Johnny the Wrestler
Story★★★★I’m gonna start out by telling you a story of 1 of my patients. We’re going to call him Johnny. He was, I hope you’ll pardon the derogatory phraseology, but it seems the best way to put it.
He was the fat kid. He was third, fourth, fifth grade, something like that. He was already quite overweight and his parents brought him to me for just routine childhood things, sore throats and earaches and whatnot, but I was most concerned about his weight.
He was already gaining weight and becoming more and more overweight and I talked to his parents and say, hey, what are you feeding him? Well, you know, pizza and hamburgers and french fries. And well, you need to maybe think about fruits and vegetables. Stuff like that.
Little by little, over the years, a few years, they sort of escalated, and it got to the point where they just kind of threw up their hands and said, we don’t know what to do. Every time you would see him walking around town, or even coming into the doctor’s office, he would have a can of soda in 1 hand and a candy of some kind in the end, a lollipop or a candy bar. And that’s the way he always was. And his parents said, we try to give him healthy food at home.
We don’t buy that for him at home, but his friends at school, and they give it to him at school, and there’s vending machines, and he goes over to the general store down the street, and they give him candy. We don’t know what to do. And they tried threatening him. They tried bargaining and all these things.
Nothing worked. And then when Johnny got into 8th grade, something happened.
I still don’t know why or exactly what took place behind the scenes, but he decided that he wanted to be a wrestler. Now if you pay attention to what’s happening in the world, in our culture, in the popular media, there’s a lot of talk about people choosing identity. And it can be a really powerful thing. And it was for Johnny.
It totally transformed his life that he chose to identify as a wrestler, and then it changed all the other decisions that he made from the time he woke up in the morning until the time he went to bed at night.
Also attributed to: Unknown
Azelton, Kimberly; Hess, Mike; Mills, Philip, “Building New Pathways of Change” (AudioVerse teaching 41423).
The point
A story about a young boy who was overweight and struggled with poor dietary habits until he decided to become a wrestler, which transformed his lifestyle.
Alternate wording
Johnny's Transformation115 words
And then when Johnny got into 8th grade, something happened. I still don’t know why or exactly what took place behind the scenes, but he decided that he wanted to be a wrestler. Now if you pay attention to what’s happening in the world, in our culture, in the popular media, there’s a lot of talk about people choosing identity. And it can be a really powerful thing. And it was for Johnny. It totally transformed his life that he chose to identify as a wrestler, and then it changed all the other decisions that he made from the time he woke up in the morning until the time he went to bed at night.