I’m currently in LA so I’ve been hitting workouts in my hotel gym.

Now I don’t know about you, but I need my space when I work out. No, I don’t need the whole gym to myself, but I just need to not feel like someone else is on top of me (besides, I spent enough years wrestling, grappling, and living with roommates).

So I’m busy running sprints on the treadmill this morning and a woman of a certain age — ok let’s just face it, an old lady — bypasses all of the open treadmills not next to me and settles on the treadmill right next to me. I can’t tell you why this bothers me, but it does.

But then something AWESOME happens.

This little old lady locks onto my intervals and starts doing them with me!

If that’s not a $hit ton of awesome right there, I don’t know what is. Inspired, I end up going extra rounds and really pushing myself thinking, I’m bringing some inspiration & motivation into her fitness routine. I went from pissed to honored in minutes.

After I finished and cooled down, she introduced herself — of course her name was Ruthie! — asked about my Halevy Life t-shirt (always shamelessly promoting!), and said she loved seeing someone work hard in the gym.

So…what’s the moral of the story? I think there are probably a solid 20, but my immediate takeaways:

1) You never know how you will affect other people, so always think like a leader.

2) Whether you want to be or not, you ARE a leader to someone at some point. Take this responsibility seriously.

3) Always choose the treadmill next to the little old lady. :)