family now and would do anything for.
But underneath the business, the workouts, the equipment, there is something else. If you are someone that’s going through a rough time in your life and feel down and out, feel like giving up, please hear me out here…
It wasn’t too long ago that I was about to give up. I would visit my father’s grave and sit next to him for hours, crying to him about how messed up my life was, how he left me too early, asking why everything that was happening to me was happening, how life wasn’t fair to me and how much I missed him. Life was throwing me one curveball after another, and I simply didn’t know how much more I could take.
But one day after visiting my father I looked into the mirror when I got home, red-eyed, and realized this isn’t how he would have want to see me. I felt like I had not only let myself down, I had let my family down. I knew it was time to make a change and stop feeling sorry for myself.
Bad things in life will always happen: Losing loved ones, losing jobs, bad choices, mistakes, etc. Life isn’t easy and never will be. The silver lining is that we can all relate. Everyone at some point in their life will go through the same heart ache, pain, confusion and sadness I went through, so we can relate. And we can help one another.
I now preach to everyone to always stay positive no matter what and no matter how hard it gets. When the time came a few years ago, I took that advice and stayed positive and kept fighting. I stayed focused and stayed the course. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and stopped questioning everything that was happening to me.
This gym took a boy who was lost, confused, angry and sad and turned him into a man who stands before you the happiest, healthiest, most motivated and most grateful person.
My future feels so bright because of this gym/company, and every morning I can’t wait to wake up and keep grinding, to be at the gym all day to pay it forward as much as I can, to change as many lives as I can.
If you are going through a hard time in your life and reading this please trust me when I say this: Everything happens for a reason, so stay strong, stay positive and keep moving forward. I promise your life has something better and life changing waiting for you.
That something better and life changing for me was UFC GYM. This gym gave me hope and changed my life. I opened this gym across the street from my father’s old store, and as of today, we have 700 members in less than a year. Every once in a while I will walk outside of the gym and look across the street at my father’s old store and think about how proud he would have been of me today.
With all of this being said, UFC GYM means everything to me. UFC GYM is my life, and everyone in the gym is my family. I couldn’t be more grateful and honored to be part of this company. Today, I not only own a UFC GYM, I run five of them, and I am grateful for it all and know to never take anything for granted. Today I am a humble man and more thankful than I ever thought I could be. A gym changed my life, and I want to preach that something can also change yours.
