Guest Blog:T-Rob, A Real One!

I love how on social media you get to meet so many different people and connect with like-minded individuals. Thomas, aka T-Rob, is definitely one of those awesome people that are always real and positive. He’s always speaking the truth and sharing how he honestly feels and views situations in life. We need more people like him in this world! More honest, positive down to earth people who aren’t afraid of being vulnerable and real. So I thought it would be fun to have him as my Monday guest blogger so you could all get to know a bit about him as well! He is such an inspiring guy!

 

 

My name is Thomas Robertson aka T-Rob. I’m a 28-year-old fitness enthusiast born in Colorado and raised in Houston, Texas. I left Texas after high school to play football at Portland State University. While at Portland State I earned two degrees, one in business and one in criminology. I currently work for a nonprofit as an outreach supervisor and a violence intervention prevention coordinator. My personal passions are my faith, family, which consist of my beautiful wife and our two beautiful children, and fitness.

 

What got you into fitness and how has it affected your life?

What got me into fitness was simple actually. Girls! I’ve always been a bigger guy naturally and when I was growing up girls were really into the buff in shape athletic type of guys. I didn’t actually have too much luck with girls until I got into athletics and took the process of changing my body seriously. What I learned quickly though was that girls are into the football players with abs, not 315 pound offensive linemen. So I made a promise to myself once I was done with football that I would transform my body dramatically.

After losing about seventy pounds after football I started getting a lot more attention from women, so much so I fell into sports and lifestyle modeling by accident. The funny thing is I tell people now that I learned more about the people around me than myself when I started seeing results. People would say things to me like, “oh you’re different since you lost weight” or, “man why didn’t you stay big?”, “T-Rob, you trying to be something you’re not!” Looking back at all that I know now it was the other people’s insecurities talking, but I do believe fitness allowed me to start looking at life with a vertical priority.

 

What motivates you in life? What keeps you going when times are rough?

This may sound corny, but my kids keep me motivated. I remember almost three years ago on August 13^th, 2016 when my son was born, he opened his eyes when my wife was napping and looked at me eye to eye. At that moment it hit me that this is what unconditional love is. My son doesn’t know anything about my past, or what’s to come. All he knows is that I’m dad; all he knows is that I’ll be there to pick him up when life crashes down as well as when he reaches the highest of highs. With that unspoken bond formed that day I knew I couldn’t let him down. So I’m motivated every day to taking steps to grow and be the best version of myself. I especially am motivated to stay not only physically healthy, but spiritually and emotionally healthy as well.

So when rough times happen in life I pray and just look at it as a test from God preparing me to instill wisdom into my kids one day. Especially my son. Not to say those lessons won’t be as important for my daughter, but too often as men I believe we hold back from talking about real things other than half naked women, music, and sports so the next generation of men don’t get the full wealth of knowledge passed down from our previous generations.

What is something you could tell your younger self that you know now, but struggled with then?

If I could tell my younger self one thing it would be, “nothing is wrong with you, embrace everything about yourself and don’t change for anyone.” I for the longest time was extremely insecure about three things; my physical appearance, my nerdiness, and being socially embarrassed. Looking back at these three things now I feel silly for being insecure about them. It’s so weird to think that once I got to college I could really embrace my insecurities, because I was in a completely new environment where I pretty much had a fresh start, I could be whoever I wanted to be. I was still me, but didn’t care as much of what others thought and naturally people who wanted to be around me gravitated towards me.

 

What are ways you push yourself to be the best version of you every day?

Man this is such a loaded question, I could literally write a whole page on this one. The one main thing I do have to say though is my faith. My faith in God and I think its crazy that people don’t just sit down and think about how we are all individually so amazing. A mentor of mine always says, “God doesn’t make junk”, and I truly feel like everyone on this earth has a gift and we must identify what that is. Once you do identify that gift that’s when the cool part of life starts to happen. Purpose and gifts uniting into one makes for an awesome life’s journey.

 

How do you stay real and true to yourself and show that there is strength in realness?

If all I’m known for is being a great husband and father to the world’s most amazing wife and kids then I am good with that. I think people get too caught up in being publicly recognized to determine their worth and they end up losing their true selves to their worldly personas. I really could care less how many people know me; it’s more important to me how I make the people around me feel. To be the positive leader I know God created me to be I must be as authentic as I can be and willing to grow to do that.

 

I also asked T-Rob if he’d share one of his favorite inspirational quotes because those are always fun to read!

“ It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” – Muhammad Ali

 

Please take the time if you are on Instagram to follow T-Rob @southernboi_t

Photography by Carli Spinner