Sunday Stories

Sunday Story…the 9 Save Your Life Reasons to Work Out (not exercise)

2012-01-29T01:20:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…the 9 Save Your Life Reasons to Work Out (not exercise)

I often rant and rave about the benefits of working out. You notice I said working out not exercising. I exercise my rights, I exercise my math skills, I ride an exercise bike but I don’t exercise. I work out. I get moving, get moving fast and intentional, and do things I haven’t done before and sweat and pant and effort.

The other day my little tiger class (4 &5 year olds) was doing push-ups and I asked them why push-ups were important. I got a lot of interesting answers, most of which were related to the things we all know…to be strong, to get bigger muscles, to be in shape, to exercise, even to get good at doing push-ups. Then after a bit more prodding and having them watch the student instructors move a bin of sparring gear to reach something else I finally got the answer I was looking for…to be able to lift heavy things! Are all those other things true? Of course they are. But in the final analysis the only real reason I want to work out is so that I can lift heavy things, move heavy things, run fast, climb stairs, help my invalid relative out of a chair, or work in my garden all day. In other words when I work out I need it to serve me in my life.

So here are the 9 Save Your Life Reasons to Work Out (not exercise)
1. Fresh Air, sunshine, and earth are all healing and contributory to your spirit. Hamsters run on wheels, not people. You don’t need to spin your wheels for 45 minutes going nowhere just to sweat. Get outside and see the world, even if it just your own neighborhood. You will be amazed at the changes over the course of a year.

2. Lifting heavy things builds muscle but it also builds will. When you set up or get under a weight you have never lifted before your mind is going to work against you. Your mind is going to say no, is going to want to stop, to quit. Your will, your drive, your desire is what has you step up and go where you have never gone before. This part of your body is under-developed and the only way to get it bigger is to challenge yourself with things that are seemingly impossible to your former self.

3. Sprinting empowers you. Remember the old saying about not having to outrun the bear, just outrun the slowest camper? If you sprint you won’t be the slowest camper. And in this day and age it more likely you will need to outrun the taxi cab barreling down at you than a bear but still…

4. Use it or lose it. Sitting around doing nothing is like watching a car rust in the rain…it is going to fall apart sooner rather than later. Doing the usual exercise pattern you have done for years is like watching the same car die of neglect. It needs new stuff to keep that shiny new look and feel. So does your body. You need to challenge yourself by doing different stuff, by creating some interest in what you are doing…it is body AND mind after all not just body.

5. Play more, work less. When you were little you played a lot. As a matter of fact it may be all you did. Working out is play. Exercise is drudgery. Play more, work less.

6. You are a miracle. Never before in history have you existed here. You have been gifted an absolute marvel of bio-mechanical engineering. Man has never been able to create the machine that rivals the sum of all your parts working together. If we were to try to reverse engineer your biology and mechanics that allow you to be alive we would be faced with an impossible task. Appreciate the how and why and wherefore of even the simplest movement let alone your ability to run fast, play hard and drip sweat.

7. Look better naked. However good you look now, you can always look better. Enough said.

8. Sleep. Sleep enough that you don’t get fired or divorced but sleep a lot. You will need 8 or 9 hours if you work out. If you exercise, well watching TV while you exercise might as well be sleeping right?

9. Eat more and eat better. When you work out…when the sweat is pouring off of you and drenching the floor, you legs are shaking, your heart is pounding, and your breath is strangling in your throat…you know you are going to be slicing fat off your frame for hours. Eating will be a little piece of heaven that drink of water will be like the nectar of the gods. And because #7 is true you will want to put premium fuel in the tank.

10. You will be an inspiration. Let’s face it we all want to be looked up to. We all want to be famous in some way, even if it is to the 5 people in our lives we see every day. Getting in great physical condition, eating right, sleeping a bunch, looking great, feeling great, having an amazing attitude and a sense of wonder are all contagious. The people around you are going to want to get some of what you got. And you get to be their hero. And that may be reason #1.

Run fast, lift heavy stuff, learn new ways to move, play, sleep, eat, inspire. Work out. Have fun. A simple recipe for honoring yourself and the amazing vehicle you inhabit. It’s never too late to start unless you are already dead.

Let’s be grown ups and start playing like we were kids again!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The 9 Big Butt Reasons

2012-01-22T00:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…The 9 Big Butt Reasons

The other day I was talking to somebody about food and why you shouldn’t eat certain things. And I was about half-way into my usual explanation about foreign proteins and anti-nutrients and sugars and such when she stopped me short. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, “now give me the big butt reason.” I looked at her a little puzzled. And she said,”you know, why shouldn’t I eat something because it will make my butt big. That’s a reason I can really understand and stay with.”

So here goes The 9 Big Butt Reasons for eating certain foods and certain types of foods.
1. Why should I not drink soda? First (logically) there is too much sugar in them and the chemicals used to make soda leach calcium from your bones. BBR (Big Butt Reason): Too much sugar gives you too many calories and causes you to want even more sugar and makes your butt big(ger).

2. What about diet soda? First the artificial sweeteners are just chemicals and not good for you and your brain does not recognize the difference between fake sugar and the real thing, so you still release insulin and store fat. BBR: The more you drink the more you want and you want sugar even if you aren’t getting it so you eat more other crap to get it and that makes your butt big(ger).

3. You say not to eat gluten and wheat…why not? First there is the whole story about lectins and other proteins and the allergic reactions many people have with gluten but I won’t go there now (let me know if you need to hear this again). BBR: The gluten and wheat create an insulin reaction like sugar and cause you to eat more and more often , not to mention the calorie dense nature of the food makes it easy to over eat and that makes your butt big(ger).

4. Sugar? No Sugar? First it is addictive like crack or heroin or nicotine and the more you eat the more you want. BBR: it creates over time an insulin resistance that makes it harder and harder to lose weight because you aren’t processing sugar efficiently except to store it as fat and that makes your butt big(ger).

5. No pasta, no bread, no rice, no cake or pie, and no grains? First (after re-reading the gluten thing above) your digestive system does not process these foods in an efficient manner, they have almost no micro-nutrient value, and you can easily pile on more calories than you need. BBR: you eat too much, too often, and with no intention and that makes your butt big(ger).

6. No Processed food? First if it came out of a box it came out of a factory and it has been created to last a long time on the grocery shelf and will do the same thing in your body. BBR: there is little to no nutrient value except in the chemicals they put back in so you are eating calories that won’t increase your health and that makes your butt big(ger).

7. No peanut butter? No legumes, peas, beans? First (see the gluten thing above again) the allergic reaction many of us have and don’t realize it, the proteins are indigestible, the sugars create the same havoc with your insulin as the above. BBR: makes is hard for your digestive system to work properly, puts little holes in your intestines to let the proteins out and messes with your immune system and makes your butt big(ger).

8. No Alcohol? First sugar (see all the stuff before this) and gluten (beer) and then there is the toxic nature of alcohol in general and the ill effects it may have on your liver. BBR: if your liver isn’t working right it makes it hard to process sugar correctly, alcohol and most mixers we put alcohol into are full of sugar so you drink too many calories and that makes your butt big(ger).

9. No dairy? First your body does not have all the necessary tools to process lactase after the age of 2, it is more efficient to get calcium from other sources other than the chemicals producers have to add back in after pasteurization and the milk sugars and proteins act in your body like all the things we have already discussed. BBR: too many calories, too easy to eat too much of it, and that makes your butt big(ger).

The BBR bottom line? It is too easy to Over-eat these foods. They are calorie dense and nutrient weak, chemically dense and crowded with things your body was never meant to absorb, let alone try to process into a healthy body. On one hand the formula is simple…eat too many calories and it makes your butt big(ger). You can never exercise your way skinny. On the other hand the type of calories does matter…1500 calories of sugar will react differently in your body than 1500 calories of vegetables. Sugar provides no micronutrients and Vegetables are the best source of micronutrients.

The Standard American Diet consists of 60% processed food (CRAP in a box and yes this includes “diet” food, specially designed foods for weight loss), 30% meat, 5% white potatoes and rice, 5% vegetables. If you eat like this your butt will get big(ger). You should be eating something like 60% veggies, 30% meat, 10% or more fat (nuts, seeds, olives, avocados and the likes). If you do your butt won’t get bigger and if you add some exercise in your butt might even get smaller. And after all, isn’t that the real question you were asking anyway?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Practice

2012-01-15T00:10:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Practice

Over the years, I have found the answer to a lot of questions to be: Practice. If you want your performance to be mistake free: Practice. If you want to get good at something, anything: Practice. If you want to be a master, a virtuoso: Practice.

There is also the practice of doing something. I may have a yoga practice or a medical or dental practice. This is to say that I am doing that thing repeatedly on a daily basis. So I have, in essence, a yoga habit. I have a medical habit; I do it repeatedly on a daily basis. I have a work out habit, a work out practice.

We become what we do repeatedly. No you are not going to become down dog or crow pose but you might become a yogi or yogini (someone who practices yoga). But then not everyone who does yoga has a yoga practice and not everyone who does yoga is a yogi or a yogini. So what separates the doer from the practitioner? What makes the difference between the fighter and the martial artist, between the painter and the artist, between the horseman and the equestrian?

In a word: Intent.

What do you do every day? You live. You get up, go do something, then some more things, then some more things, eat a few times, maybe relax a bit and go to bed. Tomorrow more of the same. Lather, rise, repeat. Go to the gym today…it’s Thursday and I must go get on the bike for 45 minutes. That’s what “they” say will keep me healthy so I go grab a magazine or my iPod and zone out for 45 minutes on the exercise bike, treadmill, whatever you hamster wheel is. “They” told you that was what was needed so there you go. Friday, something else”they” told you to do. Eating food “they” told you to eat. This week no carb, next week, no fat, next week cabbage soup, next week pineapple. No intention, no motivation…is it a habit, sure. So is brushing your teeth or putting on clean socks but that doesn’t mean you are actually practicing brushing your teeth, or eating with intention, or working out with intention or dressing with intention.

Intention changes everything. So does the awareness of what it is you are doing. Because if you are practicing mindless, by the numbers stuff your life will become a mindless by the numbers sort of life. Maybe you are OK with that…just going through and taking whatever life gives you and just doing whatever you can to get through until tomorrow.

So what are you practicing today?
Are you practicing eating good quality meal prepared with love and care or are you practicing throwing some junk down your pie-hole standing in front of the sink?
Are you practicing increasing your health and fitness through working out or are you practicing by exercising in some mindless robotron way?
Are you practicing living intentionally or are you practicing living by default…whatever you get handed?

You don’t have to have an intentional intention. You are creating intention by practicing what you are doing everyday…surfing the web and wasting time…or intentionally seeking out new knowledge? Your tomorrow’s are being determined right now…by how intentional you are doing what you are doing right now. Wonder why you aren’t in better shape? How is your intention when you exercise? Do you approach every workout with the intention to be better than the last one---faster, stronger, better? Wonder why your nutrition plan isn’t working? Do you approach every meal with the intention to fuel your body with the healthiest, cleanest food you can possibly put in your body? If not, why not?

Why not, indeed? What is stopping you from having intention? You are going to love this…you can guess, I know you can guess…what is the thing that is stopping you from living and intentional life, from intentional building the body, the fitness, the health you want, from having the nurturing, kind and loving relationships you desire?

Practice.

That’s right you must practice intention. I can practice leaving dirty dishes in the sink or I can practice cleaning up after myself immediately. I can get up in the morning and start running after all the mundane tasks and jobs that come up with no intention or plan. Or I can get up intentionally and practice eating with mindfulness, doing my work with the intention to provide my employer and clients with the best possible experience possible, and practicing living my life with intention.

How are you going to do this? How are you going to shift into an intentional life? Start by deciding to be intentional. Then become aware of what it is you are doing. Do you really want that 3rd cup of coffee? Do you really need to stay up an extra ½ hour just to watch that program? What is the intention, what will you get, how will doing that activity move you forward toward your intentional life? After the decision and the awareness we can begin to hone our intentionality. Is it possible to be intentional about brushing your teeth? Yes. Is it possible to be intentional every time you walk into your office? Yes. Is it possible to take every meal with intention? How about every bite? What would happen, how would your life be different if everything that passed between your lips was the result of intention or had conscious intention behind it? Every word going out was intentional, every drink, every bite of food intention as to its purpose? What would life look like if that was your practice?

Practice intentionality. It’s simple, really, just not easy.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Expect More

2012-01-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Expect More

Expect More of yourself. Way too often we don’t. We don’t expect more of ourselves. We don’t set the bar high enough. I am not talking about doing more, or being more efficient, or getting more done, or having more. I am talking about being more. Living larger. Living life in ways that confront the status quo and state unequivocally…”I am bigger than this.”

Over the years you have had teachers, coaches, maybe even your parents who expected more from you. And well they should expect more. They saw, in you, the potential for greatness, the potential for excellence, the potential to live your life on the edge of More.

But what do you see? Are you living with big expectations? Or are you just doing enough to get by. Are you just doing whatever life throws at you and trying not to get “out”? Or are you swinging for the seats? Are you living your life Expecting More of Yourself? No? Why not? I mean really why not?

Are you scared? What are you scared of? Are you afraid you might fail? Maybe you are already failing. Maybe the way you are living is a failure in itself. Maybe the way you are running your life…afraid of really trying, afraid of really reaching and stretching, afraid of being who you were really meant to be…running your life that way is the failure. Not trying to Be More is the failure. Not expecting more is the failure.

What does this mean, what is this attitude that you can be more, that you should and can Expect More from Yourself. What I am talking about is an thought process that says I can…I can improve my body, I can improve my mind, I can improve my attitude, I can improve my fitness, I can improve my nutrition, I can improve my relationships, I can improve my spirit, I can, simply, improve. I can be better, I can get better, I am better. This is in opposition to what appears to be the prevailing idea in our modern world…that it is OK to be mediocre, it is OK to be average, it is OK to be just another cog in the machine, and it is OK to muddle along. Well it’s not OK. You need to Expect More of Yourself. Never mind what I expect. Never mind what you spouse expects, never mind what your boss expects. You need to expect More of Yourself.

You do not have to settle for mediocrity. But you must decide not to settle. You must decide you are going to step up and step out into the spotlight. You must decide you are going to risk the slings and arrows that may come your way when you start to improve, when you start to Expect More of Yourself. You will change your expectation of what you can do physically. You will change your expectation of what you can do mentally, intellectually. You will change your expectation of what your relationships can look like. You will change you’re your expectation of what you can deliver, what you can bring to the table. You will change your expectation of what and who you can be. All of this stems from Expecting More of Yourself.

Then what? Let’s say for a moment that you embrace this attitude of More, this attitude of higher expectations, this concept that you can be, that you are one of the great ones. Then what?

Your life will change. That is it in a nutshell…Your life will change. Maybe you will finally lose that last 10 pounds. Maybe you will run that marathon, ride that century, or get that promotion at work. Maybe you will finally start that charity you have been dreaming of, or get started on learning that new language. I don’t know what your life will look like when you start Expecting More of Yourself. And neither do you. But of this one thing I am sure…Your Life will Change.

So, if you are happy with mediocre, if you are happy with average, happy with just going through the motions then don’t start Expecting More of Yourself. But don’t expect me to do it either. I mean why should I? If you don’t? Your parents and coaches, and teachers had an obligation in many ways to expect more of you. It was kind of built into the job. I don’t and, honestly neither does anyone else. We are not obligated to expect any more of you than you expect of yourself. So, if you want me to expect more of you than You Need to Expect More of Yourself. It is your job, your mission should you choose to accept it. You don’t have to, you can reject the mission. But this message is not going to self destruct. It is going to stay right here for you. It is going to come up again in some other form. And you can choose to keep ignoring it. It is your life.

Expect More of Yourself. Change your Life. Improve your expectations. Be one of the great ones. Leave a legacy of the highest order, the highest and best realization of human potential. Do this and I will Expect More of You as well.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Resolution 12

2012-01-01T05:11:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Resolution 12

If you have been paying attention over the last few weeks we have talked about resolutions and goals, why they work, why they don’t and how to be proactive and honest with those things you want to do to improve your life. Honestly, most of your New Year’s resolutions are all about you. Maybe over the years your resolutions have sounded like one of these:
I’m going to quit smoking.
I’m going to lose weight.
I’m going to work out more.
I’m going to eat better.
I’m going to travel more.
I’m going to learn a new language.
I’m going to go back to school.
I’m going to make more money.
Any of that sound familiar? I’m sure it does because if you haven’t said at least one of those, someone you know has said one of them.
Maybe you have been paying attention over these last few years and your resolutions are smarter (Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Tangible) so your statements look like this:
I’m going to quit smoking on January 1st and I will use the patch to help me with the cravings and hire a naturopath to help me detox from the toxins in the smoke I have been consuming.
I’m going to lose 30 pounds by June 30th 2012. I will begin by cutting all soda out of my diet first. Then sugar. I will increase my vegetable consumption by 100%. I will start walking 45 minutes a day until I have increased the distance by 50% and then I will start jogging.
I’m going to increase my income by 30% this year. I will do this by planning my day the night before and my week on the Sunday before. I will increase my sales calls by 30% a day over 2011. I will find 1 additional source of passive income in 2012.
You get the picture, yes? It’s all about you. All about you improving yourself or some part of your life. All about how you can be more, better, or do something that you perceive will make your life easier, better, or more successful. Great, good on you.
BUT (you knew this was coming right?)…is that all there is? Is that all you are about? Is that all you can do with your life is to improve your own plight? Really? Really?

Should you do all of that? Should you stop smoking, eat better, exercise more, improve your mind, and make more money? Of course you should. It goes without saying, really. And how often do we try those things without success only to promise ourselves that this time it will be different. This year will be the year that it finally works. And here we are on December 31st, again.

SO…here is an all new idea. And idea you can get behind and one you can get in front of. And this is not my idea. Yep, this is one I am taking from someone else because it is such a great idea and so, so simple. I am sort of upset I didn’t think of this, actually.

This year, instead of making resolutions to improve yourself or your life in some way let’s make resolutions to do more good in the world. Let us turn all that internal motivation outward to the external world. Instead of resolving to make ourselves better, what can we resolve to make the world better? What can we do to help others? How can our resolutions improve the world?

Sounds pretty simple, right? And even more importantly it sounds like something I might be able to get behind and stay on task for twelve months or more. It doesn’t have to be complicated or massive like world peace or solving world hunger. It can be simple…remembering everyone’s birthday and sending them a card, paying a compliment to someone new every day, or maybe volunteering as a mentor, a big brother/big sister, providing fitness/diet/nutrition guidance to under privileged/underserved people.

How will you stay on task with this? And the answer is that it is a simple psychology, really. You are doing for others; you are committed to doing something outside yourself. Other people are counting on your contribution and you don’t want to let them done, you don’t want to disappoint them. For those reasons alone you will stay the course. And, after a while, you will find how much richer your life is from performing those simple acts. You will discover a well in you that is finally being filled. A well filled with human kindness. A well you filled yourself, with your own kindness. It doesn’t get much better than this.

As I said this is not my idea. I got the germ of this essay from daily good here:
http://www.dailygood.org/view.php?sid=155
This is a really good idea. This is a very doable idea. This is simple, measurable, achievable, and tangible. You can do this. You can make this the year that your resolutions are achieved. The world is counting on you. If you go here:
http://resolution12.tumblr.com/
you can see what other people are doing. You can join some of them in posting yours. You can send them to me and I will post them…as a matter of fact if you send them I will produce a Sunday Story with nothing but your resolutions…how’s that? Send them here … utffernley@gmail.com and put resolution 12 in the header so I will track them.
Here are 2 or 3 I will do in 2012:
1. Produce 1 ton of food in the garden this year and give it away.
2. Give $52.00 a week for 52 weeks to various charities and organizations
3. Give 1 presentation every month to underserved communities about food, exercise, bullying, or kindness.

Let’s make 2012 the year of Kindness. Happy NewYear!
Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday story...the Question

2011-12-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…the Question

I get the question every week if not every day. It really isn’t the question that someone is asking. Because the question they are asking is rarely the question that needs to be answered.
Usually the question is:
What do I need to do to lose 20 pounds?
How can I get in better shape?
What can I eat to enjoy better health?
How should I work out?
How do I communicate better with my spouse/child/significant other?
What do I need to do to be better at my job/career/school?
How can I make more money?

There is nothing wrong with these questions. They are perfectly valid and they do need to be answered. But almost each one is not asking the question that needs to be answered before the answer to these questions can be validated.

The reason for this is simple. Each of these questions simply does not make sense until we start measuring where you are in the light of how you live your life. And where you are in terms of the commitment to getting where you want to go?

Context Covers a lot of Area
If we look at context, or the availability your life is going to allow you to do the things necessary to get the goal done we start realizing that certain limitations exist.
Want to make a million dollars?
Want to bench press 300 pounds?
Want to date a super model?
How is that going to work in the context of your life? If I live in say, Fernley Nevada, which is not exactly the entertainment capital of the world, nor is it part of the fashion industry in any way shape or form, the likelihood of me even seeing a super model is pretty darn slim, let alone being able to date one. The “context” of my life is such that the possibility of that outcome taking place is just not going to happen. In another (maybe more realistic example) if I want to lose 50 pounds but I work 2 jobs, raise 3 kids by myself, eat crap food from fast food joints every day, don’t sleep well and have never worked out in my life and I think getting up from the couch for a glass of water is real exercise losing weight is simply not in the “context” of my life.

The bottom line on context is that if I have goals or quests that I want to achieve but they do not fit into the context of my life then they are not real and they are not achievable. We call things like this “dreams”. If I want to win the lottery but I never buy a ticket then winning is only a dream and not even a remote possibility. I have not made the changes in the context of my life to win the lottery. So if you want to do certain things you are going to have to shift some element of your life to get them done…you are going to change or shift or transform the context of your life to make room for getting the goal done.

Commitment is Compliance

You are going to hate this one. You must be committed to not just the goal or the quest. You have to be committed to the everyday, to the plan, to the nitty gritty, down and dirty daily work of implementation. You have got to do the work! Every day. Every moment. Unerringly committed to doing what must be done each and every day. If you want to lose 50 pounds but every Sunday you eat a large pepperoni pizza to reward yourself you have lost sight of your commitment. Yes I understand the psychology of rewards and all the rest of that blah blah blah. Guess what? I don’t care. Get a plan. Stay on task. Do the things every day the plan calls on you to do. Don’t cheat. If the plan needs to be modified, modify it but don’t quit, don’t take your eyes off the prize at the end of the quest.

So what’s the question?

If the question you are asking is not the question you should be asking then what is the correct question? Let me put it this way…The magic is not in the plan. It is not in the perfect diet, plastic surgeon or career, or work out plan. There is no magic pill. The magic is in how much you care. The magic is in how much you are willing to do the 2 things you must do to complete your quest…shift your life to make the quest fit into it AND commit to doing what needs to be done to move forward everyday toward the goal.

SO…the question is this: Are you doing or Have you done Everything you can do with what you have already? When you read all the words before this we come down to this: Are you doing enough with what you already have? If you are not then get after it first. Do the research, do the plan you already have. Then if you can say yes, I am doing all I can with what I have then we can start there. That is our jumping off point. When your commitment and your context have shifted to accommodate the quest then we can get to work. Want to lift 300 pounds off your chest? We can make a plan for that if you have the context and the commitment. Date a super model? Same thing. Lose weight? Enjoy better health? Same same.

I can help but only to the degree that you are willing to work. Not to the degree that I am willing to listen to your reasons for not being committed and contextual.
Want help? Call me.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Couch Potato

2011-12-11T05:56:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Couch Potato?

The other morning, after kickboxing class several of us were having a conversation about various exercise methods. The fact of the matter is that there are many ways to become more fit, especially if you are starting from zero, or less than zero (yes that is possible). I know of one example of over 100 pounds lost by riding a bicycle. We have all heard of people who lost weight and improved their physical fitness by running, swimming, walking, dancing, p-90x, zumba, crossfit, aerobics, tae-bo, or any of a number of other things. All of these things have one thing in common: they require you to get up and start moving. It is impossible to get fit lying on the couch bemoaning your health and fitness.

But what is fitness, really? How do you define fitness? How do I define fitness? What makes up an athlete or a state of athleticism? Who is an athlete? Is there some independent measure or benchmark that we can say makes someone fit? After all we can say when someone is unfit, or ill, or unhealthy. There are some objective measurements for sickness or disease…blood pressure, pulse rates, blood markers, and more. And, yes, some of those markers would also indicate a fit person as well.

We can look across a spectrum of fitness and find lots of different examples. For example, an Olympic marathoner can run 26 miles in just over 2 hours (120 minutes). That means they are going to average less than 5 minutes per mile. I don’t know about you but I cannot run 1 mile in less than 5 minutes let alone 26 in a row. This is obviously an athlete of some repute. But is he really fit?
How about a Triathlete? One of the folks who can swim 2.4 miles (in the ocean), ride the bike for 112 miles and then run for 26 miles. One after the other and do it in less than 8 hours. This is a feat to be reckoned with.
What about a power lifter. I recently met a man who can squat (put weight on his back and drop his rear down below his knees and stand up with the weight) over 1000 pounds. That is a strength I don’t have but is he fit?
How about the body builders and fitness models…the people who get their body fat so obscenely low so we can see every striation and fiber in their flexed muscles? Must be fit right?

All of these examples are of athletes who can be considered to be in good shape, have a decent cardio vascular response to exercise, and the potential to excel in their sports. But they are each different and they each have made a similar fitness choice…they have specialized in their “thing”. An Olympic marathoner is never going to be a power lifter. He just isn’t made for it. And that power lifter is never going to outrun the marathoner once they get past about 50 yards. His fitness is not going to allow for that.

So how are we going to define fitness? Because the definition we use will determine the method of exercise we choose. And the method will create the level of fitness and health we are trying to achieve.

Most commonly we are looking for the following characteristics: strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, agility, power, accuracy, cardiovascular/respiratory endurance and stamina. The ability to have all of these things is what makes an athlete. Obviously if I am going to be really good at running 26 miles I am going to give up on a few of those fields in favor of my chosen sport. The same holds true for power lifting.

Fitness by my definition requires me to be good at all of those things. I must have power and strength. The other day a man asked me to help him pick up his motorcycle that had fallen over at the gas station. He couldn’t do it. I walked over and lifted it up…this is functional fitness. I must have endurance and stamina to run or swim or bike or row as I choose. Even if that is a 4 or 5 hour hike or walk in the amusement park. I have to have balance and flexibility…too many people as they age can no longer move the way they did years ago and the primary reason is that they aren’t flexible any more. It is a practice to stay flexible and balanced.

If I am going to be an athlete I must work on all those areas without prejudice or specialization. That means I have to do 2 or 3 things frequently…I must train, I must practice, and I must push my body when I practice and train. Doing 45 minutes on the hamster wheel just isn’t going to get it done. Knocking out 3 sets of 10 reps of a specific body part isn’t going to get it done. I have to train which means I am increasing my cardiovascular/respiratory response, strength and flexibility in the activity. Training is an activity that increases performance in a measurable way. I have to practice which means I am improving coordination, balance, accuracy and agility. This activity results in changes in the nervous system…I am getting better at the activity. Power and speed are improved through adaptations in both training and practice.

The definition of fitness I use says that no matter what I am tasked with…picking up a motorcycle, mowing the lawn, hiking up the mountain, sprinting across the road, sitting down without a chair and getting up without assistance, jumping over the fence, climbing up a tree, or???...I will be able to perform. You see I want to be a life athlete. I want to be an athlete that can do what we wants when he wants and be able to say when it was over I am glad I train and practice hard so I was able to get that done. It’s pretty simple really. But it is definitely not easy. It takes sweat, effort, thought and fortitude to push yourself hard. And then come back tomorrow for more.

Come on and get fit with me. Unleash your inner athlete (and bury your couch potato)…they are just sitting there waiting for you to put them in the game…the game we call life.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Why I'm Fat

2011-12-04T04:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Why I'm Fat

I am fat. I have to face it…like all 2/3rds of Americans today I am overweight. I am at least 10 pounds overweight and I have no one to blame but myself. I really need to stop kidding myself about this. Sure, I have some abdominal muscle showing which should indicate a particular level of fitness and body composition. But the facts are simple…over 66% of us are overweight and I count myself among them. Even worse…1/3rd or over 33% of us are obese. The world health organization (WHO) defines obesity as a “BMI” (body mass index) of 30+, and overweight is 25+. Mine is 24.8 but I am an athlete and as such my ideal weight would be about 10# lighter and a BMI of closer to 24.

Many years ago all the humans who walked the earth were fit and healthy and lean. They were taller than we are today, had fewer cavities, enjoyed better health and had bigger brains. So what happened? Why are we, today, in the face of having more than enough food to eat getting fatter and fatter as time progresses? You would think, in light of what we know, that we would be able to eat in ways that science tells us will make us even healthier and fitter. But the facts are in…in the last 40 years we have gotten fatter and fatter, our health has gone downhill, new diseases have come about related to diet and we are generally in poorer health. This just doesn’t make sense. Or does it?

Imagine for a moment what a lion living on the savannah of Africa eats. Meat. They eat lots of meat and not much else. We don’t see lions out foraging for a snickers bar or even sitting down to a nice breakfast of leaves and twigs. Nope it is pretty much meat all the way. The lion has developed this way over thousands of years. He is programmed by evolution to eat what it is that he eats. Imagine for a moment that we would try to turn our lion into a vegetarian. I am just guessing but I am willing to say we would probably end up with a pretty sick lion. The thought of him being a vegan is chilling.

On the other hand let’s talk about cows. Our happy cow living her life in a bucolic pasture, munching on green grass, chewing her cud and producing milk for her offspring, all of whom then eat more grass and get fat and happy. Our cow has developed a digestive system that works perfectly when fed grass. She takes grass and turns it into meat and milk. It is a beautiful thing. How about we start feeding her animal parts? How about we ask our cow to start running down a deer for dinner? But she doesn’t have the teeth, the stomach acids, or the digestion to make animal parts into milk and meat. She will get sick (by the way, this is why feedlot cows have to be given a regular diet of antibiotics to keep them alive).

Now let’s turn our attention back to us human animals. What were we meant to eat? How did we evolve to eat the foods we are eating? The fact is we don’t really know. Our pre-historic ancestors left no menus lying around for our anthropologists to decipher. There is a way to get some clues, however. We know they didn’t eat cereal, pizza, or drink milk. All of those things are fairly new developments. And in anthropological terms anything in the last 10,000 years is fairly recent.

We didn’t eat grain or legumes. In order to destroy the toxins the grain (a seed designed for one thing---propagation of the species) produces to protect itself we have to process the grain to make it somewhat palatable to our digestive systems.
We didn’t drink milk or eat dairy products. There were no domesticated critters yet. And if you have ever tried to milk an animal that didn’t want to be milked, well let’s just wish you good lick with that shall we?
We didn’t eat processed fats, sugars…they simply did not exist for those humans.
The tools needed to process those foods did not exist until about 10 thousand years ago. It was here that human civilization really began. We could take seeds, plant them, harvest them, and process them and feed people. And for the last 9,900 years grain has reigned supreme in the human diet. This allowed us to stay in one place because we had a constant food source readily available. Then we could create cities and roads, and have traffic jams and start enjoying all the wonderfulness of the non-hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

At the same time humans began to get shorter, have smaller brains and have more cavities. It’s a small price to pay for a Starbucks on the corner, right? Then about 100 years ago we began to industrialize our food system. We introduced processed oils and sugars into our diets but even into the 1960’s we were still pretty lean. The obesity rate was rising but not alarmingly so. Somewhere about 1970 we were told to avoid fat…that eating fat was making us sick, causing heart disease, and causing havoc with our arteries. So we all went on a carb-binge. It was OK to eat cereal with a 30 gram sugar filled yogurt on top. It wasn’t and our waistlines are expanding every year to prove it. Even worse all those grain based carbs began to work their magic with our immune systems and digestive tracts.

We got sicker and fatter than ever. And today I am fat. I am fat because I swallowed the party line hook line and sinker. And I will continue to be fat until I change my diet. It really is that simple.

Now, those of you who know me already think I am a fringe foodie. I don’t eat grain, sugar, legumes, or dairy. The problem is simple. I am not 100% compliant and that is where my last 10 pounds are hiding…in that glass of wine, shot of tequila, chocolate bar, and piece of cheese. I may be 90% compliant but until I take that last step those stubborn last few pounds will remain with me.

I am going to get 100% compliant. I am not willing to put myself in the overweight category anymore. I will be the lean human machine I was created to be. How about you?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The Urge to Purge

2011-11-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…The Urge to Purge

About 3 years ago I “down-sized” my life. I moved into a house 1/3rd smaller than the one I was living in. A 1 one car instead of 2, one bedroom less, everything was smaller. I even lost so much stuff I could put the car in the garage (what a concept)! But lately I have been feeling stuck and cramped and just generally weighted down.

When I look around my world today I see a lot of stuff. I seem to have spent a lot of time (and money) acquiring stuff. Some of this stuff is left over from things I used to do. Clothes, food, books, cds, knick knacks and bric a brac are all there.

I have one cupboard in my kitchen filled with food I will no longer eat. Rice, flour, prepared and boxed stuff, loose stuff, it’s all in there. Yet for some time I have resisted getting rid of it. Honestly a great portion of it is probably waaaay past its expiration date. I will never eat any of it. It’s perfectly good but for some reason I have resisted cleaning out that cupboard. Maybe I am thinking of the day the world crashes down and I will need some weird Thai box food to eat? I have friends who would eat this food. I could give it to one of the food pantries. So what is the stop?

Although my closet today is smaller than the one I had 3 years ago, I do have 2 closets full of clothes. And some of those clothes are still bagged up from the move, so I have not worn them in 3+ years! Again I have friends who would wear some of these things. There are shelters that would take them. There is probably a clothing exchange somewhere that would take them. I could sell them. The fact is that many of them don’t fit anymore, others are a style I don’t wear anymore, and others may never have been right but they looked cool and the price was right. So what is the stop?

My garage is the place where all the orphan stuff goes to live. There are 3 boxes of empty mineral water bottles. I saved them because they need to be recycled somewhere and in California they have an actual cash value. There is an old stereo system that is probably 20 years old including a turntable with no needle and a cassette player…yes a cassette player. And somewhere there is probably a box of cassette tapes which haven’t been played in 10+ years. All of it needs to be gone through and trashed, sold, recycled, given up, or burnt. So what is the stop?

Obviously I have the urge to purge yet I don’t. When I look around I feel stifled and stuck. It is almost like being in a closed up room with no air flow in the summer time---really uncomfortable and hard to breathe. The answer is…just do it.

Just throw it out.
Just give it away.
Just recycle it.
Just burn it.
Just get rid of it somehow, someway.
We all know the answer yet we don’t do it.
We all know the lightness that will come when we unburden our life from these things.
We all know that by getting rid of the old we make room for the new…the new experiences, the new, possibilities, the new people that can come into our lives when we make room.
We all know that purging our junk is good for us once in a while.

Yet it is so hard to do. The task is daunting. When I look at that cupboard I cringe. Yet I know in my head that it will take less than an half an hour to clean up. So what is the stop?

The clothes feel worse. It feels like I have to decide that I am never going to wear that again. That I will never be that size again. That the style no longer suits me. Then when we add in the memories of the clothes…where they were last worn, who bought them, the compliments received while wearing them, it feels as if I would be giving away those memories as well.

Then there is the garage. And that feels just impossible. A huge task. And I am not talking about the work; I am talking about putting the memories away. Taking books I have been carrying around for 40 years and doing something with them. It just goes against my training. On the other hand I haven’t even looked at them in over 3 years, let alone read them. They have been sitting in boxes all that time. The same thing goes for cds…I have hundreds yet today I keep all my music on various hard drives and I wouldn’t have room in the house for the 500 gigs or so of music I keep on those drives. Yet there they are in boxes all over the garage.

The stop is not wanting to deal with the memories of all that stuff. If I keep it all locked away I don’t have to deal with it. I don’t have to sort and sift through the experiences and the good and the bad that all that stuff represents.

We all have stuff. We all have more stuff than we really need. I know I do. And I know I am going to get the stop off and get rid of the stuff that no longer serves me. This stuff is holding me back from what I really want, from the things that will really serve me in my life as it is right now.

Anyone want any of this stuff?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Tribes

2011-11-20T04:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Tribes

A long, long time ago in a place not all that far from here there was a very young man who taught at an early age to like people and make friends. And if someone new came into the school or the neighborhood he went out of his way to make the new person feel like they had a friend in him. It was part of who he was; part of what he thought was expected of him. He brought them into his friends and his groups and treated them like they were important and welcome in the community. It felt like the right thing to do.

Someplace along the way, probably around age 9 or 10 this young man noticed a couple things happening. And these things had him feel sad, lonely, isolated and ostracized. What happened was pretty simple; the new friend left often taking some of the community or group with them, branching off and creating a new group or a sub group that our young man was not welcome into. In other words after bringing the newcomer in, he was forced out by the newcomer.

What this young man made that mean was this: I don’t belong. Even when it looks like I belong I really don’t. And if I befriend someone they will leave after using me to gain access to the people and groups they really need access to. And if I am welcomed into a group or a tribe I will always be the outsider, the interloper who will be expendable once his gifts, skill and talents have been replaced or used up.

Just because you make something mean something it does not make it true or a fact. It is just the meaning you have assigned to those events. Someone else may give those same events a completely different meaning. It is part of our nature as humans…to create meaning.

As I might imagine you have already guessed that the young man in the story is me. As I look out over the past years (and there have been more than a few) the realization has dawned that I have been living out of this “story” for most of my life.

In other words this has been a theme in my life…not belonging. For a long time I have felt like I didn’t have a home. Not a real one…one where people see me and appreciate me. I have spent so long keeping different parts of my life from touching one another that it feels like 4 or 5 jigsaw puzzles that are somehow connected but I am missing the pieces that will connect the puzzle into a cohesive picture. Each puzzle is complete but I know that when they are all hooked together there will be a new and more impactful picture. The question is now: what do you do to find the pieces that will connect the whole picture?

I have been looking for a “tribe” for a long time. I have found many tribes that I fit into at least partially. These are the places and people who seem to welcome me (at least the parts of me that are visible to them). But after awhile I start feeling like I really don’t belong. Like I have missed the “joke”, the inside information that the rest of the group is privy to. Again this is not the truth; it is only the story, or the meaning I have given to the events.

The fact of the matter is until I allow my own truth to be seen and heard I cannot really be present in any place I show up. Until I advocate for myself clearly and with power there is no way to belong anywhere. I would just be floating along, like a piece of flotsam on the tide, showing whatever face needs to be shown at the moment. So that would be the first connecting piece: be my own advocate.

The first piece is closely tied to the second piece: show up fully without fear of approbation. What that means is that instead of a toll bridge between the different elements of my life we are going to bring the borders right up next to each other. My life should be connected not disconnected. When all those disparate pieces become a complete picture it will be easier for the tribe to accept and understand and appreciate me. Or not. Because not all tribes are the right fit.

The last connecting piece is: give up the story. The story that says I don’t belong. The story that says I am not worthy of this or that tribe. That is all that is: a story. This is where we get to change the past. What happened is what happened. What I made that happening mean is all about me. I get to change the story. I get to decide what those events mean to me. And doesn’t it make more sense to tell a story that will serve me in beneficial ways?

So now the end of the story might go something like this: I am a connector. One of the most useful things I do in any group is to connect people in ways that serve them and the greater good. I help people find the places and tribes that will serve them and their chosen vision and goals. I belong and I show up fully and I am accepted for the gifts, skills and talents I bring to the table.

What’s your story? Does your story help you or are you living out of a story a 10 year old told him or her? Wouldn’t it be better if you told yourself a grown up story? A story that has the kind of meaning that will truly serve who you want to be tomorrow?

Go ahead change your past and create the future you choose.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Get Up, Stand up

2011-11-13T00:45:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Get Up, Stand Up

Yesterday two of my students were fooling around in class. This is not unusual for these two young men. As a matter of fact it is pretty much the code of the day. However, one of them almost always blames or finds that the other one is causing the disruption. He refuses to take responsibility for what is happening around him. He gets mad and frustrated when the discipline is meted out to both of them. The other one, on the other hand, takes responsibility for what is happening and accepts the consequences. He just would rather goof around than be compliant. So…which position is better?

Personal Responsibility doesn’t mean it’s my fault or I am to blame. Personal responsibility means I am not going to blame circumstances or fear or fate or failure for the way my life looks. Personal responsibility means I am going to stand up and be counted for what is happening in my life.
When I do something wrong, I stand up.
When I do something right I stand up.
When I do something that hurts someone else, I stand up.
When I do something that helps someone else I stand up.
When I do something that hurts me I stand up.
When I do something that is right for me I stand up.
When you choose to live this way the constant is that you stand up…constantly and consistently.

I often write about changing your life and about changing the world. I write about being the person you were put upon this earth to be. I write about being kind, about creating the life you want to lead. I write about living in a way that serves you and serves the people and the world around you. I write about optimum health and fitness. But all of those things take a back seat to personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility is the keystone to living life on your terms. Way too often, way too many of us are just taking what life gives us. We are trying to surf on an ocean of waves with a 2x4 and getting beat up for the effort. I don’t know about you but that just isn’t a lot of fun. I have done this. You have done this. We were just trying to get by, just trying to do what we had to do to get through one more day, month or year, thinking that if we just did x (whatever x is) everything would be ok. Guess what? It isn’t going to be OK. It isn’t going to get any better. Haven’t you noticed that every time we get x life throws us another curve ball? Just when you thought you had it all figured out the game changes? Just when you got all your proverbial ducks in a row someone decided that having your ducks in a row was the wrong thing to do. So what did you do? You chucked the ducks for the next thing it looked like life wanted from you.

How long are you going to continue this way? Aren’t you tired of it yet? I know I am. I can blame the economy for this or that. I can blame this President or the other one. I can look at my life and say I got some bad breaks, that is isn’t my fault, not really, and I can figure that I just need to tough it out a while longer.
OR I can start by standing up. I can stand up and take responsibility for my life, for what has happened to me and for what is going to happen to me in the future. I can stand up and begin to put my life in the order I want it to be rather than allowing life to shove me around like some flotsam in the ocean.

I am not saying this is easy by the way. Because it is not easy. It may sound simple but it isn’t easy. It is going to require a shift in how you view the world and your place in it. You must begin to believe that you are the captain of your ship. You must begin to believe that life is an ocean and if you don’t sail on it with purpose and direction you will end up wherever the currents and prevailing winds push you. And honestly, unless you are very lucky, that is probably not where you want to go.

The direction personal responsibility will send you will be one of your choosing. And just like sailing on the ocean you will need to make course corrections from time to time. You will need to check your compass, recalibrate where you are in reference to where you want to be and make adjustments. You might even have to change destinations to achieve what you really want. But the keyword in all of those sentences is you, I, me…the personal pronouns of personal responsibility.
I am responsible for my life.
I decide where I want to go and how I am going to get there.
I stand up for me.
I stand up for what is right and what is wrong in my life.
I do the work to fix it.
I am powerful because I am the captain of the ship that is my life.

It is never too late to take your power. No matter where you are today. No matter how old you are, no matter how poor, or rich, no matter the state of your health, unless you are dead and in a box, you can take the helm of your ship and start piloting it. So go ahead, decide that your life belongs to you and take the wheel.

Get up and Stand up.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Sweetness

2011-11-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Sweetness

There is a drug so powerful that it addicts almost 100% of the people who use it. It is so insidious that the effects can only be seen over time. Yet the short term effects are immediate and noticeable in almost 100% of users. Long term it has been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, neurological disorders, digestive issues, high blood pressure, lever disease, dementia, depression, and epilepsy.

This substance is so innocuous that it is virtually everywhere in our modern world. It appears as a dangerous and addictive white powder. It is available virtually anywhere and it is cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it is used in great quantities throughout our country. We manufacture tons of it and it does not occur naturally in nature.

It is everywhere. It is in our schools, our homes, our workplaces and our recreational centers. And it is killing us. We allow the schools to give it to our children as a reward. We give it to our children without thinking. I grew up on it and so did virtually everyone we know.

Most of us are addicted to it. We crave it and will ruin our health for it without thinking. The cravings are so powerful we will ruin our health before we try and quit. If we try to quit we will have withdrawal symptoms just like a crack or a heroin addict. It may be the hardest addiction to leave behind because we have been brainwashed to believe that it really isn’t ”that” bad.

The drug in question, the white powder I am talking about is sugar...the stuff that sits in the bowl on your kitchen table. You probably have a whole container of it somewhere in your house. Right now your children may have a whole bag of it stashed somewhere in the house. Of course their bag isn’t just pure sugar; no, their bag is worse. Brightly colored wrappers, fascinating logos and combined with other things to make it even more appealing and addictive they went out and begged on the streets for it just the other evening. And we, the adults, the grownups encouraged them to go. And some of us even shared in the spoils when it got home.

You may think this is radical thinking. How can a food be addictive? How can something that we thought was so good be so bad? There are lots of studies and books and articles that prove this out. And it isn’t just excess consumption, although excess consumption is very harmful. It appears that even a bit of consumption can have far reaching effects. And it is in almost everything you eat, if you eat any kind of processed food. For the record processed food is pretty much anything that isn’t meat, vegetables, fruit, seeds, or nuts. Bread, pasta, yogurt, chips, or pancake batter all have sugar.

And yes, fruit does have naturally occurring fructose (a monosaccharide sugar). This is one of the reasons fruit intake should be limited and fruit juice should not be ingested. Fruit juice has had the mitigating fiber and “food” removed from it and results in a pretty plain drink of sugar and liquid.

You have been conditioned to eat sugar your whole life. If you don’t believe me, if you think I am full of it just try to stop eating sugar for 30 days. All of it. 100% clean. After all if I am wrong you can always go back to eating it again on the 31st day. Oh and artificial sweeteners are probably worse. They act the same way in the body, they affect the same beta sites and they create the same insulin reaction as sugar. Except there isn’t any calories, no sugar for the insulin to act upon so there is a large probability that your insulin resistance is going to get worse (this is what helps create type II diabetes by the way)

You will experience withdrawals. You will have headaches, fatigue, cravings, and generally feel bad. Yet if you stick it out you will feel better in just a few days. It is going to be way too easy to fall back into the sugar abyss. Sugar is ubiquitous…it is everywhere. And the real challenge will be over the next 2 months.

This Monday marked the start. Not the start of winter, although winter is certainly trying to arrive. Monday was Halloween and the start of “treat” season. The next 2 months will be filled with candy, irresistible deserts, favorite comfort foods, and a wink and a nod to overeating. Guilt and pressure to “try everything” will be paramount. So much of the food we associate with comfort, and home, and the holidays are sugar laden bombs just waiting to go off to the detriment of your health.

Is your health important enough to you to stop eating sugar? Or have you dismissed me as some kind of crazy, a fruitcake who has fallen into the soup of crazy nutrition advice? You don’t have to believe me. You can do the same research I have done. Go ahead and Google it…sugar addiction. Or just about anything with sugar…sugar and diabetes, sugar and obesity, sugar and hyperinsulinemia, sugar and depression the information is readily available.

Or you can stick your head in the sugar bowl and say it just isn’t true. After all the government and the major food companies only have your health interests at heart. The only person who is going to suffer is you not the FDA or the USDA or Monsanto, or Pepsi, or Coca Cola. And really you have nothing to lose by stopping for 30 days. Just 30 days of no added sugar. C’mon you can do it!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Wonder If

2011-10-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Wonder If

How would life be if we took a blank slate and wondered if…
We couldn’t fail
We could love without worry
We could be the person we really wanted to be
We could learn all the things we have always wanted to learn
We danced in the moonlight with the fireflies

What would happen? How would life be different for you if you just wonder if?
What if you took that wonder and put it into action?
Wonder if I just packed it all in and started on a walking tour of the country…the world?
Then what?

Wonder if we all just quit one day and started living out of out possibilities instead of our expectations.
Then what?
Wonder if I could get up tomorrow with no agenda, no to do list, no cat to feed, no children to herd, no job to go to.
Then what?

Looking back and wondering if is easy. As I look back on my life I can wonder if…
What might have happened if I married so and so instead of so and so
What would life had been had I gone to this school instead of that one
Had taken the other job
Hadn’t had the affair
Hadn’t yelled at my boss
Had gone to the Caribbean instead of Hawaii
These questions you have probably already played in your head. I play I wonder if with my past every once in a while. It is an interesting little fantasy game that whiles away a few minutes I may not be using at the moment. But really, it is pretty non-productive. Of course things would have been different if this or that had happened differently. Would my core be any different, though? Would who I am very deeply be any differently than who I am right now? I suspect not, at least not if your core values and ethics are strong and powerful.

When we play wonder if into the future the game shifts dramatically. I am going to operate out of my core values. I am going to stand tall in who I am, in whom I am being. That part is not going to change. But when I play wonder if…

Wonder if I can re-invent myself
Wonder if I can change the world
Wonder if I can be the parent I wanted to be
Wonder if I can be financially successful
Wonder if I can write the _______ (fill in the blank)
Wonder if I can create or invent _______ (fill in the blank)

The problem comes when we start answering the question…YES, of course I can.
Then the doubts and the other questions begin…
Then what?
What will I do then?
How can I do that?
I’m not this or that enough to get that done.
What will everyone think of me if I do______ (fill in the blank again)
What will my family say?
How will I live?
What about _______ (pick something)
These are the fears coming up and destroying your wonder if.
This is what happens when our blank slate isn’t really blank. If I truly have a “tabula rasa” none of those things should ever come up. I don’t know about you but even when I try to erase the slate there are still impressions left. This morning I erased my white board and started to write something new. What I erased was still there…I could still see it and could still read it without much trouble. I wiped it cleaner and it was still there, hidden but there.

The same thing happens with us. We wipe things out. We think we are “over” it. We think we have worked it out. We have erased the fears, the conditioning, the expectations but they may still be operating underneath. They may be lurking under the rocks in my subconscious. The belief systems I have put into place over the course of my life continue to operate whether I know it or not. This is a black board that is really hard to erase. It is going to take some bit of work to shift and change a lifetime of beliefs, fears, and expectations.

Is it work worth doing? Because this work is not going to be easy. This isn’t like changing your socks or doing the dishes. This is monumental life changing world shifting work. It is going to hurt. It is going to create some cracks in your armor.

But what if doing the work could open up the world of wonder if? What if all of a sudden you could love like you have never been hurt (even though you have been), dance like no one was watching (even though they are), work like you don’t need the money (even though you really do), sing like no one is listening (even though they may be), and live like its heaven on earth (even though it isn’t).

Would you do the work now? Would it be worth the struggle, the pain, and the hurt? If not, why not? What is going to be enough to have you do the work?

I’ll bet about now you are wondering but how am I going to do the work? I have no idea what he is talking about. I have no idea how to get started. I have no way to access this crazy work he is talking about.
Yes you do. If you are getting this you have a computer. If you have a computer you have a world at your fingertips. There are blogs, ebooks, forums and much more to get started on. There are people out there who can help you (including me).

Start wondering if
Do the work
Wonder if some more
Do more work
It’s never too late for you to be who you were meant to be.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Wish in One Hand

2011-10-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Wish in One Hand

There are a million excuses for you to use for whatever you are not doing, or supposed to be doing but aren’t, or for your shortcomings. One of the most common is I wish I could___________ (fill in whatever you wish you could be doing).
I wish I could get into shape but __________
I wish I could eat better but___________
I wish I could get my blood pressure down but____________
I wish I could, I wish I could I wish I could. This is not the sound of anyone who is going to get anything done. I am sure the reasoning you are applying to the things that you aren’t doing is sound and reasonable. I am sure it makes sense. I am sure that logic works. FOR YOU.

The facts are simple. If you are wishing in one hand and finding a whole lot of stuff after the but you are simply letting the world run you on whatever terms it finds timely. You are not in charge of your life. You are not being proactive in running your life.

I’ll bet you wish you could change that outlook. But it’s too hard isn’t it. But my spouse just won’t let me. But I have so many responsibilities. But I don’t have any time to plan my life. But the world just handed me a bad hand of cards. But there just isn’t anything I can do about it.

Fine. Stop reading now. You have gone far enough. There is nothing for you here.

Still reading? Good. Look quit wishing for stuff. There is no fairy godmother coming around to grant you 3 wishes, no genie coming out of the bottle, no magic beans. Your wishes just aren’t going to come true. I feel really bad about putting it so bluntly but there it is. Think back to when you found out about whatever childhood icon you believed in (Santa, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny) wasn’t real. Remember the confusion, the devastation this brought to your world view? Or maybe you had some idea before it was confirmed but you wanted to play along with the game a little longer. You wanted to believe in the magic longer because it kept things simple and easy in the little world you were living in.
If you want to be in better shape you can be. If you want to eat healthier you can. If you want to live a life of wonder and splendor you can. It really isn’t that hard.

First you better decide what definition you are going to use for the thing you want. What does healthier really look like to you? I know what it looks like to me but what does it look like to you. The more clear your definition the easier the process of getting is going to be. You need a clearly defined idea of the thing you want. I want to be rich. OK…what does that look like in the world you are living in because compared to many parts of the world (where they live on less than $3.00 per day) you already are rich. I want to lose some weight…OK how much?

Wishing just won’t make things so. You need to define what it is you want. You need to start defining how you want your life to look. This is the stop for many people. What if I’m wrong? What if I say I want this that and the other thing and I get it and then I don’t really want it? One question comes to mind…if you haven’t designed the life you are living and you really aren’t happy with it, how will getting something you design but don’t want be any different than what you have today? Just asking.

It seems to me I would be better off designing a life and then realizing I would rather have designed it differently than living on accident. If I don’t like what I create I can always make some adjustments and create something else. I mean can’t you shift and change more than once? I have had several careers over the years. I loved them all and thought they were the exact right things at the exact right times. Was I wrong? Was I building sand castles just waiting for the tide to come in and tear them down? No these were solid things, good things but I changed and shifted and then built something different. Not better perhaps, but certainly more relevant to who and what I wanted to be doing.

Just defining what it is isn’t going to be enough though. You are going to have to figure out how and when you are going to get what it is you really want. Then you are going to have to make a plan to go out and get it. It won’t happen in the face of inaction. It won’t happen in the ill defined, poorly planed environment your life has been up to this point. If you want it you are going to have to go and get it. If you want to win the lottery you had better go out and buy a ticket.

This isn’t rocket science. This isn’t brain surgery. It really is very simple. But it is going to require effort. It is going to require you to get up off your duff and do something. It is going to require some struggle; you might get frustrated and maybe even sidetracked but in the end it will be your life. The life you want, the body you want, the world you want. Sitting around and wishing just won’t make it so.

If you wish in one hand and put mud in the other, when you put them together you get a handful of mud. If you put goals and plans in one hand and mud in the other at least you still have goals and plans when you put them together.

Stop wishing and start working.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Resistance is Futile

2011-10-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Resistance is Futile

Resistance training is important. Usually when we talk about resistance training we are talking about moving some amount of weight over a particular plane of movement a certain number of times. The weight resists the movement and we get stronger, our bones get stronger (more dense), our joints become more limber. That is the theory anyway. And for the most part it is true. And for the most part it is something we should all be doing.

But that isn’t the kind of resistance training I am talking about today. The resistance training I am talking about today is training yourself to do the things you really don’t want to do. To do the things that show up as hard or challenging. We all have those things. You know the ones I am talking about. The ones that if you do them will result in amazing personal growth and will move your life forward in ways you have always dreamed about but have never quite gotten to.

There really isn’t a training school for this sort of thing, at least not one I have found. There is a process or two that may be helpful in getting there but at the bottom line it will end up being all about you and your will to plow through the muck, the mud, and the sludge to get stronger in your character, more solid in your being, more grounded in your “who you are”.

Just like when we go to the gym everyday in the face of not wanting to go. When we pick up that heavier weight because we know the results will be there. When we continue to drive for one more repetition because in that last one is the success we have been striving for. We are training ourselves to fight against the not wanting to, the desire to quit, to give up to remain mediocre.

Maybe your “thing” isn’t the weights. Maybe your “thing” is something else…some other thing that requires you to push the edge of your comfort zone, the edge of your envelope. There is a mental toughness in that push, that requirement to get the last morsel, the last nugget of growth and effort. We are applying this attitude and mental fortitude to the thing we know, the thing we have committed to, the thing that is going to pay us the dividends we desire.

BUT (you knew that was coming) there are places where you are not practicing your resistance training. Places in your life that you are playing not to lose, perfectly happy with the envelope being the size that it is, perfectly perfect in your comfort zone. This is not how to win in life. This is not how you grow and become the amazing human you were put upon this earth to become.

For me nutrition is pretty easy. I eat in a way that is consistent with my fitness and health goals, I don’t find it difficult. Of course, I am an outstanding cook (Thanks Mom). The same with fitness…pretty easy for me to train hard, keep going in the face of defeat, injury, exhaustion, or simple laziness. I have no problem pushing the edges of fitness. I love the feeling of muscle straining, sweat pouring, limbs shaking training. I feel alive, centered, and focused.

On the other hand…I hate having to look at my failed relationships. I hate having to take responsibility for those relationships. This is an envelope I am very happy staying inside of. Yet if I don’t do some work I am doomed to repeat my past failures. It is the way of the world. If we don’t learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it over and over and over. I am resisting this training. I am dragging my feet, skipping workouts (metaphorically) and not putting a full 100% effort into the training. What is that about? What belief system is operating on this front?

SO…here is the exercise for those of you who want push the edge of your relationship envelope:
Write a love letter to your past lover. Pick the one that you are still most lit up, mad at, or can’t get out of your mind. The idea is to begin with fear, or anger, or sadness and end up with love.
I am so angry that you______________(fill in the blank)
I am scared because ____________________ (fill in the blank)
I am afraid because_____________________ (fill in the blank)
I love you because _______________________ (fill in the blank)
Naturally it may take a while to get to the love part. And you will need to dig very deep to discover what has you all bent out of shape about this particular relationship. You may need to do this process more than once with more than one person. The idea is to figure out the how and why you feel the way you do and then get over it and move on so that you can have a healthy relationship of this type.

This seems to be a pretty simple process. Yet I have been resisting it for several weeks. I have written a paragraph or 2 and I seem to be stuck. I just don’t want to do it.
Here is the fix (Thanks Francesca) and this is a fix you can use anywhere you are stuck…nutrition, quitting a habit, working out, personal growth or even the love letter process:

Write this sentence down:
I don’t want to write this letter (in my case) because____________ (fill in the blank). Keep writing sentence after sentence until you have exhausted all the reasons (real or imagined) for not doing whatever it is that you really know you should be doing.
Then write this sentence down:
The gift I will receive from this activity is ____________________ (fill in the blank). Keep writing sentence after sentence until you have exhausted all the gifts you could possible derive from doing the activity.

At this point you should be ready to tackle the activity. In my case…the love letter. In your case?

What are you resisting? Why are you resisting it? What are you getting, how are you winning by not growing? Why are playing small in this area of your life? Do you want to stop? There’s one small little exercise you might try …if you dare. Watch out though you might end up being great!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Harmonic Health

2011-10-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Harmonic Health

As many of you know I am on a mission to find, live, and help you be optimally fit. Unfortunately there is no recipe for this. There is no blueprint, no one right and true way. And it seems that there are so many conflicting opinions, gurus, and information that we should just throw up our hands and sit down to a really bad cheeseburger and fries.

NOOO! Don’t do it. As Winston Churchill is reported to have said…”Never Give Up”. Part of this process is trial and error. What works really well for me may only work partly well for you. And yes there are those anomalies out there that can smoke and drink and eat bad food and live to a healthy 80 years old. That isn’t me and it probably isn’t you and really do you want to risk it?

So let’s step back a bit and focus on a much bigger picture. Is nutrition important? Is exercise important? Absolutely but too often we get so obsessed with one factor that we miss the big picture…in other words you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Let’s divide this harmonic health idea into 3 parts. #1 Recovery---nutrition, sleep, and other practices. # 2 Physical Stress---exercise, disease, injury, and labor. #3 Mental misfiring---losses (job, spouse child), money, trauma, self esteem. If all three of these areas are in harmony life is good. If we get out of balance life can start getting bad in a hurry.

On the Recovery side of things we find nutrition, sleep, and other practices. These are generally on the plus side of the ledger. Some sleep is better than no sleep. 9 hours is optimal. I rarely get 9 but often get 7 or 8. If you think about it this way…9 hours would be a score of 100, 8 might be 90, and on down until you get to maybe 5 and then the number starts going into negative territory. In other words it starts costing you points and might increase your other stressors as well if I end up diabetic and overweight.

The same goes for nutrition. If I am eating very clean and organic and in the perfect portions I get 100 points. And it goes down from there. When I get most of my nutrition from a box or from a fast food joint or worse it will start costing me points. If I drink alcohol I will lose points.
If I am conscientious about getting massages, taking ice baths, meditating daily, doing mobility workouts with lacrosse balls and the like I get positive points. If it is hit and miss the points go down. If I don’t have regular practices the points get a lot less. It is hard to end up with negative points in this category.

The Recovery part of the equation is the easiest place to get positive points. The other two…more difficult but not impossible.

Physical Stress…disease, exercise, injury and labor. Labor is your job, what you do every day to make a living. Do you sit at a desk all day? Negative points. Do you throw cement sacks all day or some other repetitive physical task? Negative points. In a perfect world you would have a mix of sitting, and hard work and a constantly varied routine to alleviate mental boredom and physical wasting. Injury…injury free is neutral points, injured is negative points and the severity of the injury will determine how deep in the hole you are going to be. The same thing with disease. There is a big difference between diseases and their impact on your ability to maintain optimal health and fitness. Exercise is much more difficult. Any exercise causes stress. But no exercise causes worse effects. How intense is your exercise? Are doing long slow repetitive movement? All of these factors increase or decrease the physical stress. There will be times when this will be more out of harmony than others…when training for a specific event for instance. And certain types of training are more stressful than others.

Mental misfiring…trauma, loss, money, self esteem. If you are carrying around abusive events from your childhood that you have never processed and integrated your points are going to be negative. If you just got fired, divorced or lost your 401k your points are going to be negative. If you beat yourself up every day over all the stuff in life that isn’t right (the weather, your parents, etc.) more negative points. If you are all good in this area you probably still don’t get many positive points but the negative points in this neighborhood will add up fast.

Your job is to get as many points as possible. The more points you get the closer you will be to living in harmonic health, to optimal health and fitness. We can look around us and see bad examples all the time…the body builder using steroids, the nutrition guru whose personal life is a mess, the successful business man who is overweight and diabetic, or the relationship coach who can’t get out of bed in the morning because of (pick one) depression, disease, or addiction.

What are you going to do to get more points? I highly recommend you start with the easiest things first…Recovery. How much are you sleeping? How good is your sleep? Start working on that one because the positive points add up very quickly. Do some nice things for yourself…get a massage weekly, meditate daily, get out into nature and just be. Again these things add up very quickly. Start looking into your diet…start eliminating processed foods, soda, and alcohol and increasing your vegetable and organic food intake. More positive points.

Harmonic health takes some work. It takes keeping an eye on the big picture as well as the smaller pieces. It takes doing some internal work on your psyche. It means using your brain and not doing stupid stuff. It means being conscious and integrated. It means using your brain to create the feedback loop to know what works for you in the face of lots of information.

Harmonic Health…pretty simple really, just not easy.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Human Hamsters

2011-10-02T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Human Hamsters

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day and he was telling me about a party he had attended recently where there were 12 80 year olds still working at their jobs. By choice I might add not necessity. These were federal government workers who at been at their jobs for some time. It was a choice they were making. The next morning I listened to a story on NPR about octogenarians and their active lifestyles. BUT the point of the story was that the children of those 80 year olds (the baby boomers) expected to be every bit as active and vital as their parents if not more.

It turns out that may not be the case. Many of us baby boomers will not enjoy the healthy and active lifestyles we see many of our parents enjoying. How can that be? We work out, we eat right, we monitor our stress levels, and we are doing everything “They” tell us is good for us. Many of us have been jogging for years. We hit the gym and get on the treadmill, or bike, or elliptical for hours every week. We meditate. We eat oatmeal every morning, heart healthy spreads, yogurt, avoid red meat, get lots of fiber.

We are spending tons of time and money on our health. We are doing the research, taking supplements, trying alternative therapies for our owies and boo-boos. And we might not be as healthy as our parents! What! Really? That just isn’t right. That just isn’t fair.

Let’s look back shall we? Our parents were raised on natural foods. Often food they grew themselves or knew who grew it. Even if they lived in a big city the food was more natural. And everyone cooked their own food, even if they did so badly. If they ate fried food, it was natural and home prepared. They worked and when they got home they worked some more. A walk was not a work out but a way to get from one place to another or a means to connect and socialize. You didn’t have a machine to do everything for you. You had to lift things and carry them. Your life was active not passive.

Over the last 50 years so many things have changed from that paradigm. The grocery store has thousands of items in it today. We have machines to do so much for us…I saw one the other day that actually worked you out! The food is homogenized and sterilized. We have pills and potions to fix just about everything. We spend our day with our butt parked and then we get home and park it some more. We avoid doing manual labor. We rarely just walk to walk without an agenda.

Maybe “They” have lied to us. Maybe we just aren’t doing it right. Maybe hopping on the human hamster wheel or knocking out 3 sets of 10 bench presses just isn’t enough. Maybe all that nutrition advice is just wrong. Maybe we have bought the proverbial pig in a poke. What if all the bad choices we made in our younger years can’t be fixed with a pill or a potion? What if we need a complete life style make over? Are you willing to move from your passive lifestyle to an active one?

Think about this…you are an amazing feat of engineering. You are way more complicated than any automobile, space conveyance, or machine. You have spent a ton of money on your car, but then you complain about the price of organic food. You do regular maintenance on your car and begrudge spending the time it is going to take to keep your body in shape. You buy your car new wheels, fancy dashboard tschotkes, wax jobs and cleanings and you won’t buy yourself a coach, or a seminar, or a workshop on cutting edge nutrition, the way humans should move, or a an improvement in your form.

You have been sold a bill of goods. And you have bought it willingly…it looked easy, the promises were, really too good to be true. Just like turning an investment of $10,000 into a million in a year is too good to be true. Are you buying THAT piece of real estate? So why on earth do you think 30 minutes of “chronic cardio” three time a week is going to create a fit, strong and healthy body. How is that working for you? Still pre-diabetic? Still on the high blood pressure meds? Still suffering from the effects of your modern life? What do you say Bunky? Ready to take a look at doing something that might work?

Here it is: Stop eating C.R.A.P. (calorie rich and pathetic) food. Stop exercising (yes you read that right). Stop getting on the Human Hamster Wheel and zoning out on your phone or the People magazine or the boob tube. Stop thinking that there is going to be some magic pill or new machine or exercise video that is going to solve your health and fitness problems.
START: eating natural foods, produced on organic farms (like in your backyard) in a sustainable way.
START: training your body to perform the tasks required everyday…lifting stuff off the ground, over your head, moving around with those things, and expending massive amounts of energy quickly and playing with your children/grandchildren
START: looking at life from a holistic standpoint instead of trying to solve the symptoms that are bothering you. The symptoms are the manifestation of the sickness you are living in.
START: taking responsibility for how your life looks today and how you want it to look tomorrow.

Try this on for size: You can have world class fitness. It is right there waiting for you. It won’t be easy…you WILL have to jettison some bad habits, change your life style and your relationship with food, and generally work your butt off. It won’t take any more time out of your day…as a matter of fact it might take less…but it will be way more intense. You will have to sweat, learn new stuff, hurt a bunch and learn to love physical effort, your kitchen and your food.
Here is the bad news---You might not live longer
Here is the good news---You will live better, stronger, healthier, more joyfully.

Think about it…100 years old and vital, healthy, strong and maybe in the best shape of your life! It is possible, not easy, maybe not simple but certainly possible.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Burn the Ships

2011-09-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Burn the Ships

I have heard this story so many times and to be honest I have no idea if it is true or not but it does serve to illustrate the point of today’s missal: Hernando Cortez, in 1519, after landing on the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico commanded his men to “Burn the ships.” This decision sealed the fate of the Aztec people and their empire and probably altered the course of history throughout South and Central America. His army was stunned and one man asked “how will we get back home to our families?” Cortez said, “We will conquer the Aztec army and sail home in their ships.” Simply put…Cortez created a point of no return. Win or Die.

Cortez crossed the Rubicon...the River of no return. Once I have crossed the Rubicon, I can’t turn back. I can’t decide this is a bad idea. I can’t turn around. This is a commitment rarely seen in today’s world. Yet we love the people who represent this ideal. It is the Jobs and Wozniak in their garage creating Apple Computer having dropped out of college. The image of Michael Jordan, after being cut from his freshman basketball team shooting free throw after free throw to create what, arguably, became the greatest basketball player to play the game. Remember our founding fathers? They all knew that failure was going to result in their own deaths, imprisonment or enslavement of their families and continued tyranny for their countrymen. Over and over we hear these stories of dedication, drive, and determination and we get inspired. It brings tears to our eyes.

In the movie “Facing the Giants” there is a scene where one player, after buying into a defeatist attitude carries another player on his back for 100 yards…a seemingly impossible feat. Failure was not an option. He was not given a choice he was only given the option of moving forward. If you aren’t giving your absolute best you aren’t giving enough. It you want to see the clip go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0dLpQPVjh8&feature=related
What is your Rubicon? What is your river of no return? When are you going to decide to cross it? When are you going to burn your ships?

There is always a point of no return. The place where you have gone so far that turning around is no longer an option. There is only forward. There is only through to the end. You might have to alter the route, alter the plan but there is no longer the ability to stop and go back. There is no re-set button. There is no Plan B…there is only success.

Too often we want a Plan B. We want a way out if Plan A doesn’t work. But how often do you really have a Plan B? Plan B is almost always some ill-conceived vague notion of doing something else if what we really want doesn’t work. Just imagine walking into a dark room and taking 3 steps forward when someone behind you pulls the door shut. You don’t know how to go forward and you can’t go back. The ships are burnt. It is a little late for Plan B. You better find a way out, through or get to the light switch or prepare to be stuck in that dark room for a while…until someone rescues you or you succeed. Is that your Plan B? Wait to get rescued? Is your mama going to show up and pull you out of trouble? Bad Plan. How about this one…Succeed or die trying. When I want to succeed as much as I want to breathe I will be successful.

Plan B is an excuse to fail. I mean if you have a Plan B and it is so good why don’t you just do Plan B? Maybe Plan B should be Plan A! What’s your Plan B if you wake up and you aren’t breathing? There isn’t one right? You aren’t breathing. I am not doing what I should be doing. When I want to succeed as much as I want my next breath I will be successful. What do you want as much as you want your next breath? Do you even know?

Therein lays the problem. You don’t even know where your Rubicon is. You have no idea. Losing some weight sounds like a good idea. Getting in shape sounds like a good idea. Living a healthy life style sounds like a good idea. The world is full of good ideas. The world has good ideas by the bushel. What the world needs is for you to decide that your weight loss, your physical condition, your mental or emotional state, your substance addiction, your poor relationship with your (pick one—spouse, child, parent) is so important, so critical, so integral to your being that you would rather die than fail, you would rather stop breathing than not be successful. At that point “Burn the Ships” is a reality. There is no Plan B. There is only the Plan and there is only the execution of the plan.

Maybe you need to hire a trainer, a nutritionist, a counselor, a confidante, a something to get you up and off the cabana chair to burn those boats. Maybe you need to make a wager, tell the world in a public declaration or make some grand gesture that will prove to yourself that your journey is one so highly committed, so dedicated that failure is off the table.

I don’t know what will get you that committed. I do know that without crossing the Rubicon ultimate success will elude you and me. It is in the act of crossing the river, burning the ships, creating a do or die mentality that truly amazing and powerful things will come into being.

Go ahead…Burn the Ships…end a life of putting one toe in and pulling out…Burn the Ships

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...My House

2011-09-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…My House

is a very nice house. I have been building it for years. I know where everything is because I put it there. I built the places to put things in and the rooms for them to go into. It is my house.

I also populated it with people. The people living in my house are there because I let them be there. I asked them in, or I at least allowed them to stay for a while. Some of them are not very good house guests; others are great to have around. And still others are in hiding. They are hiding in places I have forgotten or don’t want to go into any longer.

I built this house. I created it to look the way I wanted it to look. I did it. Now way too often I was just building something without knowing what it was that I was building. It may have started out one way but then I changed my mind in mid-build and turned the garage into a bathroom or vice versa. When I look around my house it feels pretty good…after all I have been living here for my entire life.

You might look at my house and see some sort of M.C. Escher-esque creation but it doesn’t look that way to me. See it functions for me no matter what you think of it. Maybe it doesn’t quite work that way I would really like but I built and it is good enough.

You might ask, however, “what about all those rooms that you built and sealed off? What about the people living in those rooms …the ones you have forgotten about?” You might also wonder about the stairs that go nowhere, the garage that is too small for a car or the bathroom big enough for a tank. It just doesn’t appear to have much rhyme or reason.

So…the people living in all the rooms of my house are all me. After all it is my house and I am the only one living in it. There are parts of me that I tucked away for various reasons. Maybe when I was little I needed to hide and be kept safe. So I crawled into the closet under that stairs that don’t go anywhere and stayed there. The rest of me grew up and that little guy stayed in that closet, forgotten for all this time. This is especially easy to do when I don’t have to walk up those stairs and wonder what is in that closet.

That little guy in that closet got left behind. He is still there, he is still safe. But he can’t come out until I go and get him. I have to re-discover that part of the house…the part I built and then left for a variety of reasons. Then I have to coax him out of hiding. And it isn’t going to be easy. It isn’t just open the door and out he jumps. He has been in there a very long time. He doesn’t trust me or anyone else. So I am going to have to convince him it is time to come out and it is safe to come out, that I am going to take care of him now because I can and it is my adult job to do it.

This is not an easy process. It requires a huge amount of work on your interior landscape. A huge shift in the way you are building your house for the future. It is also going to require some remodeling of what you have already built. After all, how many closets did you build and then forget? How many pieces of yourself have you left behind in those little rooms?

When we speak of integration this is what we are talking about…the process of bringing the pieces of you home to live in the main house with the rest of the family. This is a life of integrity…to live in a way that is whole and in alignment with who you are today and with the vision of who you are going to be tomorrow.

What does your house look like? I am sure it is a very nice house but how many blind hallways are there? How many staircases that lead nowhere? How many rooms are there that no longer serve any purpose. How many people have you left behind to keep them safe and secure? Do you have any idea at all? Have you ever tried to step out of your house and looked back at it to see what the casual viewer from the street might see?

I know it is easy not to do this. I know that even thinking of this stuff might make your brain hurt. I know you think you have done your “work”. I know you think you are OK, that you have “worked through all your stuff”. But are you really? Or did you just close off that wing of your house. Why go down those hallways that lead nowhere anyway?

Why, indeed. It is very simple really…your life is incomplete. It is missing vital pieces that will enrich and create an integrated person driven with purpose and vision. This is the work that will inspire you and your people to become the powerful and amazing humans you were created to be.

Or you can just leave it alone and hope those doors never get opened. That those people hiding in those closets never get stirred up and decide to start making trouble in those funny little rooms. That is when life gets way past a little funky. That is when the house starts falling down on its own and has us wondering why and what did I do to deserve this and why is it happening to me.

Because you didn’t do your work. You didn’t finish your work. I know I haven’t. I keep at it. I keep finding those rooms and fixing them up, re-claiming those parts that I tucked away so long ago knowing I get back to them someday when I have better tools to get the job done.

The time is now. You and I have the tools. Let’s go to work. It is time now.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Good Things

2011-09-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Good Things

Come to those who wait. Delayed gratification is a skill and virtue over looked in our modern world. We are so conditioned to getting everything right now that when we have to wait, or worse yet we have to plan to wait that the idea is as foreign as eating insects.

I get my email (which is immediate) on my cell phone which is even more immediate. I get messages on my phone and the phone tells me right now. I no longer have to wait to get home and check the “answering machine”. If I want a cherry pie at 2AM in January I am probably only 10 or 20 minutes away from one. Strawberries in February? Mangoes and bananas so far from the tropics? We are conditioned to want things and conditioned to get them now.

It wasn’t always this way. It used to be we ate the food that was in season. If asparagus wasn’t being picked nearby we weren’t getting any and certainly not out of season. If we wanted to buy something we saved the money for it…we didn’t buy it today and pay for it tomorrow.

The smell of garlic cooking permeated my house last night. The tomatoes were roasting in the oven with copious amounts of garlic, basil, zucchini and eggplant. All the ingredients (except the garlic) had been harvested from the garden in the back yard. There will be so much that the freezer will be accepting some and next spring we will celebrate our 4th fundraiser by enjoying it with our friends and loved ones.

This meal was nearly 3 years in the making. Not literally but metaphorically. Some 3 years ago the germination of an idea began. The idea that we could grow food in a back yard and have enough to feed lots of people maybe even a community. When I moved into the house the back yard was non-existent. Weeds, weeds and more weeds, a non-functional watering system 10+ years old and a broken down fence. It was a blank slate waiting for a vision.

The vision was simple…a community garden run by the people who would benefit from it. No government interference, no strange rules governing the who, what, where and when, just people who saw the vision, aligned with the vision and were willing to work to see the vision come to life.
Frankly it hasn’t happened quite that way. The vision was to have people who are “food insecure” learn how to grow food in the garden and take that knowledge with them as well as fresh produce they helped to produce. They would begin to understand the concept of reaping what you sow, planning for the future, and setting goals and working toward them in small incremental steps. Has not come to pass.

But what has come to pass is pretty cool. The vision has modified and shifted somewhat and has become what may be a more workable model, at least for me. What has transpired is a small community of people…a core of 4 or 5, a number of other willing volunteers (10 or 20), and a interested host of observers…have dedicated hours of labor in the heat and the cold, have donated money to pay for seeds, plants, water and supplies, and have built a 2800’ foot garden in the middle of a town. A garden where the gate is open to anyone. A garden that has produced over the last 3 years almost 2000 pounds of food. A garden that has donated almost all that food to community members without regard to need or participation. A garden that has given wheel barrows of food to the food pantry.

Here may be the most special part…it is a garden where over 2 dozen children have learned how to handle tools, how plants grow, how to appreciate bugs, bees, and spiders, where soil comes from, and the value of work for the sake of work. These kids have sweated, laughed, killed bugs, burnt stuff, figured out how things work and just generally got some lessons you can only get in a garden. They have inspired the people around them to try new things (okra, eggplant), plant their own gardens and be more connected to the earth. And yesterday they expressed gratitude for the bounty they took with them.

From this single garden at least 3 new gardens are here that were not around 2 years ago. From this single garden a group of children now understand that you have to plan things if you want stuff in the future. From this single garden the awareness of eating healthy, natural food is now in the front of over 100 people minds where before it was in the rear. From this single garden hundreds of people have gotten physical sustenance, emotional nurturing and spiritual inspiration.

We sow then we reap. It doesn’t work the other way around. When we find a vision, set a goal, make a plan, and take action, good things happen. Look at all the good that happened…was the original vision fulfilled? Not yet. But having the flexibility to go with the vision that was shifting and changing, staying in action and being open to what the universe was creating in the absence of rigidity and judgment allowed a huge shift, a massive transformation to take place.

The number of people who need to be thanked for seeing the craziness through to this point is myriad. Each of you knows who you are. This amazing project could never have become real in the world without your freely given time, energy and money. I have so much gratitude for each of you and I have learned so much about this process in our work together that I am unable to express properly my gratitude. So I will just say, deeply, and with appreciation:
THANK YOU.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Wasting Away

2011-09-04T01:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Wasting away

Are you wasting your life away? Like Jimmy Buffet sang? Wasting away in Margaritaville? Did you wake up this morning in an alcohol induce haze; grab some greasy food in an attempt to stave off the effects of the hangover? Or did you get up and get your rear to the gym, on the road for a little quick run or ride, or a nice long stretch and mobility workout?

Did you spend last week worrying over your increasing waistline? It’s not going to get any better if you don’t take action. You are going to get fatter and fatter and more de-conditioned as you get older. You can’t stop the getting older thing. You have been doing that since the day you took your first breath. You can do something about the rest of it though.

Yes you can. No matter where you are, no matter how bad you think it is you can do something about it.

You can be Great.
You can be everything you want to be.
You can be part of the 5%. The 5% that is great, the 5% that lives life the way it was meant to be lived.

You can’t do it from the couch though.
You can’t do it sitting at your desk.
You can’t do it by talking about doing it.

You have to get up, stand up, and get going.
You have to decide you are going to be great, that you are going to join the 5% of the world that is eating right, working out their physical bodies, exercising their minds, expanding their spirituality, growing their compassion.
You have the power to do this.

Or not. Let’s be brutally honest…95% of the people in the world are never going to do anything. They are fat dumb and happy. Like the cows in a feedlot, contentedly chewing their cuds waiting for the day they are led to the killing room to be whacked between the eyes on the way to becoming just another piece of hamburger. No consciousness, no awareness of something better, no desire, no discipline, no desire for anything but comfort and ease.

Really? Is that who you want to be? Shall we just give you the remote, a crappy cheap beer and some generic chips, sit your butt in front of the 50” big screen and fatten you up for the slaughter big pharma and the crappy food industry are going to lead you into?

If you are reading this (still) you are not that person. Well, maybe you were 10 minutes ago. This is the clarion call to get off your butt and do something. What you have been doing is not working…unless you are already in the 5%. And if you are in the 5% maybe you should work toward the 3%. Or get into the 5% in ALL areas of your life. I know I am not in all areas of my life. BUT I am doing something about it.

Decide. Today. Now. At least if you aren’t going to get to doing the work then make a conscious choice to be in the 95% that is just waiting to be sacrificed at the altar. Yep, John, that’s me…no shut up and leave me to my mediocre existence. I’m happy here, I like being fat, dumb, and happy. I want the blue pill. The red pill is just too hard; it looks like work, struggle, suffering and sacrifice.

The red pill is going to require you change. It is going to require you do lung burning, stomach heaving, and body suffering workouts…daily, weekly, and stretching into the rest of your life. It is going to hurt sometimes. It is going to be painful. It is going to be glorious when you can do things you couldn’t do last week, last month or maybe never in your life. It is going to be amazing when you walk by a mirror and do a double take while you are wondering whose body you are looking at in the mirror. You are going to be stronger, fitter, and healthier.

The red pill is going to change your eating habits. Your taste buds are going to awaken. You are going to learn about new vegetables and how to cook them. You are going to find joy in food again. The unmitigated delight of fresh food prepared simply with love and care. You are going to learn your way around the kitchen. Your bodily functions are going to improve. You mind is going to clear. Clarity and focus and thought are found in the kitchen.

The red pill is going to force you to stretch your intellect. Learning didn’t stop when you left school. Your brain is going to hurt. Your mind is going to suffer with new information overloads. Your intellect is going to grow and be more powerful. You are going to stave off aging diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s. You are going to learn the things you have always wanted to learn…Geometry, Spanish, Art History. You are going to discover the joy to be found in a well written book, the mystery of a poem penned with care.

The red pill is going to create consciousness you thought was the province of saints and saddhus. Your world is going to grow larger. You are going to be the person we have all been waiting for. Yes you…complete, whole, integrated, compassionate, passionate, understanding and connected. Your beliefs are going to be even greater than yesterday as you begin to understand the true mysteries that exist underneath the thin veneer we all think reality is.

Decide to embrace self discipline. Decide to join the 5% of the world who are really up to something. Decide to be the physical specimen you are meant to be. Decide to be the intellectual power you were supposed to be. Decide to join the world of connectivity and spirituality.

Decide then act. Then keep on acting…in the face of ridicule, in the face of difficulty, in the face of being different, in the face of weakness and fear, in the face of base instincts and craven desires. You are Great. You are Powerful beyond imagining. You are the one we have been waiting for. You. Now get off your butt and go do it.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Step Right Up

2011-08-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Step Right Up

Step right up…get your ____________(fill in the blank) here. The carnival barker entices and lures us into his sphere of influence in order to sell his wares. The same thing is happening to you every day. The barker may be a little more subtle, a little more sophisticated, a little more professional but a barker nonetheless. Google, ads on TV, ads on the internet tare all “barking” at you, trying to get you to pay attention to them.

In many ways they are like small children, constantly tugging on you asking for attention…”Mommy, Mommy, Mommy” Although you can ignore them, they generally won’t go away until you do something with them. Google may not be as obtrusive as that small child but they are certainly as persistent.

Most of us have done a pretty good job of shutting out those messages. If we didn’t we couldn’t function in the world very well. We are bombarded by barkers everywhere we go so we become immune to their messages. Which in some cases is bad…we miss the very things that could do us the most good. The messages the universe is sending us.

The universe is not a great barker. At least not at first. Most of the time the universe speaks in a whisper to start. Little things, subtle hints of directions open and paths to look down. Then it will get a little louder, not yelling, mind you, just a little louder. The sooner we start listening though, the sooner we can move in the direction we are meant to go. Just like a mother is in touch with her child’s various cries and noises we should be just as sensitive to the noises and movements in the universe.

Part of this universal language is the language your body uses to tell you when something is wrong. All those little aches and pains, the strained muscles and twisted limbs are all things you need to listen to. The question is…are you in touch enough to recognize the signals? Far too often our bodies have been ignored, misused, and abused to the point that we can no longer hear what it is saying.

You are meant to move…it is one of the reasons you have legs and feet. If you were supposed to sit on your butt all day your derriere would look much different than it does. Of course, many people have already morphed their rears into something that closely approximates a chair cushion. It really shouldn’t look like that. If you are moving and in touch with the way your body feels when it moves properly, your breath in balance with your movement, and your muscles warm and supple your body will tell you where and how it needs help.

This is a huge difference between discomfort and pain, between irritation and injury. Far too often we don’t recognize the difference until it is too late. I see way too many people who think irritation is injury. They let small irritations and discomfort stop them from moving and working. Folks, you are going to have stuff…little things that hurt and ache and bother you to varying degrees of irritation. And the older you get the more often you may encounter them. None of these things should ever stop you; they are part of the process. Sometimes pain is part of the process that lets you know you are alive.

Here is the dichotomy, the contradiction, the paradox, if you will; the less you move, the more you will hurt when you do move. If you sit on your butt all day, when you get up you will be stiff and sore from lack of movement. Your blood will be sluggish, your heart won’t be used to working and the longer you do it the worse this is going to get. We often say that a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. If you have been sitting around for 10 years that first step is going to be pretty hard to take. On the bright side though, the second step is easier! And every one after that begins to be easier still.

Once I get in touch, really in tune with my body as it moves, the signals and messages the universe sends me about what is really going on with me become easier to listen to. When my body says certain foods aren’t working it is hard to hear when I eat so many bad foods all day long. When I eat clean, natural food prepared simply my body will begin to recognize when I eat junk. When I exercise and train in a way that promotes healthy muscle tissue, clear skin, strong bones and hair my body can give me feedback as to what might really be wrong inside of it.

You are an amazing machine. Yes, I am talking to you. Throughout your life your body has served you in spite of all your efforts to derail it. Maybe you have been in car accidents, industrial mishaps, external conflicts yet you are, for the most part, still intact. You have adapted to poor diet. You have adapted to sedentary habits. You have shut off the information pipeline the universe is feeding you through your body. Yet here you are continuing to persist in this corporeal form.

Maybe, just maybe, you should start paying back this amazing machine for all the gifts it has given you over the years. You don’t run your gas powered car on bio-diesel do you? You don’t drive for 100,000 miles without an oil change do you? Maybe you should start feeding your body the fuel it was meant to be fed with instead of processed crap from a box. Maybe you should start respecting the way you were created and get off your rear end and start moving instead of parking it in front of a flat screen with moving images of people doing what you aren’t doing (moving)!

Once you open up the pathways the information will start to flow. And then you can start feeling better, looking better and being better. It’s a fun journey if you will just take that first step!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Where's the Beef

2011-08-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Where’s the Beef?

Some of you may actually remember this phrase and the advertisement that sparked the saying. A small, diminutive grandmotherly type lady by the name of Clara Peller goes to several fast food restaurants and wants to know “Where’s the Beef?” Of course at Wendy’s, the ad producer, she doesn’t have to ask the question. The phrase, “Where’s the beef”, got ensconced in our popular language to the point of then Vice President Mondale asking his opponent Sen. Gary Hart during a debate in 1984, “When I listen to your new ideas, I am reminded of that ad…”Where’s the Beef?” The ad was funny and cute and got the point across. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOyQfd7OqIY&feature=related

So…Where’s your Beef? Where is your substance? Where do you weigh in and stand up? Do you know? What are you willing to stand up for? What are you willing to fight for? What are you not going to allow in your life or the lives of the people around you?

What we are talking about is your value system. What do you value? What is important to you? How important is it really? Would you die for it? Would you kill for it? Go to prison? This is the sort of thing you really should know. You should know what you hold as most important…the things you would do anything for.

Recently a friend of mine was faced with such a choice. He was confronted in front of his house by 4 men apparently bent on harming him, taking his property and possibly hurting his child. He made a choice in a split second that has changed his life, took the life of one of the attackers and protected his person, his child and his property. There was a line he wasn’t going to allow to be crossed. He knew where his beef was, where his stand was going to be made.

Throughout history we revere examples of this sort of courage, this sort of stand against overwhelming odds. The Spartans at Thermopylae, lauded in a number of poems and enshrined in the movie, The 300, comes to mind. The Charge of The Light Brigade, Schindler who saved so many from the Nazis, the Alamo and others all call forth the vision of standing for what’s right and true. These were people who had the courage of their convictions. They were not going to just roll over and let the other side have their way.

The question, Where’s your beef, isn’t about making a last desperate stand on some remote mountain somewhere, spilling your blood in a last ditch attempt to stave off the inevitable. No the question I am asking you is about your limits and boundaries. What will you stand for and what are you willing to do, lose, sacrifice for that principle? What is your drop dead no way line? What are your deal breakers? At what behavior will you call a halt to the relationship?

These are questions you better have answers to. We find people who know who and what they are standing for attractive. It is one of the things that we adore in our politicians. And often the more didactic and pedantic they are the more we love them. In other words we love people who are definite about what they believe in. We find this attractive even if we disagree with their positions. We want to know where people stand. It makes it clear to me whether you are someone I want to be in relationship with or not.

Think of politicians…when they flip flop we immediately dislike them. If they won’t state clearly and concisely what they believe and where they stand we run to those that will. Confidence and clarity are attractive both in our mates and our politicians. In a mate I need to know you have my back if stuff hits the fan. In a politician I need to know you are going to do what you said you are going to do and not waffle between trying to make all the people happy and doing what’s right.

A lot of this comes back to the integrity we talk about so often. Part of integrity means we are clear about who and what we are. There is no question about my values. I may shift my methods, I may need to change my clothes if you will but my underlying structure remains strong and secure.

So again I ask you…”Where’s your Beef?” What do you stand for? How are you going to find out?
Ask yourself a few questions…
What would you allow with no response?
--someone to kidnap your child
--someone to call you names
--someone to paint a cross on your neighbor’s lawn
And then…how would you respond, knowing full well you might die or go to prison if
--someone was to kidnap your child
--someone was to call you threatening names
--someone was to paint a cross on your neighbor’s lawn

On a more personal level what are your deal breakers in your current relationship? In other word what will cause you to walk out of the relationship? Do you know? Does your partner know? It might be good to have this discussion. It is important that these things are clear to both parties. What may be your deal breaker may be no big deal to me. It would be good information to have!

Your values should be yours, not mine, not your pastors, not your governments…yours. You should be the final arbiter of what is right for you and your life. Then you should gather people around you who have similar values. In there we build a community that is going to work toward a common goal in harmony, comfort and peace. There’s your beef.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Emotional Rescue

2011-08-14T00:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Emotional Rescue

A bomb goes off in a crowded plaza, killing and injuring dozens of people. An airliner is shot out of the sky resulting in all on board perishing. Innocent people, going about their daily lives, are hurt or killed with no apparent reason. They were just taking their laundry to the cleaners or meeting a friend for lunch when violence erupted and their entire lives were altered.

This is terrorism as we understand it today. Terrorism is often defined as the systematic use of violence or coercion to achieve your goals (usually political). Terrorism is generally thought of as bad. Although it is often said that one group’s terrorist is another group’s freedom fighter. I think the difference may be the use of violence against indiscriminate targets as opposed to waging a fight against participants who signed up for the fray.

Most of us (luckily and hopefully) will never experience this kind of random violence in our lives. Although it is possible, at this point in most of our lives we are not a in place where that is going to happen (as opposed to living in Jerusalem or Afghanistan).

It is much more likely that you and I will be victims of something almost as terrible…Emotional Terrorism. This is a much more personal and private form of terrorism. The aim is really the same…to get what you want through violent or coercive means. Rather than blowing up a shopping square the emotional terrorist blows up relationships. When they don’t get what they want the easy way they resort to any means possible to achieve their end.

If I ask for what I want from you and you say yes, no or maybe, I should be able to hear your answer and move on. But if my request really wasn’t a request but rather a demand then I cannot hear anything but a yes. If you deny my demand and I resort to other tactics to get what I want I am engaging in a form of emotional terrorism. Maybe I decide to with hold my love until you acquiesce to my demand. Maybe I will engage in some behavior explicitly designed to create a negative reaction in you (cheating, flirting etc.). Maybe I will deny you some previously agreed upon favor or activity. These are all forms of the sort of terrorism I am talking about.
When you look at this sort of behavior it certainly looks bad. It does not look like the kind of thing any of us really want to be doing does it? A couple questions pop up in my mind when I start looking at this kind of behavior. Where did you learn it? Why would you do it and think it was OK. Is what you want really so important that you are willing to risk our relatedness to get it?

Often this behavior is learned as we grow up. And sometimes our parent inadvertently trained us into it. Maybe it was modeled by our parents. And often we see it in popular TV shows…the dad has to sleep on the couch because he didn’t do this or that. Maybe when we threw a tantrum we got what we wanted in spite of parental insistence that we would never get it. After all, this emotional terrorism is the adult version of the temper tantrum we see in 2 and 3 year olds. The stakes are higher, the behavior maybe more subtle and manipulative but it is still a tantrum.

We do it because we haven’t grown up in confidence enough yet. We do it because our maturity level is still that of an adolescent. In other words I want what I want because what I want is more important than anything else anyone else wants. In other words it is very ego-centric. We don’t have the confidence to hear a no. Our self confidence and our self image are tied up in what we want, not in what the other person wants. This is not a grown up way of being.

And again what you want is more important than anything else including our relatedness. Maybe your experience is that people stick around for more of your bad behavior. Maybe you have been trained to do this by people who allow you to get away with it and still continue the relationship.

Guess what…I am an emotional terrorist. So are you. Well maybe not you. You might never have engaged in nefarious, manipulative, underhanded or mean things to get what you want. Ever. Honestly though, let’s get a little consciousness going here shall we? I know I have done these things. I try not to do them now. I am willing to hear your no. I am willing to hold my limits and boundaries and respect yours as well. What I want is not more important than being related to you. But I will also not tolerate bad behavior from you either because the relatedness I have with myself will not allow for your bad behavior.

I suggest you start looking around your life and start rooting out the emotional terrorists. I think the best place to start is with you. Take a really good look at how you are interacting with the significant people in your life. Are you making clear requests (not demands)? Are you being clear about the behaviors you will not tolerate? Are you clear what your limits and boundaries are? It is not going to work to eliminate the emotional terrorists in your life if you are the biggest one. Clean your own house first.

Emotional terrorism…it’s just not OK.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...I Can See Clearly Now

2011-08-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…I Can See Clearly Now

Clarity.
How clear are you on where you are going? How clear are you on how you are going to get there? Are you clear everywhere in your life or just one or two places? Maybe you just threw a dart on a map and you ended up here. Maybe you know you want to go to New York but you have never bothered to figure out how you are going to get there. Too often too many of us are operating out a default position. We do what we think is the next thing to do. Get married, have children, retire and on and on until we hit the last stop. We did what the world and our families and our friends expected us to do.

Maybe you have discovered your purpose. Maybe you are clear and what it is and how you are going to get there. Good on you. For me, not so much.

I am pretty clear on my purpose…to teach focus, and inspire transformation. But that is pretty broad stroke wouldn’t you say? That really doesn’t say much about the rest of my life…or really about any part of my life. What does any of that purpose have to do with say…personal intimate relationships? Or about financial needs and gains…or about ???

What that purpose speaks to is how I live my teaching and my physical life. I hope to inspire you to transform your physical being…if I can do it so can you. I used education, trial and error, a dogged determination and yes, focus to achieve the optimum health and fitness I currently enjoy. You can do the same thing. It won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy but it will be worth it. I want you to enjoy every moment of your life, even the uncomfortable ones. This morning I was running (don’t tell my Docs please) some 400 meter sprints (or what passes for a sprint these days) and it hurt. But it felt so good at the same time. To be able to move and put my feet on the ground and connect with that part of my human being that is the running man. When I use martial arts as the crucible for young people to understand the function of focus in their lives I am at one with my purpose. When I talk about all the facets of self defense (diet, education, bullying, habits, goal setting, and more) with my students I am fulfilling that purpose. Pretty simple and straightforward, yes?

What about some clarity on the other fronts in life? Because life isn’t just about our physical being or what we do for a living. I am very lucky, what I do for a living coincides neatly with my purpose. I know many of you are not so fortunate.

How can I have some clarity around, say, my spiritual life? What is my purpose there? I know many of you will have this handled. I have received your comments about your commitment to your God, your savior and I get it. And I love that clarity for you. But what is the purpose? What is the mission of your commitment? What is the vision of how you will bring your spiritual self into alignment with the rest of your life? How are you integrating that purpose into both your daily life and your long term spiritual goals?

And then there is the purpose as it involves my personal intimate relationships. Would you be inspired by those? Would you want to emulate, to model your own after mine? I think not because frankly they are a bit of a mess at this point. And a great part of the mess stems from not knowing what I really want in that kind of relationship. It also stems from this “Lone Ranger” sort of mentality I seem to be so comfortable with. If I don’t let you get too close I won’t have to let you all the inside the door so you can really and truly see who I am…because you might not like that. So I keep you at arm’s length…it feels so much safer that way.

Do we need a different mission statement for all the areas of our lives…spiritual, personal, financial, career, and community? Or is there one overarching mission and vision and then we should branch off of that? Honestly it looks really hard to have a separate mission for each area. I suspect this is the stop. It was hard enough to find the one purpose so the work required finding 3 or 4 more looks very daunting. Maybe once I have identified the main purpose, then I need to simply figure out how to live in those other areas that will make that purpose a true statement.

I must admit the truth of that last statement. It just felt right and felt organic and really simple and comfortable. Go back to your mission statement, your vision. Then start living into all the areas of your life from that statement.

For example…my financial life is transparent, authentic and is purposefully designed to teach focus and inspire transformation. My personal, intimate relationships are transparent and authentic, designed to inspire transformation and teach focus. Hmmm…I have to say that feels pretty comfortable and easeful.

I feel like a load has been taken off my shoulders. I feel like there is some clarity in this area.

Now the next thing is to design the actual real things that need to get done to fulfill the mission/vision. All of a sudden this does not look quite so difficult. The process you just watched unfold is really very simple. Identify where the stop is, where the fear and insurmountable point lies. For me it was going through a whole process to identify 4 or 5 more purposes or mission. I just couldn’t get past that one. So I did nothing. So I backed up and found a goal, a point where I could see my way through. Again, in this case, it was linking the current mission to what I am doing in the easy areas and seeing it apply to others. Now it feels like I can move forward identifying and doing the things, one at a time that will need to be done to achieve both the long term mission and the short terms goals.

I Can See Clearly Now.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Here Be Dragons

2011-07-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Here be Dragons

Centuries ago most of the world believed the world was flat. And at the end of the world you would fall off and be lost to perdition. The maps of the day showed the end of the known world and in the unknown space was the phrase…”Here Be Dragons” since everyone would understand that warning. In those unknown spaces lie danger, fear, and terrible consequences for passing over that line from the known to the unknown.

Today we know the world is not flat. We know the dragons are not living at the edge of the world waiting to devour any foolish enough or unsuspecting enough to venture into that territory. Yet there are places where we believe the dragons live.

Fear. Belief. The two together create some powerful forces in our lives. When we believe the fear we are risking major problems. We might actually create an edge of the earth where none exists. Many of us (me) do this in our lives quite often.

I know what needs to be done. I know I should write my goals down. I know I should create a vision board. I know I should complete my paperwork for the accountant. I know I should have a cohesive marketing plan. I know I_____(fill in the blank). I even know that once I do those things my life will be better and I will feel a sense of accomplishment. Yet I procrastinate and I put them off.

Where does the problem come from? Why am I not doing those things that will make my life easier, more abundant, more prosperous, happier, or more fulfilled? Is this a belief problem or a fear problem or a vision problem?

If I have a vision and a mission for my life (I do). Then this procrastination is not a vision or mission problem. You see once I have vision and a mission that both excites and scares me I know I have that issue taken care of. So that brings us to fear.

Am I afraid of success? Am I afraid to excel? Am I afraid of whom I might be or that I might lose my center if I do those things (maybe)? Am I afraid that people will ridicule me or that I will lose face somehow? Is there some fear of the fear that I don’t know about or want to acknowledge? Although some of these things may carry some kernels of truth they really aren’t at the heart of the matter.

As you know when we decide on goals we need to also make an action plan. As much as I loved the movie and the book “The Secret” we can’t just wish things into existence. We need to do things. We need to create a plan that will lead us down the yellow brick road. After all, how long would Dorothy have wandered through the Land of Oz without the yellow brick road. She had an action plan to get home. I need an action plan to achieve my goals. If I am going to go where there be dragons I might want to know how to get to the edge of the world.

This sticking point comes when we lose belief in our ability to perform the tasks on our list. When I look at my list of things to do, my action plan and that list has 10 things on it if I don’t believe that I can do #6 then I may actually not even do #1. The stop is at #6 but I won’t even get started since I can’t see my way past #6. Does what I am saying make sense? Let me see if I can put it a different way…If I believe I can sail around the world, I mean really believe, then there are a bunch of steps for me to get there. But if I don’t believe I can find the ships I need then I might not even start writing up my plan or presenting it to the powers that have the money to finance my venture.

So what do we do? Give up? Never! Take your list and identify where your belief fails you. Where on the list do you think you just can’t perform? Let’s say it is at #6. Now make a new list and only put the first 5 items on it. These 5 items you feel confident you can get done. Take the original list and put it in a drawer somewhere. Get started on the 5 items. When you finish #4 go find the original list. How do you feel about #6 now? More than likely #6 will present no challenge anymore.

The magic is in getting started. Sometimes things are as simple as putting one step in front of the other. Then doing it again. And again and again and again. If I believe I can sail around the world but I don’t believe I can find the ships I won’t start. But if I forget about that step and only focus on the first 5 steps then by the time I get around to finding the ships I will no longer be afraid, no longer living in disbelief around finding the ships. I will have a plan, have the money, the maps and the men. At that point the ships will appear as will the next 4 items on the list.

This is a way to achieve your goals in the face of a certain disbelief along the way. This is a way to stay in action and break out of the chains of procrastination. Give it a shot…you can always go back to doing, well, nothing.

Here be dragons? I think not.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...I Believe

2011-07-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…I Believe

So last week I wrote about F.E.A.R (False Evidence Appearing Real). In looking at FEAR we take some of its power away. When we shine a light in the darkness it disappears. Darkness is the absence of light. Yet somehow the darkness helps define the light.

Fear is the absence of Belief. Fear cannot exist in the light of Belief. Belief is the enemy of fear. Have you ever found that when you truly believe in yourself, in your ability, in your commitment the fear melts away like snow in the spring? When we turn our energy to understanding and exploring what we truly believe the fears seem to go away on their own.

That is where we are today…exploring the belief side. Turning our spotlight over to what we believe. What do you believe…deep down in your core, inside your soul?
I believe…
I believe in the divinity of all humans.
I believe we are all born with a purpose to fulfill on the earth in this lifetime.
I believe we are all connected by this divinity, by a thread that has connected each and every human since the beginning.
I believe in the power of the human body to heal itself.
I believe in the power of the human mind to devise solutions and invent new way of doing and being.
I believe in the power of the human soul to create lasting peace and justice.
I believe peace is harder to find, harder to maintain, harder to share than any other alternative. This is way we have found it so elusive over the eons.
I believe that I must find peace in myself before I will find it in my home, my community, my nation, my world.
I believe the world is an abundant place.
I believe in the aristocracy of individual effort and vision.
I believe in the power of love.
I believe in the power of love to change the world.
I believe true intimacy robs us of vulnerability and creates a fortress of strength founded on love and trust.
I believe there is enough food to feed the world.
I believe we were designed to move.
I believe we have the power to control our health using natural food and remedies.
I believe I can live a health productive life to 150 years old.
I believe you can always do more than you think you can.
I believe my children love me.
I believe my parents love me.
I believe I have the right to say no when something crosses a boundary, or exceeds a limit.
I believe You have the right to say No as well.
I believe each of us has the right to believe in the divine in whatever way feels correct to us.
I believe you are right in your beliefs.
I believe my need for security is not more important than your need for autonomy.
I believe your heart and my heart are one.
I believe there is a need for compassion and empathy and the more of those two things that exist and occur in the world the happier we will all be.
I believe in the sanctity of the person.
I believe in the importance of the family.
I believe you get to design your family the way that feels right and is nurturing to you and your soul.
I believe in the need for community, for tribe, for a group of people who are aligned in purpose and a common goal.
I believe I have enough…friends, love, money, stuff, joy.
I believe I can have more…friends, love, money, stuff, joy.
I believe gratitude is the single most important attitude I can foster.
I believe there is not enough gratitude in the world.
I believe music is divinity embodied in the airwaves.
I believe your energy and mine has been here for a long time and will continue to be here for a long time whether or not we choose to take a corporeal form.
I believe you should take care of the body you came here with through good natural food, exercise, love, gratitude and communion with like minded people.
I believe you should be honest and truthful.
I believe it’s easier to be nice than it is to apologize for being mean or rude.
I believe that when my path crosses with yours there is something there, some take away for both of us. After all with 6 billion people on the planet how is it you and I have crossed paths today? It is probably not just coincidence.
I believe there is no limit to what you can learn.
I believe there is no limit on how many people you can help.
I believe there is no limit on how high you can soar.
I believe in the power of your mind, body, and soul to create the world you want to live.
I believe you and I have the power to change the world.
I believe…

After last week many of you wrote what you were afraid of, what your fears were. If you didn’t I invite you to do it now. You may find that the longer your list is, the deeper the fears go. I would invite you to do the same thing now with your beliefs. Write them down…what do You believe? And, again, the longer your list the deeper you will dig, and the more profound the realization will be of what you truly believe. You don’t have to share them with anyone unless you choose to.

I am noticing that since I started really looking at what I believe and how that relates to who I am in the world, my fears are diminished, and the things I was afraid of have lost much of their hold over me. It isn’t magic by the way…Fear is the darkness, Belief is the light. Let’s get out of the darkness and into the light. Find your beliefs and vanquish your fears.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Who's Afraid

2011-07-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Who’s afraid?

Fear. We all have it, even those of us who won’t admit it. Even those people who, when you watch them, appear to be fearless. It is one of the universal human experiences. Fear.

F. (False)
E. (Evidence)
A. (Appearing)
R. (Real)

What are you afraid of? What is your biggest fear? Do you know why? What are you going to do about it? Do you need to do anything about it? Do you know what you are afraid of? Have you ever really explored it? Or is it too scary? Maybe the F.E.A.R. is not at the top of your mind but are you allowing it to run as an undertow in your life…stopping you from making decisions, and making commitments that would change your life?

Here are some of mine:
I am afraid I will die penniless, alone and afraid.
I am afraid that my business will fail and I will have no fallback position, find myself homeless, out on the street and wondering what to do now.
I am afraid I will become disabled and be unable to be physically active.
I am afraid the country I live in will never be what it once was or what it could be.
I am afraid the economic rules got changed and no one told me.
I am afraid my computer will crash and l I will lose 200+ gigs of music
I am afraid I am not as smart as I think I am.
I am afraid that no one will read this and if they do they find it insipid, moronic and without worth.
I am afraid that I have pursued the wrong path for the last 20 years.
I am afraid that all the eating right and exercising hasn’t and won’t make any difference in the quality or the length of my life.
I am afraid my children don’t love me and my parents just tolerate me out of a sense of duty to their progeny.
I am afraid my body is breaking down and I won’t accomplish the goals I have set.
I am afraid I am going to die in a car accident.
I am afraid my karma is so messed up that I am sure to be reborn as a gnat for the next several hundred lifetimes.
I am afraid that I am lying to myself about the evolution of my soul.
I am afraid to set certain goals because I might fail.
I am afraid to create a vision board because I might be wrong about what I really want.
I am afraid to make plan because I might be wrong and really screw up a pretty good thing.
I am afraid I will never be good enough for…? What? I have no idea.
I am afraid there is no way out of the life I have created without completing wrecking the one I have…a strategy that I have employed in the past to the detriment of myself and many others.
I am afraid all the good works I have done really don’t amount to much in comparison to the people I have hurt and the bad actions I have taken.
I am afraid that I will leave no legacy behind, nothing that will have me be remembered after I have extinguished this mortal coil.
I am afraid.
Whew. That was a lot to get off my chest. When you read that list you may say to yourself…”are you kidding? Why would anyone be afraid of that?” Or maybe…”what a jerk. Why does he think anyone cares?” Whoops…there’s another fear rearing its ugly little head…the fear of your censorship, your criticism and ridicule.

So what’s next? I can’t live my life in fear. Well, actually I can. I see people who do it every day. They are living in ways that define their fear. Maybe one of you reading this is doing that? Allowing your fears to define your life? It’s time to move past those fears, to move into action and fearlessness.

Everyone has fear. Everyone. Courage is looking at your fear and going ahead anyway. It is what I just did. I have been looking at this topic all week. It scared me spit less to begin to write this today. To expose my fears to you…my friends, my parents, my family, even my strangers. It’s like walking around naked when everyone else is wearing clothes and there is nothing you can do, except keep walking completely exposed.

This is one way to allay your fears. Write them down. Read them to yourself, read them to your spouse, significant other, family member, read them aloud in a crowded bus station. Once we bring these things up to the light of day we take some of their power to control and harm us away.

When I look at that list I am surprised at the depth of my fear. I am curious where those things came from. And I refuse to allow them to rule my life. I have looked at my fear and I am going ahead anyway. I have made many mistakes in my life. I will make many more. But one of my mistakes is not going to one of inaction. I am not going to crawl into my shell and hope it all turns out OK. I am going to move forward boldly and with confidence. It is my destiny and my birthright.

A quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt goes something like this:
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
That may be the best way to deal with your fear. Just Do It. Anyway.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...What Matters

2011-07-09T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story...What Matters

I don't know what matters. I mean what really what matters. I think we each get to decide what matters to us. And it's OK if what matters to me really doesn't matter to you.

I do, however have a pretty good idea about what doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what color your skin is. It matters who you are and how you conduct yourself in the world

It doesn't matter what church you go to or what religion you belong to, or what name you give your God. It matters how you treat people who are not in your church or who do not believe the same things you do.

It doesn't matter who you love or who you marry. It matters that you love completely and with your heart.

It doesn't matter where you live. It matters how you live.

It doesn't matter how much your paycheck is or what your title is. It matters that you contribute and work with purpose.

It doesn't matter where you went to school. It matters that you are learning and growing and seeking new knowledge.

It doesn't matter who your friends are. It matters that you treat the people around you with respect and dignity.

It doesn't matter if you have made mistakes, if you have had failures and disappointments. It matters that you learn from every experience.

It doesn't matter that you have had your heart broken. It matters that you loved, are loving and loveable.

It doesn't matter what car you drive, the size of your house, the breed of your dog. It matters that you value the things you have and feel grateful for them.

It doesn't matter....
It matters...

I could go on and on. But the bottom line is so much of the stuff we think matters really doesn't matter all that much. Especially when we shine the light of our mortality upon the stuff. You don't get to take any of your stuff with you. No money, no car, no house, no dog, nothing is going to come with you. When you are gone the rest of us will be left with your stuff. It is going to stay here.

You get to take your soul with you. What matters is what you have done with this life to move your soul forward, to create a life that serves as an inspiration for someone else, to make memories that someone else is going to remember for their life. No one says, on their deathbed, I wish I would have made more money, or I wish I would have bought the BMW instead of the Caddy. Most of our deathbed regrets are about people we didn't serve, the legacy we could have left, the words that should have been said, the love we didn't give.

So what are you going to do about it? What can you shift, change, alter or transform that is going to effect this kind of new outlook?
One thing and one thing only: YOUR ATTITUDE!

When you shift your attitude you change the world. Your outlook, your attitude is what matters. And it is the only thing that really matters. Not the weather, not your paycheck, not your parents, not your children...only your attitude.

So how are you going to choose a different attitude? Start with gratitude. Wake up in the morning happy to be alive. You didn't die last night. The house didn't burn down with you in. You are breathing which is one of the major components to being alive. Go to bed at night grateful for the things that happened that day.

Here is an exercise...right before you retire tonight write down 5 things you are grateful for, 5 things that happened today that have you feeling a touch of joy in your heart.

These are the things that matter.

Here is my list for this part of today:
1. The sun is shining and there is a slight cooling breeze
2. I slept long and well
3. I have eaten well prepared food, created with love from ingredients that came from places that were well cared for.
4. I have met my needs for connection.
5. Life feels ease-full, comfortable, and simple. I am stress-free today.

The list does not have to be earth shattering or life changing. It does not need to be a “War and Peace” or the “Communist Manifesto”. It just needs to be you expressing and understanding those things in your life that do matter.

If you take this one practice on, your life will change. The world will change. You will have changed the world! The “what matters” will shift in your life and maybe you will start living out of abundance, prosperity and success instead of lack, scarcity and failure.

What matters is gratitude. What matters is love. What matters is connection. What matters is your relationship to yourself. What matters is your relationship to the world.

What are your 5 things? You can do this. We all can do this. It may not be easy, it might even be really hard. But it is a practice, a habit, a thing to do like brushing your teeth. When I was growing up we always said our prayers before bed. And part of that prayer was asking for a blessing for people. Think of this exercise as your nightly prayer. Expressing gratitude everyday will create a life of gratitude, you will go to bed with a smile and you will wake up with a smile. And that is never a bad thing.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Independence Day

2011-07-02T15:51:00.001-07:00

Sunday Story…Independence Day

As a group of people we consider ourselves fiercely independent. We think ourselves free to do and be, to become, independent of what our ancestors did, or who our parents were. But are we really free? Are we really?

What is independence? Most of us would define this as freedom from something. Freedom from money worries, from tyranny, from food addiction, from any addiction, from oppression, from suffering, from fear, from illness or medical issues, from pain, from ????

The problem is when we define something by saying what it is not we haven’t really said what it is. So maybe we should say it like this. Freedom to make my own decisions, to eat what I wish, to choose, to be who I want to be, to create art, to create a life, to create a legacy, to ????

You get to decide what your definition of freedom or independence looks like. And I get to decide what mine might look like. Like success or wealth or abundance the definitions are as prevalent as there are people. So how are you going to decide?

Far too many people have given up their independence, their freedom for some sort of security or some sort of idea of what security might look like. I will work at a job I dislike (intensely) because the pay is good or the benefits are great, or the job market is just too scary. I get comfortable in this narrow little space. Then I start feeling like all those other things I thought of, the other things I thought were important just aren’t anymore. Little things like having enough money to do what I want when I want. Or the ability to pick up and go when I want to go without the constraints of work put upon me.

Others have locked themselves in a prison of addiction and desire. Drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, food, and drama come to mind but they are not the only ones. After a while the desire for the thing becomes greater than the desire to be free from the thing. The thing owns you and your life, your life revolves around that thing…getting more of it, not running out, making sure the cupboard is always full of it. This is certainly not how any of us imagined our lives would go. I don’t think any child grows up thinking …”Gee, I want to be a heroin addict when I grow up,” or “Wow, the life of an alcoholic looks like the way for me.” No one does that, I think.

So what happened? What did I do to give up my independence? Because I really don’t think any of us do that on purpose, by design. Gee, let me give up the ability to choose my destiny for a weekly pay check. Let me give up my god given creativity to “fit in” so I can be like all the rest of the people around me (which is really not possible). Let me give up my real purpose on earth so I can scrabble around looking for my next fix of whatever I have become addicted to.

All of these things, all of these “give ups” keep us mediocre, average, like macaroni and cheese in a white box. You know the one…no brand name, barely any instructions and a taste that is well, bland and boring. Are you living in that white box? When I look at your life have you crawled inside your comfortable little white box trying to get through the day with no real bumps or boo boos on your knee? Are you mac-n-cheese in a white box?

Why? What happened to you? What made you decide that was OK? Because it really isn’t OK. You deserve to be free. You deserve a rich independent life. You should have a life full of choices and the ability to make them comfortably. And you are the only person who is going to go out and get that freedom and independence for yourself.

But how is that possible. You have locked yourself in your little white box. And it really does not look like there is any way out. You have created this little prison that is masquerading like a life of choice and freedom. So what are you going to do about?

First realize what you have done. Second decide it is time for a prison break. Third start plotting and planning. Remember any successful prison break takes a certain amount of planning and requires a certain amount of time. The time required will be dependent upon how good the prison is that you have built for yourself and how deep your resolve is to get out of that white box.

The world needs your creativity. The world needs your voice, your presence your contribution. You are an integral piece of the puzzle that your community is. When you decide to remain mediocre, staying mac-n-cheese in a white box we all suffer from the lack of you. I need the excellent you, the one that is striving toward something greater, something amazing and special. And you need the me that is doing the same thing.

The New Hampshire state motto is “Live Free or Die”. Most people think it is a reference to the Revolutionary War and the struggle for American Independence and that is where it arose. But it is just as important and poignant today for many other reasons. Think about what your life would look like if you were to live free. Free from the prison you locked your life in, your creativity, your self-expression into. Free from mediocrity, free from a life of Mac-N-Cheese in a white box.

Live Free. Don’t Die.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Steppin' Out

2011-06-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Steppin’ Out

You circle the parking lot looking for that coveted parking place closest to the door. The stairs, the escalator, or the elevator? The last time you rode a bike was several presidents ago. Roller skates? I don’t think so. We live in a mechanized world. We drive way too much. It all contributes to this faster, fragmented and furious pace we are living.

I am not anti-car. I love my car and I love driving. I love that I can get in it and be someplace in a very short order. If I had to walk to San Francisco I probably wouldn’t get there very often. On the other hand…

The principle of general physical preparedness (gpp) says that I should be able to get up and do what needs to be done with my body. Can I carry a 40 pound child through an amusement park and out to the far reaches of the parking lot? Can I use an axe and shovel all day to dig that stump out of the yard? How about sprinting 100 or so yards to the scene of an accident to render help and being able to do it when you arrive on scene? Climb a tree to rescue your kid’s cat? Maybe even something simple like walking a mile or two because your car breaks down and there is no cell coverage for AAA to come and save you? Maybe even simpler…reach down and pick something up from the floor without bending your knees?

This level of fitness…the general physical preparedness level…requires that you do a number of things. We have talked about these things before. Lift heavy things. Move them quickly over a distance. Sprint once in a while. Pull yourself up, push yourself up, sit yourself up, squat down. Do things in ways you wouldn’t normally do them. Expect the unexpected. Connect your body, your breath, and your mind into a unified whole. Move slowly often.

This last one is the one many of us have trouble with. We are bipeds. That means we were made to move on two feet. We were not made to sit on our behinds. We were designed to move often and with ease and comfort and not in your “fat-burning zone” either. When was the last time you walked from the furthest reaches of the parking lot? On purpose? Or walked up the stairs instead of the escalator right beside the stairs? Or rode a bicycle just to get from point A to point B? No hurry, no worrying about the rpm or your pulse or anything else? These activities are meant to help increase your base metabolic rate. Just like sprinting once in a while will do. And moving heavy stuff over distance quickly will do.

What is your base metabolic rate you may ask? This is the rate that your body burns energy. The more we sit, the more sedentary we become the lower that rate becomes. In other words your body requires less and less energy to maintains its basic functions. So the more I sit, the slower everything moves. And I require less energy to just be alive. This is a good thing if I am starving to death. Most of you are not starving.

Maybe you can think back to a time when you were very active. Not exercising not training but really active. Maybe you were playing and moving; up to lots of things in the world. Your base metabolic rate was probably pretty high. And you were feeding yourself often and without a lot of care. And you weren’t overweight. Then your activity level dropped off. And so did your base metabolic rate. But your calorie intake remained the same and it still wasn’t all that much good food either. Guess what…5 years later your health is declining noticeably. You are tired. You aren’t able to do some of the things you used to take for granted.

Better get in shape, right? So you get on the bike, on the treadmill, the elliptical (human on the wheel) and start doing “cardio”. After all this is what all the experts say will do the trick right? And you start moving into the proverbial “fat burning zone” and stay there for about 30 minutes while you read Time magazine or People or watch the tube. And guess what? While you are on that machine in that zone you are burning fat. So why do we see so many people who are religious about their 4 times a week chronic cardio habits never make any significant changes in the body composition?

Because, and here is the most important part of this whole article, chronic cardio does not raise your base metabolic rate. In other words, once you stop working, once you get off the machine your body stops burning fat and goes back to whatever it was doing before you got on. Which for most of us is burning glycogen (a form of sugar) because that is what we are fueling our bodies with. Our base burn rate is so low that your body doesn’t need to burn fat at rest.

Your body is designed to burn fat as fuel most of the time. When I walk or ride my bike at a leisurely pace I am burning fat. My body is trained to do that. When I run really fast and lift heavy stuff I am training my body to burn energy faster and do it consistently over the course of the day. Of course I am not sitting around all day either.

Get up, get out of the chair, off the couch. Start moving. It is your birthright. Your body was designed as a well oiled efficient machine meant to go places. Being on the treadmill, the stationary bike, the elliptical takes you nowhere, no matter how fast you go. Get off the human hamster wheel. It wasn’t designed for humans, unless you are in captivity. Maybe someday…

So…start moving and start eating real food….animals and plants…mostly plants. Take it one baby step at a time but start stepping. Pretty soon you will be stepping out!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Happy Father's

2011-06-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Happy Father’s Day

Today is Father’s day. I don’t often link these stories to actual dated events but I am going to make an exception this week.

Every week I write this Sunday Story. I have been doing it for just over 3 years…that means over 156 stories…over 156,000 words (each one is about 1000 words)…over 156 pages at a 12 point typeface. That is a fair amount of writing. Sometimes I touch you, my reader, more deeply than others. Sometimes I reach inside and really spill my heart out and you get it and other times you don’t. It doesn’t really matter because I figure you get the things you are meant to get and all the rest is just so much fluff anyway.

Every week my mother prints this story out so my father can read it over his breakfast. At 78 years old the print is a little larger and it takes him a little longer to read it than it did a year or two ago. My father’s health is failing. Slowly, inexorably, sometimes painfully failing. I suppose it is part of the natural ebb and flow of life but it is still heart rendering to watch and hear about. I feel sad I am not there as often as I would like. Anyway Dad, this one is for you…

There are many things I learned from my father. The older I get the more I realize how many lessons there were for me. The older I get the more impact those lessons have and the more I come to appreciate all the gifts I was given by having a father like the one I had in my life. I hope my children were ½ as fortunate.

I learned the value of working hard. My father worked all day and then came home and worked at home. At different times in my life he was a school teacher, a farm worker, a truck driver, a quality control inspector for nuclear plants and some other things I have forgotten. We lived on a horse ranch for a year or two. We owned a vineyard at one point for several years. I remember my dad worked. When we were raising sheep for 4-H projects he was there to help and to bury the orphan lambs that didn’t make it through the nights. I learned how to prune a grape vine. I learned to put in a day’s work in the field and do the job correctly the first time, no matter how cold it was or how much you really wanted to quit. We milked cows together in the hours before dawn as “replacement” milkers for local dairymen. It was a job that got done no matter what. There was no fail. It was a position of extreme trust that these men placed in my father and he, in turn, in me. If the job was worth doing it was going to be done well.

Which leads me to another lesson...I learned it really wasn’t important what you did. What was important was how you did it. Did you do the absolute best you could? Was the job done above and beyond expectation? Are you the best at what you are doing or are you working on being the best? At one point in my young life I can remember telling my dad that I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be but I was going to be the best at whatever I ended up doing.

Once when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old we had gone to a family reunion. Most of the extended family lived way up in western Washington and we were living in California outside of Sacramento at the time. I was just at that age where all these people were interesting and I really had no idea who they all were. But my dad was inviting them all to our house to visit. I remember asking him later…”Dad, you invited all these people to our house. What if they all show up? Where will we put them all?” His answer was simple…”I invited them because it’s polite and gracious. And if they all show up we will make room for them because they are family.” Of course most of them never came to California and those that did didn’t all show up at the same time. I learned to be polite and gracious.

Another time my father was teaching special education in a small school in Washington. I was 12 or 13. He had to drive something like 50 miles each way to go to work and then come home and run the horse ranch we were living on at the time. I think I resented him being gone that much or something stupid like that and one day I asked him…”why are you teaching those retards anyway?” In a flash I saw his face go from anger to extreme sadness at my thoughtless question. Before and since, I don’t think I have ever seen such sadness and certainly not on my father’s face. His answer went something like this…” these children deserve our help. They aren’t stupid. They are different certainly yet they are, in many ways, like you and I…they want to be loved, they want to contribute and they are often the kindest most loving people I have ever known. I hope I never hear that word come out of your mouth again.” In that moment I learned compassion and the value of seeing every person for the divine spark they carry within their soul.

My father gave me permission to lead my life. He never tried to run it for me. He gave me advice and still loved me when I didn’t take it. He encouraged me to be who I could be. When I made mistakes (and I made plenty of them) I can never remember him coming down on me with contempt and criticism and condemnation. It would have been easy for him to do as many of my transgressions were worthy of all three of those things. I learned to love.
So…
Work hard
Be the best
Be Polite and Gracious
Have Compassion and Understanding
Love

Thanks Dad. Happy Fathers Day.

Love, your son, John.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Flip the Switch

2011-06-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Flip the Switch

There is a point in your life when you flip the switch. The switch that turns the path, steers the car in the other direction, that takes you down a different road. The question I am asking myself today is what is the motivating factor, the underlying reason that we decide to make fundamental changes in our lives?

We have talked about the pain of continuing on a particular path being less than the pleasure of going down a new path. And although this may be reason enough to lose a few pounds or quit smoking or start exercising, I really wonder if it is enough to have you shift your life into a completely different lifestyle. I think maybe, if the fear of pain or the anticipation of pleasure might get you started, might get you boot-kicked onto the path but is it really enough to have truly alter your life style?

So why do we finally flip the switch or pull the trigger, if you will. What has you go from a donut eating, camel straight smoking, coffee drinking cowboy bent on self destruction (me) to a dedicated paleo eating, crossfit fitness fanatic and martial arts maniac (also me)? These two life styles could not be further from each other.

You have been under attack you know. Throughout your life you have been bombarded by images bent on creating conformity within you. Eat this and you will be popular. Dress this way and you will be cool (like everyone else). All the cool people do this. If you want to be skinny eat this and not that. This attack is simply meant to liberate your money from your wallet. If everyone wants the same thing, eats the same thing then there is a lot more of it to sell and a lot more profit. Marketing is not a bad thing, in and of itself. But over the few years too much of that marketing has been selling us a crock of, well, crap. Bad food, worse habits, quick fixes, and herd think has lessened our desire to be the individuals we are meant to be.

It also didn’t happen all at once. It crept up on you a little at a time, 5 pounds here, 5 pounds there, a poor attitude a bit here, a smarmy, sarcastic remark, the t-shirt with a particularly facetious saying on it and the next thing you know…It’s a hundred pounds, your attitude has no gratitude and your hoping just to keep your average, mediocre boat afloat for a while longer.

That is not to say that this isn’t your fault. It is your responsibility for the way your life looks. You didn’t have to drink that kool-aid you know. And you can stop drinking it anytime you are ready. But it may take a time or two before you finally completely and totally stop drinking at the magical mediocrity trough. But you can do it if you really, really want to.

So how do you really get the switch flipped? What does it take to get on the track you really belong on? What is going to be your over-riding impetus to effect the real change you and your soul are so longing for?

It is going to take one thing and one thing only…a decision backed by a commitment. You need to decide that your life doesn’t have to be this way anymore. There is something else, something more, something bigger, something you are meant to do. Then, once the decision is made, commit to creating a process and sticking to it. No matter what. No matter how many people tell you it can’t be done, no matter who ridicules or tries to pull you off course, no matter if you fall off the path. You will keep going. There is no failure on this journey. There is the learning that comes from experimentation. There is the lesson that you get when things don’t quite work out as you planned. But there is no failure because your course is set, your resolve is unbending, you are on a mission.

For myself, I decided I no longer wanted to die the slow, inexorable death waiting for me down the road I was on. The destination on that road had 5 or 6 little brown prescription bottles, a working relationship with several physicians, a non-working relationship with an insurance company, an unhappiness doing work that simply provided a paycheck and a family life that was more at home in front of the television that anywhere else. No Thanks.

I wanted to be able to do anything I chose. Just like I did when I was 8 or 10 years old and the whole world was wide open. Physically I wanted to be able to do whatever it was that I chose to do without fear of injury or chronic pain. Mentally I am constantly learning and keeping my brain engaged in so many processes. I have a vision for my life and what and how I want it to look. I make a difference everyday in the lives of the people around me. I live a life designed with my purpose in mind and designed to fulfill that purpose. I walk my talk. But it was conscious choice. And behind that choice was the will to commit to the process. And in that process was a road of self –discovery…a place where all knowledge was on the table, nothing was assumed to be true anymore. There is no magic bullet, no magic door to walk through for optimum health and wellness. It is work and it is a lifestyle. And it is a journey I plan on continuing to the end of my days.

The legacy, the inspiration I want to leave you with is this…you can still be whoever you want to be. You can still choose what and who you want to be when you grow up. It’s never too late. Or you can continue on the path of your certain future. For me…I’m wearing shades ‘cuz the future’s so bright!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The Girl in the Box

2011-06-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story...The Girl in the Box

I am, generally, a happy person. At least I like to think so. When I look out at the world it appears to be happy place. In the world I live in, people don’t steal from each other. When bad stuff happens (and it does) I do my best to spin it positive and try to give the benefit of the doubt to the other people.

Before you dismiss me as some Pollyanna person who only sees rainbows and unicorns (8) I know the world shows up as a scary and dangerous place for many people. And for many people it really is dangerous and scary. People die, get horrendous diseases and are treated by other humans in ways as despicable as to be fodder for horror novels. All these things are true.

Yet, do I need to live my life in a box? Scared to stick my head out? Scared to discover all the things wrong or right with the world? Too many of us are living in the box. We see all the horrible things in the world through the lens of sensational news reports and talking heads serving up fear on a platter. When I view the world through those glasses my little box looks pretty good.

The girl in the box is representative of a life lived in fear. The box is safe, the box is secure. There is very little to worry about in the box. When I close the box it is dark and nothing can hurt me. My fear is under control. Yet reality is my fear is controlling me and not the other way around. My life in the box looks safe and secure to me, the person in the box but is it really safe?

There is an old saying…”behold the turtle, he only gets somewhere when he sticks his neck out.” A turtle when he is pulled into his shell (his box) can’t go anywhere unless someone kicks him some place. If you are living in your box you are stuck until someone else kicks you down the road. And how scary is that? You aren’t in control when someone else is pushing the box places. And you won’t even do anything about it; you are so obsessed with being safe and secure you have given up all control over your destination (life).

When you finally stick your head out of the box and look around you have no idea where you are, how you got there, or what you are going to do next. Other than crawl back in the box and hope the next kick lands you somewhere nice and soft. Like Maui maybe, or the south of France in a pretty little villa. That sounds pretty scary if you ask me. Not knowing where the next kick is going to land you is about as far from secure as I would care to be.

You realize of course, that the box isn’t just a box. It is a life unexamined. It is a life that just meanders about with no real plan or passion driving it. Far too many of us are living lives bereft of meaning and purpose. Our lives are defined by a box we have framed and created by default, not by plan.

Are you living in box without realizing it? Is your box so comfortable that it doesn’t feel like a box anymore? It’s decorated nicely, all the comforts of home are there, you don’t really have to do much to keep it up and all your friends and family have cute little boxes too. So it works pretty well.

Until you start feeling like there might be something else, something more that lies outside the box. Then the turtle sticks his neck out and starts looking around, starts exploring the world outside his tightly controlled and confined box. When you start looking around you get to decide if you are looking for beauty or ugliness. Because whatever you are looking for you will find. Look for dishonesty and you will find it. Look for hatred, bigotry, and cruelty and it is there to be found. Look for honesty and it will be there too. Look for people who are up to great things in the world, who are kind, and giving, open and honest they will be there as well.

The world outside my box is beautiful. And it isn’t perfect. There are many things I don’t like about this world. I choose to live outside the box even though it can be scary, ugly and difficult to deal with. I choose to live outside the box because the beauty and the possibility and the joy are greater in every moment than any of the hurt, pain, ugliness, and suffering. You will notice I choose. I choose every day how the world outside the box looks. It is mine to do.

In the choice I make I choose to live with passion and purpose. The box holds my passion down and stifles my purpose. The box does not serve my choices. Why would I choose to close off all the joy and yes even the sorrow the world outside the box holds? It would be like living as half a person. Even if there is pain and suffering it would be better than the stifling life in the box waiting to be kicked down the road by some unknown boot to some unknown destination.

Are you the girl in the box? Why? What are you doing in there? Don’t you know the world needs your passion and purpose? We need you to get out of your box and start sharing all the beauty, joy and passion you have to bring. Stop selling yourself short and cheating the world of your gifts, crawl out of the box.

Now. Today. See you on the outside!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Recharge, Re-energize, and Restore

2011-05-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Recharge, Re-energize, and Restore

We are often, in our modern world, faced with images of the un-stoppable force. The “energizer bunny’ keeps on going and going and going. We value the player who never quits, never gives up. The one who shows up before everyone else and stays after everyone else has gone. The image of the lone athlete shooting foul shot after foul shot long into the dark is almost an icon in this culture. One of the sayings I know I have espoused frequently goes like this: You can rest when you are dead.

In the triumvirate of optimum health and fitness probably the least emphasis is placed on the rest leg. We talk a lot about exercise…how to work out, when to work out, the benefits of working out. We spend even more time on the food and nutrition leg. This is the one place all of us can easily control yet many of us have the hardest time with. Plus there are so many myths and legends that surround food it is ridiculous. Not to mention the emotional component so many of us struggle with around food. The rest leg really gets the short end of the stick. We just kind of take it for granted…go to bed and go to sleep, get up in the morning. Simple right?

In reality the rest leg of the recipe may be the hardest for many of us to manage. Especially if you are a type A, highly driven individual…competitive and goal oriented. You don’t know anyone like that do you (me!)? I really hate to rest. I really hate to slow down and admit that I need to rest. And the truth of it is that I really need to slow down and rest.

Part of this is the sleep factor. Getting a deep restful restorative sleep is critical to the equation. If you aren’t sleeping well it is hard to be really energized and upbeat. As a matter of fact you are more likely to be depressed and critical (a fancy way of saying cranky!) if you do not sleep well. And the answer is not chemical sleep aids. There are so many other things to work on…things like exercise and nutrition. The other two legs help immensely with this one you know! The whole sleep thing is manageable…sleep in a dark room, keep the temperature cool, a bit of fresh air will help, wear socks, get up at the same time every morning, don’t eat a heavy meal before retiring, limit any stimulation before bed (horror movies, reading intense literature), limit fluid intake. All these things will help your sleep be more restful and complete.

Another large part of the rest and relaxation leg is the management of stress. Stress kills ladies and gentlemen. Stress will keep you up at night. Stress will affect how you digest your food…or if you digest your food. Stress can create heart disease, stroke and a myriad of other health concerns. And stress is created in your mind. You are the progenitor of your stress. Yes bad stuff is going to happen. Yes bad stuff might happen. It is how you deal with the stuff happening or not happening that dictates the stress level you experience. Being an optimist definitely helps reduce stress. Train yourself to see the glass as half full. Expect good things to happen. Have a positive mental attitude. These things are all trainable. You can “fake it until you make it”. It is a practice just like the opposite side is. It just maybe that being depressed, sad, and negative is easier or more popular in some circles (not mine!).

Meditation is also a very useful tool in both managing stress and getting your batteries re-charged. Sitting quietly for 15 or 20 minutes a day will do wonders for your mental outlook. This too is a practice. You must work at it, especially in the beginning. In the beginning it will seem like your mind is going a million miles an hour. This monkey mind is actually going on all the time. But you don’t notice it because you have so many other things happening. The monkey mind is the natural state…you may also notice it when you are trying to sleep. Your thoughts keep careening around like billiard balls on the break…back and forth , here and there, one thing to the next. Meditation will help put some of that to bed. Training your mind is like training your body…it takes effort and practice.

The other part of recharge, restore and re-vitalize is to take a vacation. This is a place where I am seriously challenged. By vacation I mean the kind where you have no agenda, no plan other than to just get away and relax. Change your routine entirely. Take 3 or 4 days off from working out and training. You won’t go backwards in 3 or 4 days. You won’t lose a bit of fitness in those days and you might even allow your body to heal some of those nagging little injuries. Your mind will relax and even expand. Your body will begin to heal itself. Your emotional aspect will calm down and you will stop some of the mental chatter that is not so nice. Your energy will rebuild and restore itself. You could do this in just 3 days if that was all you had. Take a load of your mind, off your body and off your spirit by doing nothing at all. Get out of town so you don’t mow the lawn or do your home chores or just go into the office for a few minutes. Just get gone for a short period and you might be amazed.

Guess what? Today is Sunday and it is the middle of a three day weekend...a weekend where you could be resting, restoring and re-energizing your life. It’s still not too late to go. Do it now! Go!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Traffic Jam

2011-05-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Traffic Jam

“There is no traffic jam on the extra mile.”

I heard a friend of mine, Kenny Rossi, say this the other day. I am not sure if he coined it or if he heard it someplace else. Kenny is a relationship marketer extraordinaire and one of the most positive people I know and I know some pretty positive people. So when he talks, I listen…I don’t always do but I do listen!

The world wants you to be average. All the people around you really don’t want you to be anything but like everyone else. Remember back in middle school and everyone was trying to “be themselves” but anyone who wasn’t like everyone else was shunned, ostracized, made fun of or bullied until they conformed and complied? Remember that? Well the world is like that. A bucket of crabs always trying to pull the one trying to get out of the bucket back down into the mass of crabs until Mister Get me outta here Crab gives up and sinks into the mass of mediocrity with all the rest of the crabs in the bucket.

This is where the traffic jam is…in the teeming majority of people moving along in the same direction. I used to drive to the San Francisco Bay Area frequently. I was fortunate to be going the opposite way of everyone else most of the time. And while I was hurtling along at 70 miles per hour I was so glad not to be on the other side in bumper to bumper traffic doing 10 miles per hour. I think this would be true of most of us. I mean do you really get up in the morning and say to yourself…”boy, I hope I can find a really good traffic jam today”? I know I don’t.

So why are you living the rest of your life that way? Is there some way to get moving in the direction no one else is going? Is there something you can do or some way you can do it that no one else is doing it? Or at least fewer people are doing it? Is that going to be a little scary? Of course it is.

Let’s be honest…we worship, adore and revere those people who are way past average and mediocre. The Michael Jordans, the Bill Gates, the Jerry Rices, the Warren Buffets, the Bruce Lees are put up on a pedestal because they are not average, they are not mediocre. They are not like you or I, they are extraordinary. They have gone the extra mile.

Think back…have you ever gone that extra mile? Have you ever done what it took, no matter what it took, no matter the obstacle, no matter the challenge, you were going to finish the task, do the job? When was the last time you went the extra mile?
There isn’t going to be a traffic jam on that extra mile. Why not? Because most of us are not willing to go there. We aren’t willing to do the work. We aren’t willing to be committed to a single driving thing, passion, goal, or outcome. It is easier to sit back and wait for the work to come to you (it never does). It easier to stay mired in the muck with your friends lamenting your fate (and all the rest of the crabs). There isn’t any short term gratification in going the extra mile. And there is no guarantee of reaching your destination after you go the extra mile. BUT there is a guarantee that you will never be anything but average unless you go that extra mile.

Most of us have given up on the extra mile. Maybe you tried once or twice and didn’t get there. Maybe the extra mile just looked too hard. Maybe the goal didn’t really inspire you to go there. Maybe it was something placed upon you by your parents, or some other part of society and it just didn’t light you up. O.K…get over yourself and find something worth going the extra mile for. Work from a place of overreaching and overriding passion. Be so totally unreasonable that failure is not an option.

And if you get a flat tire, or run out of gas or someone tries to run you off that extra mile it really won’t matter because you know that being on that extra mile will result in something fantastic, something magical, and something extraordinary. Something so out of the ordinary that your life will never be the same. If you never get to the end of that mile well you had a heckuva ride with almost no traffic!

You were not put on this earth to be average, to be mediocre. You are an amazing, wonderful and special human being. If you are allowing, or have allowed the world, the culture or society to convince you that it is OK to lie on the coach and watch T.V. or that it is acceptable to be just another sheep in the herd, a cog in the machine, you need to change your thinking. You need to get out on that extra mile and see what there is to be seen. You need to go that extra mile to see just how good, how amazing, how truly special you are and you can be.

It will be so nice to see some extra traffic on the extra mile. This blog is one of my extra miles by the way. Next month will mark 3 years of weekly posts. That’s 156 blog posts, over 156,000 words, a body of work that proves, if nothing else, that perseverance counts for something. Thanks to each of you who read these…it is enheartening to know you are out there. Thanks to Tom Callos ( http://www.tomcallos.com/ ) who started a process 5 or 6 years ago and continues to inspire. And Thanks to Kenny Money for planting the seed that this project has become.

Get out there…the scenery is great, the trip is fun, and there is no traffic on the extra mile!!!!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Skinny, Fat, Fit, and Healthy

2011-05-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Skinny, Fat, Fit, and Healthy

You can’t Exercise your way Skinny and You can’t Eat your way Fit.
There I have said it.
For those of you out there who think you can just do a few more push-ups, run a few more miles, and do another round or two on the human hamster wheel and it will allow you to eat all the pizza, doughnuts and junk food, drink all the beer and soda you want…You are very wrong. AND if you fall into the camp that thinks all you have to do is “watch” your diet and eat “clean” and you will end up in good shape…You are also very wrong.

There are 3 things you must do to do be fit.
1. Exercise
2. Eat
3. Rest
That’s it, that is all there is.

I could stop writing this now but I won’t. If you have been paying attention you should be up on my thoughts on all three of those things. I am going to repeat some of them now. Before I do though, here is a bit more on the genesis of how I got to this place.

At age 34 I began to realize that I was in pretty bad shape. Not 100 pounds overweight bad but bad nonetheless. I looked at a picture of myself at a friend’s wedding and I was “jowly”. My chin was disappearing. I could still throw 100 pound hay bales around, ride, and do most of the things I wanted to do but I was definitely slower and heavier. I still smoked, drank and ate the standard American diet (SAD) which was full of crap (calorie rich and pathetic).

I started Martial arts training in TaeKwon-Do. Then to get more flexible I realized I needed to be stronger so I started “working out”. I hired a personal trainer. He taught me a lot about exercising, lifting weights and the like. His nutrition advice was to eat boiled chicken breast and rice, take some protein shake supplements, and creatine. I think he was a former steroid user and it certainly worked for him btu that wasn’t a path I was going to go down. I got bigger and stronger but not more flexible and I got slower and less agile. So I started running and, like Forrest Gump, I didn’t stop. I ran 50 mile races and totally immersed myself in the culture. Until I started blowing up my knees. And I got weaker and although I could run 50 miles and barely get my heart rate above 130bpm I really wasn’t in great shape. I ate a lot of pasta and other high carb foods to keep my energy levels up. I didn’t have 6 pack abs and I really didn’t have the kind of flexibility and agility I thought an athlete should have. But I could run. And I could roll on the mat for long periods but I was slow and my body was breaking down in ways that were very un-enjoyable. Age I was told, it’s inevitable.

Well, my friends, that’s a diagnosis I was not going to accept. It was obvious that being big and muscular wasn’t answer and being an endurance freak wasn’t either. Eating boiled chicken and rice was boring and carb loading on pasta was making me fat. So I needed to find the middle ground. And that puts us here, where we are today. And today I am 163# at 5’9” with a body fat percentage well under 10% (which means I have the working of a 6-pack) and I feel more flexible and agile than ever. Still working on the speed though!

Exercise
You must go hard, petal to the metal, all out. Work out hard enough that your heart is in your throat, your lungs are burning and when you are finished you are Done. Pick up heavy stuff and move it, quickly. Go fast if you run, swim, row, jump rope, or ? No treadmill, no elliptical, no stationary bike to zone out on. Do the basics…pull-ups, pushups, sit ups, squats but do them in different ways using different planes of movement. Be completely absorbed by your regimen while you are doing it. Change it all the time. Learn new stuff. Stretch your muscles often and work on your range of motion issues. Walk places, park your car at the far end of the parking lot, take the stairs every time you can, ride a bike just to ride it, take a walk with your family and talk about whatever there is to talk about.

Eat
Put natural food in your body. Eat all the vegetables you want. Lean protein from animals raised in a natural environment. A little fruit once in a while some seeds and nuts occasionally. If it requires processing in a factory before you can eat it…don’t. This means everything in a box or a package…everything. If the list of ingredients is longer than 3 or 4 things and includes any words you don’t know the meaning of don’t eat it. Broccoli has no ingredient list. Pasta does. Bread does. No sugar. Stop eating dairy…I know I love cheese too but it is not good for you. Stop eating grains…your digestive system cannot process them in a healthy way. Both dairy and grains have anti-nutrients built into them to help Mother Nature not human beings. Eat fat in the form of avocadoes, olives, flax seed oil, fish oil, coconut, and more. Fat is healthy and good for you provided it comes from the right places. If you must supplement, supplement don’t replace. Quit trying to solve all your boo-boos with natural remedies and pharmaceuticals…most of your problems are solve able or at least manageable through proper diet (including ADD, ADHD, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and a host of others).

Rest
Get some sleep. If you aren’t sleeping well see the diet first. Then turn the noise off…the TV, the cell phone, etc. Take a half hour before you go to bed and wind down by reading inspirational stuff or meditating. Sleep in a dark room. Wear socks. Keep the heat down in the room where you sleep. Get up at the same time every morning (this will force you to go bed when you are ready). Drink less liquid right before retiring. If you eat before bed eat very light. Do things everyday to manage stress…meditate, tai chi, breathe, exercise, eat right. Cut down/cut out caffeine…it produces more stress and doesn’t help you sleep.

As you can see a lot of this advice flies in the face of “conventional” wisdom. It also flies in the face of what we have been told by people we thought should know and should have our best interests at heart (the government, the doctors, the food companies). Guess what? You are responsible for your health. You, not me, not the government, not your M.D., not some big corporate conglomerate…YOU. If you want to thrive and be fit, that is. If you just want to exist and wonder why, at age 65, you have a lineup of little brown bottles that are keeping the pain wolves away, and causing side effect after side effect don’t do anything I am saying. It is a certain future.

For myself, at almost 55, I am fitter than I have ever been since high school and maybe better than that. I am more flexible and agile than I have been in 30 years. I am not as fast as I was 40 years ago and yes my knees still pain me. I love my food and when I eat something that isn’t on the prescribed list I savor and enjoy every bite. I sleep well.

Come join the revolution…you’ll be glad you did!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...the One

2011-05-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…the One

Songs have been written, movies have been made, novels and stories published all on the subject of the “One”. The myth, the legend, the fairy tale all have elements of the “One”. We are all active participants in the search for the elusive “One”.

The “One” could be my soul mate, the savior of the world, the job to end all jobs, the Doctor who will cure me, the diet that makes me skinny, the exercise routine that gives me the 6-pack abs, the relationship that makes me whole. We are searching constantly for this mythical creature, this unicorn, this chimera, this “One” that fixes the world.

In the movie “The Matrix” the main character is a man named Neo. This character is put up to be the “One”... the “One” to save the world, to save the society, to put an end to the war, to stop the machines from taking over the world and killing all the humans. That is a pretty tall order for one human. Yet eventually in the movie Neo comes to realize he is not the “One”. And as a matter of fact the “One” doesn’t exist. Unless you are really the “One”, that is.

This is a mind bending exercise. But then a lot of this sort thing can do that to you. We are all guilty of perpetuating this myth. We look for our last love, trying to find the “One”…the one that is our soul mate, the one that will love us forever, the one that will make the world a better and brighter place to live in. And when the person upon whom we put that cloak turns out to be just as human as we are we are severely disappointed, sometimes to the point of depression and despair.

Why do we invest so much in this quest? This quest is a tale like the search for pirate treasure. We are all on the same sort of quest far too often. And far too often the quest yields disastrous results. If I were a knight of old and searching for, say, the Holy Grail I might spend my whole life searching and traveling only to die frustrated. Maybe I get close, maybe I just about reach it only to come up short. I might even die on the trail. Or, maybe I decide to stop searching and spend my life wondering if I could have found it. And then I still die unfulfilled and frustrated.

Over the years I have had many different jobs, many different careers. When I started each one I thought, Ah this is the “One”, this is the thing I was meant to do, this is the job I was meant to do. And, like Neo, it was the “One” for some period of time. And then it wasn’t any more. I am no longer looking for “One”, right, true job or career. The quest is over. And the problem wasn’t the quest or the “One”.

A friend of mine has been looking for the “One” her whole life. The man who will save her. The man who will love and cherish her, the man who will make her whole. She finds a likely candidate and invests her heart and soul and (here is the real problem) gives up herself, who she really is to become “worthy” of the “One”. Then when he is revealed to be the regular human he has been all along she is wiped out and devastated.

There is no “One”. There is no perfect human who is going to save you and solve all your problems, and make your life the fairy tale you think it is supposed to be. There is no perfect job where you are paid what you are worth, where you are valued and supported in exactly the way you want to be valued and appreciated. There is no perfect house, there is no perfect pet, no perfect song, no perfect meal. There is nothing in the world that exists in that realm. Yet we imbue certain things with that “One” mystique.

On the other hand…

You are the “One”. I am the “One”. You are the “One” I have been waiting for. I am the “One” you have been waiting for. We are the “Ones” the world has been waiting for.

The work I am doing is the “One” when it is aligned with my purpose here on earth.

All the things I look for to be the First, Last and Only “Ones” are the “Ones” when I allow them to be.

You see, there is no objective “One”. There is no holy grail. Until I make it so. Until the who and what of the thing is changed in my eyes. One man’s junk is another’s treasure. I get to make you the “One”. I get to integrate what I am seeking with what I am finding. The “One” only exists in my mind. The “One” becomes the “One” when I say it is. Your search is over.
This is your personal responsibility for the stories you are telling yourself. The stories you are allowing to rule your life. Life does not exist outside of you. You are making all this stuff up. So start making up some new stuff. Find the “One” in the mate you already have. Figure out your purpose and then live your life in alignment. Stop the coping mechanisms you are using because your life doesn’t look the way you want it to. Start living into the stories you really want to tell yourself. That way you can save the world. You are the “ONE”. Live it, be it, start today!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Get Fit or ?

2011-04-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

Sunday Story…Get Fit or ?

This morning I was talking to a client and we were lamenting on the fact that so many people seem to be kidding themselves when it comes to fitness. Fitness is a peculiar thing. Every one want to be fit (I think) and I don’t think anyone wants to be fat (I think). I mean do we grow up idolizing the guy who had to be buried in a piano box? Do we look at pictures of obese people and dream of the day when we can get that large? I don’t think so. I don’t think being fat or obese is the natural, normal human state.

On the other hand just because you are not fat does not mean you are fit. I often see people who appear to be fit, or appear to be in good shape yet they can’t do one pull up or a push up or sprint 50 yards (sprint = run as fast as possible). So how is this possible? It is obvious they aren’t fat yet their level of fitness is abysmal.

So what is fitness? How do I define fitness? Obviously we can’t define fitness by some objective measure of height and weight proportion. It doesn’t really matter if you are skinny, you can still be un-fit and actually fat. And it really doesn’t matter if you are really muscular (you look good naked) because you can still be not so fit.

If we look up the definition of fitness in the dictionary we see lots of choices but nothing that really defines fitness across a broad spectrum of individuals. Here is one from the Random House Dictionary:
The capability of the body of distributing inhaled oxygen to muscle tissue during increased physical effort.

Ok, but what does that really mean to you and I? Doesn’t everyone have the capability of doing that? I mean it seems to be that definition is missing one or two details but maybe it’s just me.
Here is another definition from Stedman’s Medical Dictionary:
The state or condition of being physically sound and healthy, especially as the result of exercise and proper nutrition.
So that one is a little better but it still doesn’t say much about what we can really do, or what we should look like, or how we should perform. And it does nothing to tell us what physically sound looks like.

I once heard it said that Michelangelo’s statue of “David” was the perfect representation of the male form. The neck, the biceps and the calves are all the same size. The body is perfectly formed. But was he fit? I mean he might look good naked but was he really fit? You see, how I look does not say a thing about my level of fitness. The physical, corporeal shapes are not an indicator of fitness.

So…let’s range a little farther afield for our definition of fitness and go back centuries, maybe even millennia. The time before television, processed food and globo-gyms; the time before the industrial revolution, the invention of machinery to ease our labors, and the idea that fat equals prosperity; maybe even as far back as when your life depended on your fitness.

When we look that far back…all that way when our very lives and the lives of our families, and the people around us depended on our fitness…a definition begins to take shape. That person had to be able to move and move every day to find food whether through foraging or hunting. That human had to be able run really really fast sometimes…whether it be running to catch dinner or running to escape being dinner you better be fast or be gone. She had to move heavy stuff over a distance to create shelter or haul the days catch home. He needed to be able to face any task and get it done. There was no training manual, no warm up period, no do-overs. There was a task and it needed to be finished. This person lived in a state of alertness and readiness. This person also rested and waited sometimes. This human ate the food he could find, forage and hunt. She lived in a harmony with the earth, the seasons and the world around her.

Obviously most of that is not true today. I don’t worry about running from a bear on my way to the studio. I can buy what I need to eat at the grocery store and in this day and age its always in season. Yet it is this level of fitness I am programmed for…the leave that allows me the ability to run fast and hard; to keep moving for long periods of time if necessary; to move heavy stuff over a distance and do it quickly; to be agile, flexible, and powerful.

You are not going to get this way reading a magazine on the treadmill for 45 minutes every other day. You are not going to get this way eating crap (calorie rich and pathetic) food. You are not going to get this way lifting weight in a single plane of movement the same way every day for weeks on end. By the way those machines were developed for the injured, elderly and deconditioned…so if you are not in one of those categories you should be doing something else.

So how fit are you really? Can you still sprint? You used to you know…way back when. You used to climb trees and play on the monkey bars. You used to learn new sports and new games and created new ways to move and play. Why not now? Who says you can’t? It’s just your mind telling you it isn’t possible. Well that and your body that you have abused through non-use and abuse over these last few years.

Are you going to give up on living to your full physical potential? Or are you going to suck it up and start looking at your fitness through the reality lens? No matter how old you are, no matter how infirm you feel, no matter how many extra pounds you are carrying around for how long you can do better than what you are doing. One thing is certain though…if you don’t start it is not going to get any better. It is only going to get worse and worse and worse.

Get fit. Really and honestly fit. No kidding yourself any longer…Your life (and the quality of your life) depends on your fitness.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Let Them Eat Cake

2011-04-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Let Them Eat Cake

There is an ancient Chinese proverb (or curse) that says something like: “May you live in interesting times.” Fortunately or unfortunately, we are living in interesting times. This may be a curse or a blessing depending on your attitude and which side of the fence you are sitting on.

Danger and opportunity often go together. Turbulence creates change and uncertainty and in that space there is the chance for great gain and great loss. It all depends on what you do with it. Do you pull into your shell and hide or do you strike boldly brimming with confidence and moving forward with an attitude of success?

All that being said…the title today is a reference to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France right before the French Revolution…when told the peasants had no bread she is reported to have said…”Let them eat cake.” I imagine the years before, during and after the French Revolution were interesting times.

What if the years we are living in right now are the years before the next revolution? What if this time is the incubation of an explosive new era in our history? What if the shifts and changes we are experiencing both here and globally portend a massive transformation in how we humans live here on this planet?

If you were living in France in the years before the revolution what would you have done? Would you have fled the country? Where would you invest your money? What would you counsel your children to do? What would you tell your aging parents to do? What would you do?

We no longer live in the same world that existed when I was a child. That much should be obvious to all of us. Really the changes are coming faster and faster. Knowledge is doubling faster and faster. Technology is running far ahead of our ability to absorb it. The rules that most of us grew up following are no longer applicable…study hard, go to college, get a good job, raise a family, put money away for retirement, retire, live off your retirement, die. Invest in real estate…they aren’t making any more of it and it never loses value. No, my friends the rules have and are changing as we speak.

What are we going to do when we don’t know the rules anymore? I suspect we are all going to make up new rules, and the day of an overriding group of “rules” is gone. The prize is going to go to those people who are willing to strike quickly, shift their focus on the fly, and think way outside any currently existing boxes.

So what to do about the Marie Antoinette’s of our world? The leaders who think the rest of us should just suck it up and work harder for whatever crumbs they allow us to find? Politicians who think of my purse and yours as a fatted cow ready for their taking? Maybe it’s time we, metaphorically speaking, lopped off their heads. Maybe we should get involved in our communities on the most basic level.

The only power politicians have is the power we give them. When you wake up from a bad dream you might be short of breath and scared. But slowly you realize the dream is not real in this conscious world. It is time to wake up from the dream. It is time to wake up and take back our power. Turn to your neighbor and start taking interest in them. Look over at the park and start taking care of it yourself instead of letting some politicians decide when the lawn gets mowed, the trash taken out, or the bathrooms cleaned.

We live in this world; our children will live in it after you and I are gone. If we live now like there is no tomorrow, someday we might actually be right. It is past time for us to stand up and start taking back our power and our rights as humans…the right to raise our children to be healthy and happy, the right to live in a world that sustains us, the right to choose what our happiness is going to look like, the right to pass on to our progeny a world that will sustain them as well. After all we are only borrowing it from future generations.

It is not OK for our governments to take from us in the form of regulations and taxes. And it is not OK for us to take from governments some weird sense of entitlement that allows them to take care of us at every turn. You are a living breathing powerful human, capable of taking control of your life, helping your neighbors and promoting peace in your own life. You have this ability; it is innate in your humanity. Quit giving up your power because you are too lazy or too unfeeling or too something. Get it back by getting involved. Start speaking your mind, you will be surprised who agrees with you. After all, if you don’t stand for something, you will stand for anything.

It is time for us to forge a new life, a new way of being in the world. For far too many years we have allowed things to pull us apart into various factions. It is time to get back to the most basic units…family, the street you live on, and the town you live in. This is where you can make an impact. This is where you can see, feel and taste the work you are putting into building the life you want to enjoy. And it is the place your children can reap the benefits of your efforts.

Start a garden and share the bounty. Rent a movie and invite your friends. Cook dinner for someone. Turn off the TV and talk to the other people in the house. Look around and do something that will shift something in the world you live in, the one you see every day. Or not…pull your head into your shell and hope when you stick your neck out again there isn’t someone waiting to lop your head off.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Opening Night, Closing Day

2011-04-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Opening Night, Closing Day

Remember how it easy it was to be excited on the first day of school? Or the first game of the season? Your first date? Wondering if the experience is going to be everything you hoped for? What if you approached every day with the attitude that today is opening day? Today is the day that the first impression gets made. Every phone call, every interaction, every word is new and fresh. In many ways this is true even with people we see every day.

Why can’t I wake up every morning and see the world with fresh eyes? What if I got up this morning just like a small child and saw everything like I had never seen it before in my whole life? Wouldn’t the world be an amazing place?

What if when I looked upon you, I saw you just as I did for the very first time? Full of wonder and inquiry, thirsting to know who you would be and what we might create together? And what if you looked at me with the same eyes…inquiring, adoring, wondering?

But let’s be honest, it is very, very difficult to keep those fresh eyes. It is hard to face the 100th or the 1,000th day with the same opening night jitters and anticipation as we did on day one. As a matter of fact it may be impossible.

And when I look upon you after 3 or 6 or 16 years I see so many days and nights, ups and downs, and good and bad moments that my vision is clouded by my perceptions. It is so hard to see with fresh eyes every day, to think with pure open mind, to feel purely without judgment, that it may be close to impossible.

So maybe I need to look on it from the other side…If it is too hard to act like every night is opening night maybe it is possible to view it like it was the last day.

Many years ago I asked one of my instructors (SahBumNim Asimo) what he did to keep his classes exciting and how he stayed so engaged after all the years of teaching. His answer was simple…”I teach every class like it was the last class I was every going to teach. As if I would never see these students again.” I have to admit I don’t always hit this mark. I would like to but I don’t always.

One day will be our last. I don’t know when but there will come a day that will be my last. What if that day was today? What if this was going to be the day that you weren’t going to wake from? Did you look at today, at the people around you, like you might never see them again? Did you treat them, the world around you like it might be the last memory of you they would ever have? Why not?

This concept…the one where we realize that today is the last day of our lives is not new. Yet almost none of us really live that way. How would I live, how would I speak, what would I say, where would I go if this was my last day? How do you want to be remembered if this was your last day?

The following quotation from a classic commencement address from Steve Jobs offers an idea:
When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

There is no reason not to follow your heart. There is no reason not to be the person you want to be. There is no reason not to live on purpose. There is no reason not to live consciously and with intent.

If this was an easy thing everyone would be doing it. Unfortunately many people don’t know what they don’t know. If you are reading this that is no longer true for you. You now know. You now have no excuse for not getting out there and starting. So pick one…Opening Night? Or Closing Day? Maybe both…get excited and antsy like Opening Night, be intent on leaving a legacy like Closing Day!

Do the work it is going to take to get to that point of living a life on purpose, with conscious intent. Find your passion and follow it every day. Do not let the world hammer you into a life of quiet desperation, a life of terminal normality. Act boldly. Act as if this were the first night of the performance that is your life. Act as if this were the last performance you will ever give.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The Willl Garden

2011-04-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…The Will Garden

The other evening I had the privilege of listening to an icon of business speak. Stuart Ochiltree, former CEO of Avon products and the man who brought Avon from 700 million in sales to 4.5 billion in sales, was here in Reno to speak to a group of Univera associates (of which I am one). Mr. Ochiltree is the current president of Univera. Although he dispensed many nuggets of wisdom during his talks there was one in particular that stuck out for me. As a matter of fact I wrote it down! What he said was this: “Will is probably the most factor in achieving your goals.”

Last week we talked about goals and setting them and making a plan and then following it up. Most of us are familiar with these steps. It really is simple and easy. There is no big secret. Yet many of us don’t achieve our goals. We might start but there is no will to continue. It is too easy to let those goals go and stop far short of our objective.

This seems to be what happens far too often with dieting, quitting smoking, or any number of other things we might try to do. “I’m going to lose these 30 pounds! I just signed up for this new diet plan and all I have to do is eat this special mixture of seeds, nuts, and twigs for the next 30 days and this really cool drink and I will be back into my skinny jeans next month!” So away you go…got the goal, got the reward, got the plan, got the decision and the motivation. About 10 days into the whole thing, you are doing pretty well, the weight has begun to drop and you are feeling good. Then the dreaded banquet dinner comes up with all your favorite foods and you just can’t resist, or its opening night of the baseball season and the whole team is going out for pizza and beer. Your resolve falters and you fall. And the next day you just can’t get back on the plan and you let it go. Will

Or you are going to start exercising so you join the gym and hire a trainer for a few sessions. After the first session you hurt. And the day after you hurt worse. Intellectually you know this is to be expected but dang…it hurts bad. Maybe you should take the next session off. Just until you feel better, then you will be right back in it. Of course the next day isn’t your day. By the third day, well the memory of the pain is still fresh so you find several other things to do that preclude you going back to the torture chamb…I mean gym. Pretty soon your fitness goals become fitness dreams and they get put up on the shelf next to some of your other goals that never got done. Will

What if you just showed up? What if you just got back on the diet one more day? So you blew it. So maybe you won’t lose 30 pounds. Maybe it will only be 20 pounds. Are you going to beat yourself up for only making 2/3rds of the goal? How many pounds will you lose if you quit 10 days into the deal? None? Quitting is a habit, so is winning, and so is finishing what you start. Perseverance is a trait to be cultivated. Will

Your life, in many ways, is like a garden. There are traits you want to develop and grow, things to be cultivated, and other things to discard, pull out, and get rid of. If you learn to quit you will quit. If you learn to finish you will finish. It becomes part of what your garden, what your life looks like every day. When finishing becomes an expectation your will no longer needs to be the power behind the effort. I expect to finish, I don’t struggle. I might have to suck it up down deep and find the part of me that really wants to finish but I KNOW I will finish.

Hitting your goals is similar. I expect to hit my goals. Part of that expectation knows I am going to do what needs to be done. I expect I will harvest all the bounty from my garden. I expect my goals to be reached. I will do what I will need to do to reach those goals. It’s a habit like watering the garden or pulling weeds.

Will or mental toughness is a very hard thing to teach. How do I teach you that there is always more you can do? How do I instill in you the drive to reach down and do one more repetition, or one more sprint, or one more jump? How can I inspire you to practice just a little longer or harder? What makes one player stay after practice and shoot 100 free throws long after everyone else has gone home? Is it that some people just have it and some don’t? Is it that some people have the drive, the motivation, the will to succeed and the rest of are doomed to always just coming up short?

Here’s the answer…it’s a practice. It is something you do day in and day out. You decide to shoot those free throws and you aren’t going to let anything get in the way. Rain or shine, sickness or health, whether you feel like it or not, you go out and do it. You ask more of yourself than I do. You give more of yourself. It becomes a habit, something you do, the way you are. And when the going gets tough you already know you can do the hard, the tough things since you have developed the habit of seeing those things through day in and day out.

If your life is like a garden what are you cultivating? What are you growing…indolence, mediocrity, and terminal normality? Wouldn’t you rather have excellence, abundance and success? Grow your will, cultivate your mental toughness, and look to creating the life you deserve by making it a practice…just like anything else…Will is a practice. So get out there and practice.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Shift Happens (or not)

2011-04-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Shift Happens (or not)

OK…big confession here…I am probably the worst at taking my own advice. It’s real easy to give you advice…eat this, don’t eat that…set goals and do it this way…thinks this way or that…try this, look at that. You should do this because blah, blah, blah. Is that what you hear when you talk to yourself? Blah, blah, blah? Remember when you were getting the lecture from dad? Blah, blah, blah. Maybe your boss yesterday…blah, blah, blah.

Maybe when you read this, you might think…wow that’s a really good idea but then it disappears into the background hum of your everyday life. The get up and get out the door, grab your coffee, feed the kids and the dogs and get yourself to work day to day things. And those good or even great ideas fade away and go to dust.

I do the same thing…I have a great idea…I should write about that…that would make a great Sunday Story but I don’t write it down. Poof it’s gone. Never seems to come back. And every time it happens I say I am going to write it down next time and yet I never seem to do it.

At what point do we make the shift? At what point does the pain of staying in our pain, of maintaining the status quo become less than the pain of changing. Because change is hard. Well, maybe not hard. Not hard like carrying 5 gallons of water 3 miles so your family can drink, cook and bathe hard but uncomfortable hard. Change is something we humans are loathe to do, even when we know that change is the right thing to do.

How many people do we know that say…I should eat better…I should quit smoking…I should exercise more...I need to go back to school? And when we see them again 3 or 6 months later we hear the same lament, the same wishing and dreaming. And nothing changes nothing gets done.

What is it going to take to get you to do the things you already know that you need to do? What is going to be the push? What is going to be the impetus, the motivator, the kick in the pants that gets you moving in the direction you know you need to move to?

Sometimes we get an external wake up call. The doctor calls with some very bad news…your test results came in and we need to talk. You wake up in the hospital with tubes and stuff hanging out of your body. You wake up in jail. You are involved in a very bad car accident. All of these things can be a clarion call, a blaring trumpet’s ring for you to wake up, for you to get moving in a different direction. At that point the reality of the pain and suffering you are causing yourself weighs in and you decide to shift the scale.

So how do you start shifting, changing, metamorphosing before you get some really bad news? How do we start listening to what the universe is telling us before it screams so loud we can’t ignore us?
First you decide to change. You make the really big decision to make a shift, to become something new.
Second you set the goal and you write it down. IF you don’t write it down it isn’t real yet. It only exists in your head and we all know how easy it is to lose things up there. Write your goals down on paper using a pen. Then type them up if you want. Take it even further and draw pictures or create a vision board of what it is you setting your sights on.
You make it measurable…I will weigh 158 pounds by May 1st. You have to be able to measure it to manage it. If you can’t figure out how to measure your progress, how will you know when you reach your target? If I don’t have a destination in mind for my trip I will never know when I get where I am going.
You make sure it is doable…don’t try to lose 100 pounds in 30 days, or be marathon ready in 45 days, or drop your cholesterol down 50 points in two weeks. Some things are not doable based on the reality of the world we live in. Some things are a physical impossibility. So set goals that are doable.
Third you create a plan. A road map, an instruction book to follow and refer back to. Thomas Edison did not try 1000 identical ways to invent the light bulb. He had a goal and he tracked the results. He stayed with the process until the goal was achieved.
Fourth you enlist the help and support of your friends and compatriots. Sometimes we over look this important step. You can also enlist the help of the people who are not always in your corner. You know the ones I am talking about…the people who always say…”you’ll never be able to do that.” Those groups of people who always seem to bring you back down and seem to have some sort of stake in seeing you maintain your status quo. The ones for whom your change is scary…maybe because if you do it then they might have to do it as well. Those people can help motivate and keep you on task because you really don’t want to hear their jeers.
Lastly and most importantly…take the first step. Get started. Don’t research it to death. You don’t need to know everything you just need to know enough to take the first step. Started is more than ½ done. Don’t be a victim of paralysis by analysis.

You know what you need to do. You are powerful beyond measure. You just need to decide to embrace the powerful pain of change. Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly you too get to create something else with your life. The beauty of the thing is that you are the captain of your own destiny; your life is a ship whose destination is in your hands. So where are you going to go? What are you going to become?

For me I am going to start taking my own advice. The same advice and counsel I give here and to my clients. Shift Happens.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Feel Good Friday...The Fukushima 50

2011-04-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

Feel Good Friday…The Fukushima 50

Everyday people doing extraordinary things. Heroic. Brave. Giving their lives so others, thousands and thousands, maybe even you and I might live without fear of radioactive contamination. Men and women who are anonymous, who are just doing their duty, doing what may not only be the right thing but may also be the last thing they do.

This news story gives us a brief glimpse into yet another side of the Japanese tragedy. How different is this society? There has been no looting, no conflicts, just a get down to it and get it done attitude. I love to see the resilience and grandeur that is the human spirit. Something to be learned here:

http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=2297

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Myths and Legends

2011-03-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…Myths and Legends

Life throws each one of us the twists and turns that we need. Why do I need some of these things…the deaths, the losses, the heartbreaks, the economic disasters, the divorces, the pain and suffering and angst that occur? I mean come on who really needs these things? The stress of modern life is enough…the pollution, the degraded food supply, the economic uncertainties, the natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes), the un-natural disasters (nuclear plants), revolutions, and civil wars.

Maybe you are thinking it would be better to have lived a few thousand years ago when your primary worries would have been starvation or predation…no food or ending up being food. Your existence would revolve around getting enough food to live and making sure your clan of people was protected against the predators of the world.

Maybe we need them to show us the contrast between those not so good things and the really good things…the births, the love, the compassion, the successes, the joy and happiness. Maybe we need those things to test us in some way…to provide a trial to see how we might grow, to see who we really are, what we are made of, if you will.

It is entirely possible that all of those things are just that…a sort of cosmic test to see where we are on the spectrum of growth, a way to find out if we are ready to move on or if we are still stuck on some point. I am reminded of the Churchill quote…”Success is not final, Failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.” Did you give up? Did you allow the event to change you for the worse? Did it get the better of you? For how long? Did it knock you off your center?

When these things happen…whatever these things are we will assign meaning to them. When we are young we make them mean things about us…after all, a child’s world is self centered and singular…it really is all about them. There is no room for any other interpretation. Then we spend the next set of years living through that interpretation, that meaning. Something happens and the child in me makes it mean that I am not worthy of love, I am not good enough, I am not tough enough. And then when I am adult I am still living out those meanings that a 5 or 10 or 15 year old assigned to that event.

Think back through your life. What happened? What are the significant events in your life? What do you remember? Can you pick out, without meaning, the facts of event? What actually happened? What was said or done….just the facts. What did you make it mean? How has that colored all the decisions you have made since?
When I was in about the 6th grade I got in a fight. Hard to believe, I know. It wasn’t much of a fight, really. One day after school a former friend of mine was hanging around with this other kid and this kid said something to me (I don’t remember what) and I answered back with a smart aleck reply (again, I don’t remember what). He punched me in the nose. I got blood on my favorite shirt. When I got home that day I hid the shirt in the laundry basket (brilliant strategy, I know). My mother found the shirt (big surprise!) and I had to explain why I had blood all over my shirt. I told my father the this kid, Eric Whitehead, punched me in the nose after I said what I said and my father said, “ Why would you fight with that kid. He’s the toughest kid in school.” (my father was a teacher and had a pretty good handle on the who’s who) At least that is what I heard him say. Those are the facts as I recall them these many years later.

So what did I make it mean? What interpretation did I assign to that momentous event? Well, what I heard was that I was not tough enough. I was not strong enough. I was not physically able to take on this challenge. That is the meaning I assigned those events and those words. I lived many years out of that paradigm. I made decisions to be tougher, stronger, bigger, badder, meaner than the next guy.

And then I realized the futility of those meanings. I decided to give those events, those facts a different meaning. And now when I think back and hear what I hear that day I find it to mean that I am strong. I took on the toughest kid in school. I may have gotten punched for my words but I didn’t back down from them and took one on the nose for the trouble. I am tough. I am strong. I stand up for myself.

Today I live out of that empowering paradigm. Not the disempowering one. Where are you living out of a disempowering conversation with yourself? Why? Why not make those events mean something else? Why not create a reality that serves you and creates the world and the life you want to live. Do you really want to spend the next 40 or 50 years in some story that isn’t true? Some story that doesn’t serve you and the greatness you could be?

Just imagine if you could catch these stories early in your life and assign them the kind of meaning that lifts and elevates your life and self confidence. We live in a culture that seems to celebrate the negative and the worst of the world. We watch things that tear people down and make them less than they were before. How can we help but not tear ourselves down. What if we assigned the highest and best meaning to those twists and turns of life? What if we gave ourselves the benefit of the doubt?

You are strong.
You are good.
You are worthy.
You are wealthy.
The world is abundant.
There is enough for everyone…enough love, enough joy, enough happiness, enough money, enough life.

Make your life mean what you want it to mean…not what some 6th grader thought it should mean. Do you really think an 11 year old should be making decisions for you now? Really? Get back there and do the work it is going to take to re-interpret, to re-tell those stories in ways that make you a hero.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...X Marks the Spot

2011-03-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sunday Story…X Marks the Spot

Every great pirate story has a treasure map. And on that map X marks the spot. X is where the treasure lies. X is where all the trails and travails will lead. You might have to fight your way to it but X is the fulfillment of the dream, the destination of the journey.

SO…what’s your X? What will it take to get to X? Do you even know where X might be? Have you lost your map? Are stuck in the part of the journey in a dead-end… you know, the end of the maze where there is no cheese but you can smell the cheese, you just can’t find it?

Way too many of us have lost sight of X. We have stopped looking for the treasure, stopped searching the world high and low for the X that will give us what we really want. Maybe you don’t think X is really out there anymore. Maybe you don’t believe the effort is worth X anymore. Maybe you believe your map is flawed…it’s certainly possible, after all, in many pirate stories the first map is a decoy, the one that isn’t real. Maybe X just doesn’t motivate you anymore and you really should be looking for Y or Z.

Why aren’t you looking for your X? Scared? Tired? Numb? What happened? What caused you to give up on the treasure map? Were there too many dead-ends, too many twists and turns, or did you just get sidetracked and forgot where you put the map? And what is it going to take to get back on the search? Because obviously just having X is not enough. And not having X is not enough. Because if either of those things were true you would be tearing up the world to get to X and if you didn’t have the map you would be tearing up the world to find the map.

And this is the real rub. What is your motivation for looking for X? Why do you even want to? It’s my guess that you stopped looking for X because you lost your motivation to get X. That whatever X is for you isn’t enough in and of itself…it rarely is by the way. You see…the treasure, the pot of gold, the big reward isn’t really why you go through all the trials and work to find X. No it is something else entirely.

Think about this for a moment or two…why did Captain Ahab chase the white whale across the 7 seas? It wasn’t because he wanted a whale sandwich. Why did Michael Jordan practice so much to become the basket ball player he became. Do you really think it was just for the multi-million dollar contracts? Why did Sir Edmund Hillary climb Mt. Everest? How about Magellan and circumnavigating the globe? Just for money? Just for the riches that might come their way?

Motivation rarely comes in the form of extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards are the things I get for doing something that someone else gives me, like a good grade or a paycheck. I exchange a certain amount of my time for a certain amount of money. Oh boy. I get good grades in school so I can get into a better school, so I can get a better job, so I can exchange less time for more money. Oh boy. Sign me up for that one! Yet we do this all the time. And we eventually begin to believe that those extrinsic rewards are the X on the treasure map. Because if we don’t really believe that we are going to have a serious problem. We might have to figure out what X really is. And why we want to go out and get it.

Motivation arises from intrinsic rewards. What I am going to get for doing something needs to reside in me. It needs to feed the inner fires inside of me. Have you ever wondered why one person does a menial job, say sweeping floors, just well enough to not get fired and the next person is the most outstanding floor sweeper ever? They both get paid the same? The best floor sweeper is working for an intrinsic reward. I am reminded of the story of the 3 stone masons…when asked what he was building the first stone mason said, “A wall.” The second stone mason replied, “I am building a building.” And the third stone mason said proudly, “I am building a cathedral that will edify God and inspire people to grand works.” Who do you think is working for his X?

What’s your motivation? Are you building a wall for a paycheck? Or are you building a cathedral that will have lasting impact on your life and the lives that will come after you? Because X really isn’t enough is it? Unless X is the legacy you will leave. Unless X is the intrinsic reward that will create the life you were meant to lead. You see X might mark the spot but it is the journey to X that creates the life that inspires the rest of us. X might be just a building…but a cathedral and what it took to create that cathedral, not just the bricks and mortar, but the spirit and the effort and the soul of the creators that has us sing praises.

Find your treasure map and your X. What inspires you to build a cathedral instead of a wall? What is it going to take to get you back on the trail? What journey will inspire you to get on the search, to get back to building a life of inspiration and legacy?

X might mark the spot but it is the journey that makes finding X worth the work!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Being Selfish

2011-03-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Being Selfish

As I sit here writing this week’s story I am struck by how much I really don’t want to be here. It feels like spring outside…the sun has been shining all day and the temperature has been most pleasant all day. A great day to be outside and soaking it all in.

It was nice enough this morning at 7AM to run in sunglasses, shorts and a t-shirt. A nice swift 4.25 mile run, the sun shining on my face, the world still quiet. As many of you regular readers know, running has been a thing of the past for me. Knee surgery 2 years ago and another injury last summer have prevented me from getting out and really running any distance at all. But this morning I was fast and pain free…a true delight.

You might ask yourself why I would ask another injury running when it is not necessary for my fitness. Running at this point will not increase my cardio vascular fitness, especially long distance running. And given the fact that something like 65% of all runners will experience an injury this year, why would anyone want to do it?

Over the last 2 years I have tried products and supplements to help with the knee pain. I have found a couple to work very well (they are from Univera...call me for the details!). And I have done joint mobility exercises to free up the synovial fluid and increase the range of motion in the joints (Thanks Adam!). And I have studied different bio-mechanical solutions to improve and better my running gait. So I have gone out of my way to get back on the road.

Today it all paid off. I ran virtually pain-free on mostly pavement. I felt good and fast (under 36 minutes for 4.25 miles). Blood flowed, oxygen raced, the knees worked precisely and all was well in the world. But yet you may ask…Why? Why do all that work over all that time just to run?

I was never a huge runner before in my life. In high school I ran middle distance. It wasn’t until I hit about 49 and started the UBBT (http://tomcallos.ning.com/profiles/blog/list ) that I even began to run. And I found a freedom that never existed before. It wasn’t about being fast or slow. It wasn’t about how far or the pace or the heart rate. It was about finding a unity with the world. It was about finding a sense of one-ness with the world around me, even when just running around the neighborhood. Eventually I ran longer and faster (up to some 50 mile races!). It is still about freedom, and unity, and one-ness. It is also about working on me physically and mentally to get back to something that gives that sense of peace and calm.

Also during the UBBT 3 test I did 500,000 pushups over 22 months. A truly crazy thing when I look back on it. ½ a million pushups is a lot of pushups. It seemed I was doing nothing but pushups all the time. I would drop and do them all the time and just about anywhere. Again why? It was way past what was expected of me. It was actually overtraining my shoulder and not exactly good for them. So what was the point?

And here is the point of this week’s chapter…what do doing ½ million pushups, sitting down and writing this on a beautiful spring afternoon, and doing 2 years of rehab on my knees (just to risk injury again) all has to do with each other? It is a question of self discipline and an issue of self-integrity.

I have been writing this weekly story for almost 3 years now. I am committed to doing it, rain or shine, good or bad, sick or well. I never promised any of you I would do it. I promised myself I would do it and if I can’t keep my promises to myself, well I really can’t be counted on in very many other places can I? Plus, among the many things I am is a writer. And writers write. It really is that simple sometimes. So here I sit.

Along the path of my UBBT 3 journey I started doing a lot of pushups (we were tasked to something like 52,000). Along that road I realized I did 1000 a day for 50 days (my birthday that year). 50 days became 100 and then something like 136 days before I slipped up. At that point I realized that if I just kept up a certain number every day I could hit something amazing like 500,000. It seemed like a cool number at the time. But again along the way things shifted and it became an exercise in self discipline. There were many times I wanted to quit, when I would drop to ground and just not want to push up. But I went ahead anyway. My will was stronger than my won’t.

Doing the work on my knees has been hard and painful. Yet the memory of that sense of freedom, unity, and one-ness was so strong as to keep me forging ahead looking for a way through. The desire to get back there, to feel the world rolling under my feet won out over any temporary pain, over any thoughts of not working it out.

Self Discipline. Self Integrity. These things are integral to who you are being in the world. Are you willing to do what you said you were going to do, even if you said it only to yourself? Are you going to do what needs to be done, even in the face of not wanting to do it, even in the face of pain, or frustration or rejection, or something else? Are you going to do it when it needs to be done simply because YOU said it would be done?

Lots of things are in your way. Some small things, some big things, some really important things, I am sure. But NONE of them are more important that your self integrity…none of them are more important that living into your self discipline. Need to change your diet? Need to change some habits? Need to start living into your potential? Better check your self discipline and self integrity. Then get going. It needs doing now and you are the only one to get it done.

Enjoy!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Positive and Realistic

2011-03-05T17:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Positive and Realistic

I believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe that if I can conceive it and believe it I can achieve it. I believe the most powerful tool on earth is the human mind. I believe that a right attitude will serve me better and longer than any amount of money or other success. I live a life of abundance, prosperity and wealth. I believe this to be true and my bank balance is not part of that equation.

That being said, I also believe in being realistic. It does not serve me to ignore the economic realities around me. The power company gets paid or they shut my power off. The grocer will not let me walk out without paying for my goods. The reality of the world says that there are certain things that have to get done for things in my life and yours to run smoothly. If I don’t do my laundry, if I don’t bathe regularly there are consequences for those actions (or inactions).

I refuse to live in a world ruled by scarcity, lack and poverty. This is an attitude. A decision I get to make about how I view the world. The nature of the decision allows me to see the world in a particular light. If my attitude were different I would see the world in a different light. And sometimes the world serves me a challenge to my attitude. This is part of the reality check, part of the test to see if my attitude is real or just something I change like my socks.

So how are we going to balance being positive and realistic? Because sometime the reality is that there is more month than money and that problem can get pretty old pretty fast. Sometimes the reality is that my health is not as vibrant or as optimum as I would like it to be. Sometimes it looks like life is blowing a big raspberry my way. How can you possibly be positive in the face of the myriad of challenges lefe kicks up our way? Isn’t just a bit unrealistic?

We have a principle we teach at Relentless Martial Arts called indomitable spirit. Basically it means to face your fear and move ahead. It means that I can lose the battle and continue to fight the war. That I may be down but I am not out. It means that I am measured not by how often I get knocked down but by how often I get up. It means that the only person who can determine my fate is me. And my fate is controlled by my attitude.

When faced with uncertain circumstances or, worse yet, a really bad situation that appears to be beyond my control how can I possibly control my attitude? Why not just go back to bed, give up and call it a day. Or, just as bad, walk through life beaten and defeated waiting for death to take me out of my misery? Why even bother to have a positive attitude, to try and find the “silver lining” in those bad situations. It is so much easier to just give up and wallow in your own mediocrity and pity.
Really? You were brought to life to be beaten? You were placed in this life to be the whipping child for all the bad situations that could occur? Do you really believe that? How is it that you got picked? Just dumb luck…after if it wasn’t for bad luck you wouldn’t have any luck at all, right?

You are child of the divine. You were put here to inspire, to create, to become something great. You are here to be the highest and best you can be. Start believing that. Start saying that to yourself. Start looking in the mirror and telling yourself;” I am a child of the divine and the divine does not make mistakes. I can find the silver lining in every cloud. It is my attitude that will lift everyone around me.”

Once I believe that I can find the good in the bad, that I can create a positivity out of a negativity then I can go to work to do just that. I can look at the situation realistically and start creating solutions. I can start making decisions from a proactive place rather than a reactive place. I can formulate a plan from a place of positivity and prosperity and abundance using my highest and best faculties.

We all get down (yes, even me). We all feel from time to time the world is sitting on our shoulder and we are being crushed under the weight of it. That the odds are stacked against us and there is little or nothing we can do. The question is …”how long are you going to stay down?” How long are you going to wallow around in a swamp of self pity? You are going to get hit; you are going to get knocked down. We all do. It is part of the human condition. The question is whether or not you are going to keep moving forward, whether you are going to get back up and go again. Are you going to make a new plan or keep trying the same old one that hasn’t worked yet?

Too many people have decided to stay down, to give up the fight. Or to just plod along doing the bare minimum to get by and then kill themselves slowly with mind and body and soul numbing activities. Go ahead and make a decision to be different. Go ahead and look in the mirror and say something good to yourself about yourself. Then go out of the bathroom and say something nice to someone else. You will be glad you did.

Oh, and re-read the poem at the beginning of this note…there is no place for self pity in your life. It isn’t natural and it doesn’t serve you.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The Big Mistake

2011-02-26T12:30:00.001-08:00

Sunday Story…The Big Mistake

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” Miles Davis

For those of you who do not know, Miles Davis was a very famous jazz trumpeter who is considered to be one of the major influences in jazz music. So how can he say that there are no mistakes? After all even jazz music has some rules; there are the “right” notes to be played even if you are improvising the whole thing.

Your life is an improvisation. Has it ever really gone exactly as you planned? Chance meetings, decisions made, decisions not made, people met, have all happened and your life was changed. Sometimes life changed a lot sometimes by just a little. But you know just a one degree shift in the steering wheel will send you to a whole new destination after 3000 miles. But still aren’t there some mistakes? Aren’t there some things that we can categorically say…ooops that was a mistake?

The answer lies in your attitude. If you want to be judging, blaming, and criticizing, then yes, there are mistakes. You see, those things that we would Judge as mistakes lie in the judgment not in the mistakes themselves. Just as a number is not good or bad; decisions and things done are just that…decisions and things done. They are neither good nor bad. We can say that the decision fits into our world view, that the decision is going to move along to the destination we seek on the road we have chosen to travel but that in and of itself does not make it good or bad.

An attitude that says what can I learn from the decision, what is the message that this activity has given me is far from the blame game. What if there were no mistakes? What if there was no good or bad judgment on what notes you played? What if every note you played was the perfect one? Maybe the notes didn’t exactly fit into the piece you were playing at the time. Maybe the notes sounded different or discordant but what if they weren’t really mistakes but lessons in what didn’t work in that moment.

If Thomas Edison said to himself…”well there is this is another mistake that one must be about number 512.” Do you think he would have continued to try to create a bulb that would create electric light? I know after about 500 mistakes I would have been tempted to throw in the towel. I can imagine, however, that Edison said something like…”wow, there is another way it doesn’t work. I must be getting closer.” With that attitude I could keep on going, I could strengthen my resolve and try again.

This ability to choose your attitude is one of the greatest freedoms that can never be taken from you. No matter what someone does to my body I get to choose the story, I get to choose the attitude to take from it. No matter what you try to do to my mind or spirit I get to choose how I am going to react to it. This is the one freedom that can never be taken from me. Lock me up and throw away the key. Do terrible horrible things to me. Try to imprison my body mind and spirit. I still get to choose the story, the attitude I will take from those things.

Just like I get to choose the attitude I take from the other things that happen in my life. Some of those things may be horrible…cancer, car accidents, financial hardship, or worse. Some of those things may be just mildly irritating…a bad grade, losing a parking space, getting called a name, or the like. Big or small if we take the attitude that they are not mistakes but learning experiences our attitude will not fail us.

Every time I get on the mat to practice/play Brazilian jiu-jitsu I know I may have to “tap-out”. I could look at this as a loss. That some other person got the better of me...that I was not good enough, not knowledgeable enough or not “man” enough. If that was my attitude, how long do you think I would or could continue to train? I mean how long will you beat yourself up on top of someone else beating you up to continue every day? My guess is not long. Certainly not long enough to get good enough to rarely “tap-out”. Instead my attitude is that every “tap” is another lesson…a lesson in what is working and not working...a lesson in what to do and what not to do…another stepping stone on the path to the destination. Without that attitude I would have to quit.

Do you fear to try because you might be wrong, you might make a mistake? It would be time to get over that fear. You are not perfect and neither am I. We are going to hit a note that just didn’t work in the piece we are playing; we are going to take a path that pulls us off our destination for some period. These things are bound to happen. Are you going to beat yourself up and berate and belittle yourself for doing them? Or are you going to look at those things and say…”hmmm that was interesting. What is the lesson in that? What is the learning I can take away from that adventure?”

Maybe if I try for perfection I will hit excellence. Maybe if I swing at the ball I will hit it eventually. If I never take the shot, I will a never make the goal. If I am so afraid to make a mistake I will have no hope of ever getting it right because I will never even attempt it. Your attitude determines how you view these things. What are you telling yourself about your life and your trajectory right now? What would you really like to tell yourself?

Get out there and play the piece of music that is your life. Learn something from it and then play it again. Repeat. Repeat and repeat. There is no getting it right because there is no right or wrong. There is just getting out and doing it. So go ahead…Just Do It.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...The Edge

2011-02-19T17:49:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…The Edge

“Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” Walsch

Living at the edge of your comfort zone. This is not the edge of the couch. This is the edge of your everyday, humdrum, mediocre average existence. It is different for all of us. Maybe yours is turning off the television once a week. If that has you feeling wild and crazy then go for it. No matter where the edge is for you your life starts at that edge.

Why would you want to bother? Why would you want to live a life past the edge of that comfort zone? After all it’s comfortable here. It’s easy and simple and I don’t have to do too much to maintain everything as it should be. There is no stress, no hard work to do all I have to do is the same thing I always to and I get pretty much the same thing I have always gotten. No big deal, right?

Except for one small detail…you aren’t growing. You aren’t really challenging yourself in any area. Maybe you are working out but you just go through the same motions every day. Maybe your career is never going to really challenge you unless you get out and do something about it. Maybe your relationship isn’t bad but it isn’t really good or great either. You are dying; you are slowly, inexorably sliding into a rut that is going to turn into a grave at some point down the road.

Why do so many of us accept this as normal? Is it normal to sit on the couch and have our bodies rust from inactivity? Is it normal to have our closest personal relationships limp along from poor communication and unspoken needs and desires? Is it normal to not learn anything new once we leave the halls of our schools? Is it normal to never pick up a book after we leave high school? Is it normal to be overweight, sick and tired?

Apparently it is normal. All of these things are touted as facts. The lack of continuing education, physical fitness, sexless marriages, television, fast food, alcohol and drug addiction are all normal in our modern world. Does it have to be normal? Do you have to accept it as normal for you, your spouse, and your children? I don’t think so and I don’t believe you were placed here to do any of those “normal” things. You are here for more than that. You are here to be someone…you are here to be awesome.

But you are never going to get out of normal until you get to the edge of your comfort zone and start going past it.
If something makes you feel a little uncomfortable maybe you should look at it closer and see if there isn’t a growth opportunity there.
If the thought of doing something (jumping out of an airplane, learning a new language, public speaking) scares you maybe you should go ahead anyway.
If the idea of doing things in a new and different way, taking a different route to work, eating food you have never eaten before disturbs your idea of the status quo you should do them anyway.

Getting past your comfort zone may not be easy. As a matter of fact there will be times when it is hard, uncomfortable, and maybe a little painful. Remember the first time you lost a tooth? It hurt. Maybe it hurt a lot. But losing that tooth made room for a better, more permanent tooth. So it may be with going past your comfort zone. The space you make will leave room for something more interesting and different in your life. And if it doesn’t, well, normal is always there waiting for you like a comfortable pair of socks.

If you don’t know where your comfort zone is, it won’t be too hard to find. Just look at your life and see your habits and routines. That edge runs right along those things just like the boundary on a map. Your comfort zone lives and breathes where your life is effortless and easy.

You can do this. You need to do this. Your children need to see you stretching, growing and reaching for something else, something more. When they see you living in fear of change why should they want to change? When your children see you afraid to learn new things why should they pursue new knowledge. When your children see you afraid how can you expect them to have courage?

You mission (should you choose to accept it) to lead the way into new and uncharted waters…to find the edge of the sea and sail past it. When you do that you will inspire others, especially those closest to you to do something similar. You will empower the people around to you to have the faith that a leap into the unknown is going to be OK. If you don’t who will? Who else is going to lead past the comfort zone? Who else but you?

And you don’t have to go all in either. You don’t have to sell everything and move to the Amazon, or join Doctors without borders or enter a monastery. You can get past your comfort zone a little at a time. You can always put one toe in the water at a time. Maybe start small…try reading a book one night instead of watching television. Eat out at a different ethnic restaurant once a month. Eliminate one small bad habit from your life. Set a fitness goal and make a plan and follow it up. Create a life of purpose on purpose (oops! There I go again).

Pretty soon living a life at the end of your comfort zone will become a habit. You will no longer be boxed in by your fears and hesitations. You will be walking out on the tightrope of your comfort zone, balancing a life of purpose, vision, compassion and genuine integrity while serving as an inspiration to everyone around you.

Go ahead and jump…the water’s fine!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Hell

2011-02-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Hell

Imagine it is your last day on earth. As you prepare for your final destination you see someone approaching you. As the figure nears a dawn of recognition begins. The person is you…the person you could have become. The person imbued with all the greatness, all the success, all the joy, happiness, abundance, prosperity and health you could have enjoyed. You are devastated. You are done with this mortal coil and going to your final rest knowing who you could have become.
This is one of the definitions of hell:
On your last day on earth the person you BECAME will meet the person you could have BECOME.
Think about that one. Who you are meets the person you could have been. What would that look like for you? Is who you are everything you could be? Are you doing all you can do to be all you can be?
Are you living today as the person you could become?
Really? Because I know I am not. Maybe you are, maybe not so much.
I guess the first question would be do you really care? Does it really matter to you that you are or are not living up to all the potential of who you are? Do you have any idea of the greatness that lies within you? If not, why not? Why not care about who you could become…is it too hard? Is even thinking about that shift so difficult that you can’t even look at it? Imagine that day in the future where you might have to face the you that you could have become…what would you like to say? It was too hard to be you? I just couldn’t face up to my highest and best?
Really? REAlly?
It’s too hard? Hard is getting up this morning and walking 5 miles to the river to fill a 5 gallon container with filthy water for your family to drink, cook and bathe with while knowing if you don’t return with a full container your father will beat you. That is hard. Hard is going to bed at night after another day of no food and listening to your baby sister crying weakly as she slowly slides into death from starvation. That is hard. Hard is not getting off your butt and doing the things you know you can and should and could do to fulfill your mission on earth.

It might be a little challenging to find your mission and vision but it really isn’t hard. It might be slightly daunting to start living your life like a world champion something. And no, there is no world champion couch potato or fast food eater. It isn’t hard (in perspective) to quit drinking soda, smoking cigarettes or watching hours of television. It might look hard but is it really? Do you think the person you could become is going to show up 100 pounds overweight, with a heart condition and diabetes? Or is that person in great physical condition?

Is the person you could become an emotional wreck, stained and drained by drama and trauma, ruled by their unconscious needs and desires? I think not. I think the person you could become is fully conscious of their emotional baggage and has worked every day at lessening that load in order to be an emotional giant fully in touch and aware of their desires and needs and getting those desires and needs met in the healthiest ways possible. That person is in touch with their own emotions and their own humanity and can see the good and best in each person they run into every day.

Maybe the person you could become will show up on that day, your last day defeated by the world, impoverished financially and spiritually, completely beaten down and vanquished. I think not. I think the person you could become is going to show up in abundance and prosperity, filled with spirit and spirituality, financially prosperous an example to the world of what is possible when spirit and determination meet in the soul of a person dedicated to transforming the world into a better, richer, and more abundant place.

But maybe you are going to get out of this life without meeting the person you could have become. Maybe on the day you die you won’t have to meet that person. Maybe you won’t have to die knowing all the things you could have done, been, or accomplished. Maybe you won’t mind the world being poorer for the books you didn’t write, the lessons you didn’t teach, and the music you never made. Maybe you are OK with plodding along living a life or mediocrity and quiet desperation, just another average person living another average life and dying another average death.

Really?
REAlly?
REALLY?
I mean really? You are OK with that? Go look in the mirror and tell yourself you are ok with average. You are OK with being overweight. You are OK with never learning a new thing, never learning anything new, not teaching something you know how to teach, or not singing the songs you can sing? Go ahead and go to the bathroom mirror and look carefully at the face looking back at you and tell that person you are never going to be the person you could have become.

You didn’t do it did you? Maybe you should go look in the mirror and start looking for the person you could be. Maybe you could start seeing the person you could have become right now. Maybe you should start living your life like you are the person you could have become. Maybe the person looking back at you right now is that fully aware, amazing, self fulfilled human living up to the fullest potential possible. Maybe the person you could become is sitting next to you right now and all you have to do is take a look and see them waiting for you.
So….who are you looking at in the mirror?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Integrity

2011-02-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Integrity

Integrity. Truth. Honesty.

There are few things more important than your integrity. It is the one thing that no one can ever take from you. But it is something you can give away, lose, or destroy on your own.

I define Integrity these days very simply…Be honest, Tell the truth, Play by the rules, Keep your promises. I have also Integrity defined as “doing what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it.”

Be honest…first with yourself, then with the world around you. If you cannot be honest with yourself you are in serious trouble. If you ask yourself if you are doing your best work and the answer is “I don’t know” then you are not being honest with yourself. Usually answers like I don’t know, I’m not sure, and the shrug of the shoulders are answers that include a certain amount of self-delusion. Be honest with yourself first. Look inside and be brutally honest about how you feel and what you are thinking and doing. Then when you are asked a question you can do the next thing…

Tell the truth. This does not mean to be mean or rude or disrespectful. It means to tell the truth and tell it in a way that is honest. On one hand this is very simple…don’t lie. If the answer is white don’t try to tell me the answer is black. Just don’t do it, it is not ok. Lying is pervasive in our society. We see large companies telling us things that are not true and using the excuse that it is marketing. Telling me something is good for me when it is not good or is marginal is a lie.
Then there are the lies of omission…in other words those times when I leave something out because you didn’t ask the right question or ask it in the right way. And that way allows me not tell you something that I really should. You know when you do that, it feels a little dirty coming off your tongue, just a little bit sleazy. In the back of your mind you know you left out a vital piece of information. If you are telling the truth, you don’t leave out that piece…a lie of omission is still a lie.
Let’s not forget the lies of shading. Those are the lies when we take the truth and cover it with an umbrella so the truth is there but not quite visible. I spin a tale that is true but the truth is hidden, but just a little askew, obfuscated under the spinning story I am telling you. Still a lie isn’t it? Maybe a little nicer but still a lie.

Play by the rules. Simple really, right? I mean the rules are the rules. They are usually written down and clear. All you have to do is follow them. Well…sometimes the rules are not exactly clear right? So do you go by the letter of the rule or the spirit of the rule? And what about the games where the rules are not written down? Where we all just assume the rules to be one way, to be the way we have always done things. Where is your default position? The spirit or the letter? For me, I look to the spirit of the law first. What is the way to play the game with the most forthright and honest position, for the game or the playing field to be the most level? Is it so important to win that you will shave the issues and jeopardize your personal integrity? How much money is that worth to you? We have seen the answer over and over again in the professional sports world…people who are making millions and millions of dollars who cheat to win or shave their way around the truth to get more accolades or titles. When we find out they have been lying or cheating we are crushed…we expected better, we deserved and hones game, one of integrity and honor.

Keep your word. It used to be that a man’s word was his bond. I kept my word even if it cost me, and cost me dearly. If I could not keep my word, my bond then I had to go forth and make it right. Million dollar deals were consummated on a handshake. I trusted you and your word even if I did not know you. Now it seems even the people I know can’t be counted on to keep their word. To look me in the eye and tell me the truth even when they are doing me wrong, not keeping their word. This is a very, very sad state of affairs. If you say it make it so. If you can’t complete, especially due to circumstances out of your hands, then do what you have to do to make it right. Better yet, move heaven and earth to complete the task , to fulfill your bond. Help us regain the trust we should have in each other, in our fellow man. Because, sadly, we have lost it.

I can’t force you to live a life of integrity. I can live my life as an example of it. And not just outwardly. I must, and most importantly, like a life of integrity for myself and with myself. I must live a life of integration (it’s part of integrity), a life that is complete and whole and aligned with who I say I am and who I am being. Will I fail? Will I fall down and come up short? Of course I will. Of course I have. But I will get up and admit my mistakes and start again down that path. For me this path appears to be the only one to walk? What say you?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Total Wellness

2011-01-29T06:46:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story...Total Wellness…
I have been listening and talking to a lot of people lately about health and what it means to be healthy.
Let’s be honest…health is not just the absence of disease, just like peace is not just the absence of war. Health is much more than just absence of something else. Optimum health is a dynamic process. It includes several parts or your life. Your physical health. Your mental health. Your spiritual health. Your financial health. Your social health.

Physically you need to eat right, exercise often, and feed your body with the proper nutrients (which are not always obtainable from food). If you are a regular reader you know where I stand on food…real natural organic (when possible), mostly plants, prepared carefully with intention and purpose. Diet can be the most simple or the most complicated, it really depends on you and how you want to approach it. For me if I have to read a label it is too complicated. I want to eat food that I can recognize from its source. I want to know that the meat I am eating has been raised the way it would have been in a natural state (if such a thing exists.) Then I am going to prepare the food with love and the intention to nourish myself in body and spirit. In terms of supplementation…do your due diligence and ask around. For my money I use mostly Univera products...the science is right and the products are guaranteed to work. And yes that is a shameless plug! If you want to know more call or email me and we will talk.

Exercise means to get out and sweat. To go 100% all out in your pursuit, increasing balance, flexibility, agility and strength. You can do this at any age but you have to be ready to work, to learn new skills and push your limits…no more sitting on an exercise bike and zoning out…you must be connected to your body as you sweat and strain to improve. It also means to just move. To walk or ride my bike or swim easily and with minimal effort...easily and with joy. Work hard and find that sweet spot where there is only the single activity and effort.

Mentally we need to learn new things, read books that inspire and uplift, think our way through problems. Crossword puzzles and other brain exercises are an excellent way to keep your mind active. Writing letters or blogs or stories will also keep your mind moving and stretching. Having a certain elasticity of mental power will serve you as you age. Remember minds are like parachutes…they work best when they are open.

Spiritually let’s get connected to whatever you consider to be the divine source of the universe. Let’s find our purpose, our reason to be here. I am not here to tell you about religion. But I am going to tell you that finding a way to be connected to the creative source of the universe is vital to your health. When we pray we are talking to that source. When we meditate we are listening to that source. When we give gratitude for the gifts in our life we are connecting to that source. When we do kind things for each other we are expressing divinity in our human forms. Spirit exists if we allow it to infuse our existence.

Financial health is a whole different ball of wax. You get to determine what financial health looks like to you. Maybe working less for more money is your goal. Maybe it’s making more money, having a newer car, or a bigger house. Freedom from your boss, the ability to give more generously to charities, pay for things for your children or maybe just pack up and go on vacation for a day or a week or a month. I don’t know how you will define financial abundance…do you know? Because if you do not know you might want to start defining it now. If you don’t how will you know when you get there? Or what the plan is to get there? We leave in precarious times economically. Many of the old rules have changed and shifted and the new rules are not yet clear. But understand that you need o take charge of this area…start a home based business (I can help you here), find an investment you like, get multiple streams of income coming in. There are more opportunities than ever out there…start looking and find one that inspires passion in you. You will be glad you did.

Your social health is a bit more ethereal. This one includes your personal, intimate relationships as well as the other relationships you have…you dentist, the checkout person at the store, your Facebook friends, your work associates. All of these relationships are different and yet every one of them relies on communication to grow and be fulfilling. In my very close relationships I get so many of my needs met and also can experience the biggest frustrations. Most of these frustrations stem from poor communication…not asking for what I want, not expressing my unmet needs and not being willing to hear from my partner. Communication is both listening and talking and they are both skill we need to work on and get better at…just like learning a new language, a new game or trying out a new puzzle.

Your total wellness depends on all of these areas. If you neglect any one of them you may find your life to be less healthy than you are comfortable with. Optimum health and total wellness, physically, mentally spiritually, financially and socially sounds like a pretty good goal to me…How about you? Care to join me on the road?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Rest; Not just for the wicked

2011-01-22T14:36:00.001-08:00

Sunday Story…Rest; Not just for the wicked

There is an old saying that goes something like this…”You can rest when you are dead.” For a long time that saying was a mantra of sorts for me. Sometimes it still is.

I believe you should be in action. I believe hoping and wishing are wonderful but without action there is no result. Laying on the couching wishing you were a different shape just won’t get the job done. You can’t win the lottery without buying a ticket. Action gets results.

Often, though, we hide behind action. Rather than planning and moving intentionally we are just moving willy-nilly deluding ourselves that action for action’s sake will give us the results we desire. This sort of action generally results in just creating an energy drain. I am guilty of this quite often.

We do this sort of thing with our jobs and careers quite often. We show up every day. It’s what we are supposed to do. Show up at the designated time, do some stuff and go home at the designated time, take a lunch break, repeat day in and day out, year after year. It is what is expected of us. It is what we “do”. Good on you. But are you really getting anything done? Are living, doing, thinking, and acting with intention and purpose?

It is one thing to set goals. It is quite another to create a plan that will have those goal come to fruition. And yet another to actually take the actions that will have that plan be mobilized. Imagine the General of an army about to invade the enemy country. He just can’t say go and hope everyone and everything falls into the right places. And so he makes a plan after setting the goal---invasion! The plan or campaign has different elements and different factions doing different things. The activity is planned out and deliberate. Nothing is left to chance. If things to go as planned there is an alternative. A plan B and a plan C designed to cover the contingencies that can and will occur. Then he will put the plan into action…deliberately and intentionally.

Our General is meticulous in his planning. And he is just a meticulous in his execution of the plan. And he is willing to shift and transform the execution when the situation calls for a shift. The outcome is still on the horizon but the plan can change. What would happen to your life if your actions had the same meticulous planning and execution as that of our General? What would your job and career look like? How about your relationship? How about your education (yes even if you are no longer attending school you are still being educated --- or not!)?

It is said that if you had 8 hours to cut down a tree you should spend 6 hours sharpening your ax. In other words spending the time creating the right plan is time well spent and might actually result in an easier execution than just rushing in and doing anything. The proper plan, properly executed is much more likely to succeed than a flurry of activity whirling around with little intention or purpose.

All of which brings us to rest and restoration. We need to rest. We need time to re-set the set-points. Rest is an activity. Rest is something we do. Rest allows us to find new ways to execute our plans. Rest isn’t just sleep and it isn’t just laying on the couch flipping the channels on the boob-tube.

Sometimes rest is meditation. Meditation is the activity of sitting and listening to the rocks move, the leaves fall and the raindrops form. It is allowing your breath to find its way through your body and into your emotions. It is a way of connecting with all those things greater and more mysterious than yourself.

Sometimes rest is play. You know the kind of play that happens when we allow ourselves to play freely without expectation of outcome. Without a win or a loss or even a critic to say what is right or wrong. When we watch toddlers at play…this is the sort of play that is rest, the kind of play that restores energy even while expending it. When we see the youngster singing and spinning and just living in the very present moment we see a body in motion that is being restored. It is an amazing transformation.

Sometimes rest is doing the thing that pleases you the very most in the world. Those things that, when you do them, have you completely present in the world. There is no time before and no time after. There is only that moment, that sliver of time where you exist in an exact state of perfection. It may be painting, dancing, writing or reading but there is or has been something in your life that creates rest in action for you.

Rest is being in the moment. Restoration can occur when we are at one with the flow of the universe. This is why we often think of sleep as the only time we can rest and recuperate. In sleep there is only that moment. There is no before sleep or after sleep while we sleep … we just sleep. So go get some rest today and restore your energy so you can execute all your world changing plans tomorrow!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Health, Wealth, and Purpose

2011-01-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story....Health, Wealth, and Purpose

This triumvirate can create a life designed by you for you if you will embrace them. I have been
fortunate to have spent some time recently with some highly motivated people who have embraced this trio in all their lives.

Here is my take on it!

Health
If you don't have your health you have a serious problem. All the money in the world won't fix bad health. Whether you caused poor health through poor life style choices, it was foisted upon by genetics, or you were in the wrong place at the wrong time you will realize the value of it once it has been gone for a moment or two.

You can't fix bad genes. You can mitigate some of the effects through proper diet and nutrition. You can work on having the “bad” genes not express themselves but only if you are aware of them. Fortunately this is only about 35% or your aging process. Granted it is an important 35% but it is still only 35%.

Finding yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time is an unfortunate accident. Sort of. On one hand if you ascribe to the radical responsibility theory (as I do) then you are responsible. But that theory is at the upper reaches of consciousness. So lets assume a very small percentage of your health woes may be accidental...an environmental exposure, an automobile accident, or some other unforeseen occurrence.

So the bad news or the good news, depending on how you look at it is that your health is largely in your hands. You can choose to exercise...or not. You can choose to eat healthy...or not. You can choose how you experience the aging process. Because no matter how old you are today, you will be older tomorrow. You will create 300 billion new cells in the next 24 hours whether you like it or not. How healthy those cells are is really up to you. And do not doubt that those cells will affect, whether you like it or not, how you experience life.

So let me give you the simple formulas:

Move. Often. Slowly and deliberately. Move heavy weight long distances quickly. Work on your balance and flexibilty daily. Maintain a strong core by using highly varied functional movements. Regularly learn and play new sports and physical games.

Eat natural food...mostly plants. Avoid processed foods, drinks, and other edible non-food products. Eat lean meat and green vegetatables, seeds and nuts, some fruit, littlie starch and no sugar. Eat in quantities that will support exerces, movement and work, but won't contribute to fat storage.

If you are over 30 years old, you may need supplementation to achieve optimum fitness and health. Your body has already peaked and now you need to re-achieve those optimumcellular and hormonal levels you enjoyed in your mid-twenties.

Your health is paramount...get to work on it now.

Wealth
Wealth means different things to different people. Maybe it's monetary for you...a million dollars or 100k a year in income, or just the ability to spend your time how and where you choose. Maybe you measure wealth in your relationships with the people around you. You get to decide what and how much. For the sake of this article I am going to say wealth is related to money...having enough to do what you want when you want...whatever those things are...to live life on your own terms rather than be dictated by your financial circumstances.

Your wealth is necessary to help relieve the stress of this modern life. Your wealth needs to be controlled by you and not outside influences and should have a number of ways of making it to you. Your monetary wealth will help you be healthier...since you can eat in certain ways with money that you will be unable to without money.

You need to be able to generate and improve your financial situation based upon your own efforts and not rely on others to do it for you. Get to work on this...open your own business, get some passive income and some residual income. Find multiple streams of income.

Purpose

Once we have taken care of health and wealth we can look for purpose. What drives you. What creates passion inside of you. For many of us the concept of service or “seva” is closely tied to purpose. We have talked about this a number of times...finding your purpose. Creating a vision for your life, a mission for you to act upon.

Working for something greater than yourself, helping others with their lives is part and parcel of who we are as humans. It is one of the reasons we become parents, teachers, volunteers. We feel better when we give.

Here is the cement that will hold this building up...Gratitude. Gratitude is the glue that we can put our health wealth and purpose together with. Gratitude exists for us when and where we want it to because we choose gratitude.

You should have gratitude for your health no matter how good or how bad it may be...if you are reading this t could be worse. Be grateful for the health you have today. Be grateful for the ability to improve it even if it is just a little, a small bit of improvement.

You should be grateful for the wealth you have today. It could be worse, much much worse. Start living in a land of abundance, not scarcity. You have much. And be grateful for the ability to do something about it...even if it is as simple as changing your attitude.

You should be grateful that you can look for purpose. What will give your life meaning? What are you doing right now on purpose? Are you living with passion? If you don't know try some gratitude that you can ask the questions and start you search for the answers.

Health, Wealth and Purpose with an Attitude of Gratitude. Sounds like a life I want to be part of...Care to join me?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Happy New Year

2011-01-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Happy New Year

January. Again. 2011. Who would have thought?

I was born the year before the old Soviet Russian Republic launched a thing called the sputnik into space and set off the race to the moon. Yes the moon. A dozen years later 2 men walked on the moon and returned to earth.
Today I have more computing power parked under my desk than there existed to put those two guys on the moon. But I am not pursuing anything so grand as manned lunar flights.
It is amazing to me when I think how far we have travelled in the last 50 years. Or even 100! 100 years ago flight was a novelty and a mystery.

The amount of knowledge is expanding exponentially. The speed in which the world appears to be changing is going faster and faster.
But are we changing? Are we evolving with the same rapidity that the knowledge base is expanding?

We know that eating sugar causes health problems galore from diabetes to obesity to cancer to?? Yet I talk everyday to people who ingest the equivalent of 64 teaspoons of sugar in the form of sodas and energy drinks.

We know that not exercising and moving our bodies will shorten our lives, reduce the quality of those years and create a host of problems. Yet most of us don’t bother to get off the couch and out into the world to move.

We know that being overweight will kill us before our time and that we will be uncomfortable throughout our lives both physically and psychologically yet we choose unhealthy food on a daily basis.

We know that stress is creating a huge hole in our lives, having us feel sad, depressed, and angry. Yet we don’t do the few things that would help lessen our stress on a daily basis. Things like meditation, prayer, exercise, proper diet, an attitude of gratitude, smiling.

So what good is all this knowledge doing us? To know and not to do is to not yet know.
I know what I should be eating but I don’t eat it.
I know I should be exercising but I don’t
I know I should be……but I don’t.
Why not? Why don’t you? You are a smart person. You want to be healthy and happy and fit. Yet you don’t do it. You say you want to but you really don’t want to. You really don’t want to put forth the effort that it is going to take.

Here is my guess…and that is all it is…a guess:
You do not have a compelling reason why you should. If you know you would drop dead form your next cigarette would you quit right now? If you knew that your next soda would land you in the hospital to be hooked up to some machine for the next 20 years or so would you drink it? I suspect some of you would. That you are so beaten up and so addicted to your habits that even if the consequences were death or a life sentence in a hospital you would still do it. These are fear based reasons…they work but are only sustainable for so long.
So why should you? What is your compelling, do or die reason? Don’t have one…do you? Because if you did your life would look so very different. Your life would look like a fairy tale…made up and ending exactly as you planned.

So how are you going to get that reason? What do you need to do, read, buy, or find to get you that one reason? Is it another book? Another electronic device? Another workshop or seminar? Is it me sitting behind this desk yelling at you to find your reason, to find your why, to find your place? What is it going to take?
Look deep inside my friends. Look way past all the trappings and accoutrements of this modern life…the computers, flat screens, game consoles, cell phones, cars, houses, jobs, or 401ks. Look deep into the scary place, that deep abyss of your heart and soul. There you will find your compelling reason. Somewhere deep inside of you is that purpose, the fire that will have you eat right, get fit, write that book, start that business, or just start loving yourself.
You buried the reason. You took it and covered it up in the expectations, in all the things you were “supposed’ to do, the things that were “next” in your life. All of those things are distractions. All of those things are diversionary tactics put in front of you to get you off track. And they worked. You are distracted and off track.
And the only way you are going to get back on track is to explore the depths of your burial ground. Where you put all those things that were scary and a little bit hard, the place you decided to hide you from yourself. Start digging, like a miner searching for gold, the explorer looking for the city of gold, the fountain of youth. It is there just waiting for you to find it.

It isn’t going to be easy. But once you have the reason, once you have the compelling why, you will have purpose. And once you have purpose you can get anything and everything you want or desire.

Believe It. Achieve It.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Day One

2011-01-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story....Day One

New years day. Why do we put such stock in the passing of this particular 24 hours? Is there some magical property that midnight of December 31st holds that allows us to begin anew, the promise of an unblemished future, dreams and goals put up for review and reshaping.

Probably not. There is no magic here, at least none that you could not conjure up tomorrow as well.

On the other hand...maybe there is just a little magic today. After all you get to say I haven't done ___ (fill in the blank) since last year. I haven't done ______(fill in the blank) yet this year. The slate is wiped clean...the chalk board has been erased...you have “tabula rasa”...a blank slate.

So what are you going to do? What does this magical moment hold for you? What are you willing to create today that was not possible yesterday?

Maybe this is the year you finally learn that foreign language you have always wanted to learn. Maybe this year that 30 pounds will finally disappear. Maybe you will get to the gym more than the first two week of the year. Maybe you will learn the new skills that get you a raise, or a new job. Maybe this year you will _____(fill in this blank too!)

Maybe not.

What has this January 1st be any different than the last one or the one before that?

I mean really...last year has come and gone...did you do anything you set out to do?

Did you do anything different this past year than the year before or the year before or the year before?

Really? REALLY? Then why aren't you in a different place than where you are?

Why are you still overweight?

Why are you still smoking?

Why are still out of shape?

Why are you not doing the things you KNOW you should /want/need to do to create the life you know you should be living?

Why indeed?

Lets face it. Change is scary. Transformation is unknown. You really don't know what will happen if you do the things that will need to do to change your life. And what you are doing is known. What you are doing is comfortable, what you are doing is easy. If you keep doing it you will keep getting what you have always done and is that really all that bad? After all you have been doing it for so very long.

I know what I need to do to make the shifts in my life. I have an accountability coach that reminds me of this waaaaay too often. Yet I don't always take my own advice. Why not? Why not (as Nike says) Just Do It? It really isn't that hard. As a matter of fact it is really simple. Not easy, just simple.

Set a goal
Make a plan to achieve the goal
Execute the plan.
Simple

So what's the stop?

For myself and for many others the stop isn't the goal. The stop isn't seeing what we want.

Oh no...the stop is knowing the reason why. Why do you want to … lose 30 pounds … learn a new language … get in shape … ????? I know the obvious reasons....they haven't changed over the last few years have they?

Unfortunately they are all fear based. You are afraid that you will be sick if you don’t lose the weight. You are afraid you will get passed over for a promotion if you don’t learn new skills. You are afraid you will die before your time if you don’t get in shape. Fear is a powerful motivator but it isn't working. It can only work so far. We see people every day who are told by their M.D. that if they don’t lose weight they are going to die young. Yet they don't do it. And yes they are afraid of death? Maybe they think their Dr. is lying? Maybe they think it just won't happen to them?

So what is the answer? For me it is a compelling vision of what I want my life to look like, to be. It is a vision that gets me up in the morning, jumping out of bed, running to the shower, in a rush to get the things done to get that vision fulfilled.

So what is the vision...because a promotion isn't it. A few pounds isn't it. New skills...nope. It is what those things will give you, get you. You must discover a compelling, my hair is on fire, vision of who and what you want your future to look like. It must excite you like a 5 year old at Christmas. You have to be on fire to get this done, to become this new person.

So what is it? What is the reason you are going to do the really hard work to get where you have never been before? It isn't going to be easy you know. It may be simple but it is never easy. And this first step may be the hardest. You need to find the thing that will light a fire under your behind, that will catapult you out of bed in the morning, that will have you continue in the face of failure and adversity. What is this amazing goal/reason/dream that you must fulfill or die?

And are you strong enough to really look inside and figure it out? For most of us (myself included) this is the stop. This is the place where I just don't get off the line. Maybe I am afraid of really facing what I want because then I will have to go do it. I don't know.

What I know is that I must do this. I must find the compelling, set my hair on fire, get out of my way, reason to achieve the change I want to achieve. Or just continue to live this life of quiet desperation.

Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me. How about you?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Home Sweet Home

2010-12-25T13:18:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story...Home Sweet Home

Where is “home”?
...Home is where the heart is
...You can never go home again
...The chickens come home to roost

There are so many aphorisms about home. Yet when we look up home in the dictionary, most of the definitions are in reference to a physical dwelling, a place to live, or an abode.
But for most of us that is a house.

I live in a house.
I dwell in an an abode.
I make my house a home.

The deeper meaning for many of us has to do with the reference to hearth. The hearth in times gone by was the heart of a house...the fireplace where the cooking was done, where warmth emanated from, where the people gathered to commune and join together. When I think of home this is what I think of...the community where I am accepted, the people who love me.

Home is not necessarily a physical spot on the globe. I have never lived in my parent's house, yet when I go there I am home. When I return to my house, I am home. Yes it is possible to have more than one home. When I sit with my brothers I am home. When I meet with my martial arts friends to work out and sweat and bleed I am home. When I return to the meditation hall I am home. All of these places have something in common...they are all places I can be the authentic self I am called to be. They are all places where I can just be.

We often talk about the “homeless” as a group, a category of people. What we should say is “house-less”. Just like each of us have a mother and a father, yet can be orphans, so, too, can we be house-less and not be homeless. Home does not have to be a physical destination. Home does not have to exist between 4 walls.

Home could be a cave or a tent. Home could be a barracks in a foreign land. Home could be an imaginary place you only get to in the silence of the night. Home may only exist in the residence of your mind.

Home really is where your heart is. Are you home yet?

This is the last story of 2010. Next Sunday will be 2011.

To all of you who have found the time, the strength, or the desire to comment on these stories, I thank you. I read every comment with relish and gratitude. As a rule I do not respond to the comments, there isn't always time, and often a response would be gratuitous anyway. Please continue to comment and let me know if what I have written has touched you in some way. Over the years of writing these stories I have been excoriated, lauded, punished, kicked, made fun of, and complimented. Some of you know I am writing directly to you (I am). Some of you are sure that somehow I know just the right thing to write to you this particular week (I do). These are your stories. These are the channeling from each of you into the universal energy that flows through my fingers onto these pages. So, yes I am talking to you. I am writing to you, about you, for you. I am writing to challenge you. I am writing to excite you. I am writing to get you to feel, to think, to get out of your ennui, out of your torpor, off of the couch and into the world, out of complaint and into action...any action is better than the “quiet desperation” most of the world is living in these days.

I want to make you mad. I want to have you feel something, anything. Our world needs your passion, your heart, your soul to get up and get counted. You were not placed on this earth at this time to do nothing. You are here for a purpose. Not finding your purpose is a crime against nature, like a chicken with no wings, or a horse with a pig nose. Not living on purpose is a crime as well. I want to help you find your purpose and start living into your purpose.

4 questions for you:
How am I making a difference?
Is what you are doing, right now, on purpose?
Is this what I really want to do?
Am I following my passion?

How will you answer?

As some of you know I do private life coaching, personally designed to help you create the life you want to be living. We can work on purpose, vision, diet, exercise or any number of areas that will enrich and encourage and challenge you to create a life you want to live.

If you are interested in exploring that sort of relationship email me at:
jmariotti1@gmail.com

But understand this: My mission is to teach focus and inspire transformation. In you. If you are ready I am willing. No excuses, no maybes, sort ofs, kindas...just the hard and rewarding work of transformation.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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PS.
Some of you have asked about my knee from last week. I am very fortunate to know an outstanding healer. Her name is Dr. Laura Harmon. She has an office in Fallon NV. She is a chiropractor, a massage therapist, an acu-pressure specialist, a Reiki healer, and, most of all, an energetic healer. She spent 2 hours working on my knee and got me back on my feet. Her office number is: 775-423-7000 and her business is called Fallon Family Chiropractic. She comes with my highest recommendation.

Sunday Story...To Die For

2010-12-18T16:14:00.001-08:00

Sunday Story…To Die For

2008
Silver state 50 mile race. We are going to run from Rancho San Rafael Park over Peavine to Verdi. And back. I am trying to finish in less than 12 hours in order to have a qualifying time for the Western States 100 miler. I did this race for the first time last year in 13 hours. I ran 50 miles around a track (200 laps) in 11 hours and 30 minutes the summer before today. I ran a 50 kilometer race about 8 weeks before this day and a ½ marathon about 3 weeks before this day. It is a beautiful day a little warm for this early in May but the sun is out and it is most pleasant.

Around 10 miles in I realize I am not feeling great. My nutrition plan isn’t working quite right and I just don’t feel on. But I press on…it is too early to tell how the race is going to go. Somewhere around 25 or so miles I know this is not going to be my best day but I am ½ way and I don’t want to quit yet, besides I have a pacer going to join me in Verdi at the turn around point and that should improve things. Up to this point I have been alone.

At about 31 or 32 miles I pick up Katie R. my pacer. She immediately notices that I am not drinking enough water and starts in on the mantra…drink, drink, drink. My right knee is starting to act funny and I definitely feel like something left on the road dead. But I hate to quit. Absolutely hate to quit when I have anything left to give. So I press on, besides Katie is ready to go. The last 11 miles are all downhill. This really really really sucks. My knee is throbbing, my gait is off my body is starved and I am barely staying hydrated. With about 3 miles left they try to pull me off the course as the 13 hour time limit has passed. I refuse to come off the course. I am basically out of my mind at this point but I don’t run 47 miles out of 50. So we finish, every step is agony and suffering. The knee is shredded. Surgery takes place about 6 months later. I finished dead last.

Last Thursday
My left knee has been troublesome for 3 or 4 months. I have been trying to not push it too hard but I also refuse to stop. While doing box jumps (jumping up on to a platform and down) I feel something in the left knee give out. I still have several sets of jumps to finish. Do I quit? Slow Down? No and no. I complete the entire 150 jumps. The next day I can barely walk. This morning I can walk even less. Now there aren’t any jumps in my near future.

What is it that has us continue in the face of pain and injury? Maybe even in the face of permanent and long term pain. In my two examples above there was no 8” high trophy, no $25,000 check, no date with a super model. Nothing to gain but the satisfaction of finishing something that I started. It has been said that men will die for points. Why is that? Why will we continue just to say we finished?

I believe it is part of our make up to continue in the face of adversity; that there is something within us that wants to be able to say I Did It. I finished the task. I decided to do it and I have done it. Mission accomplished. Yet not everyone does it. And honestly I would be better off today if I had made a different choice in both of those examples. I probably could have avoided surgery on the one knee in the first example and I certainly would be walking better today in the other example.

It was clear to me in the second example that I should stop yet I did not. I considered stopping yet I did not. I work out enough that calling a halt to that activity was not going to jeopardize my fitness level. Yet it did jeopardize my overall health. Maybe I have a wish to be hurt so I can stop? Unlikely. Maybe I just want to beat everyone else doing the work out? More likely. Once again a man dying for points.

I am not going to let someone else beat me if I can help it. I am not going to put up less than a 100% effort for any endeavor. If it is worth doing it is worth doing with my entire being, my entire heart and soul. Too often in our world today, too many people are just going through the motions. They show up, clock in and go back to their stupor. They bring no passion, no energy, no chi to the game. The game just plays them not the other way around.

The game is life folks. Life includes your workout, your 50 mile race, your job, your family, your personal growth, your evolution as a human on the planet. Will you die in pursuit of your life, or would you prefer to die quietly, going out without a whimper?

For me I want to go completely used up. I want to have done all there was to do, jumped every jump, ran every race, tried everything…leaving nothing on table but crumbs. Don’t carry me quietly, get out of the way as I slide into the grave screaming woo hoo what a ride!

How about you? What will you die for? What will you live for?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Upside Down World

2010-12-11T23:25:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Upside Down World

A world turned upside down….credit is not actually credit. Credit is actually debt. Debt is not good. Credit is good. Credit goes on the plus side of the ledger. Debt goes on the minus side, at least in all the accounting books I am familiar with. Yet they call them credit cards, when in fact, it is a debt card.

A world turned upside down…we allow big food corporations to sell us on the benefits of added minerals and vegetables in their processed edible non-food products but broccoli and cauliflower and carrots are being robbed of their nutrient values by mono-crop over intensive farming methods.

A world turned upside down…big banks and big companies get government bail outs but the business owner down the street has to close his doors because government regulation and fees reduce the business that he has worked for a lifetime, fed his family, put his children through school to the point it can no longer be profitable.

A world turned upside down…poor people get hand outs if they qualify, rich people get tax breaks, the working poor get to work and no help.

A world turned upside down…in the face of overwhelming evidence people continue to smoke and deny the deleterious effects of smoking on their health. And cigarette companies continue to advertise smoking like it is still good for you.

A world turned upside down…drug companies advertise pharmaceutical solutions to diseases we never knew existed (restless leg syndrome). The drugs in question get advertised as long as the legal disclaimer is read and the side effects often include death. Yet natural products can make no claim even if clinical trials show their effectiveness in the treatment, prevention, or cure of the same syndromes.

Are we so in love with our pain, so in love with the status quo that we will risk pain, injury or even death to keep it in our lives? Do you so love your plight that you will ignore the open doors out of your wretchedness? I mean really? Is the pleasure you derive from smoking greater than the pain of lung cancer, emphysema, or just not being able to move the way you want to?

As humans we are programmed from birth to move toward pleasure and away from pain. This is one of the astounding paradoxes of our time: We admire and worship heroes who put their lives on the line, who run back into burning buildings, follow criminals, or rush into the fire of battle. These heroes run into danger and into pain not away from it. Our history abounds with these stories. We love talking about these people and placing them on the pedestal of our respect. Yet when we have an everyday choice like not smoking, eating right, or changing our minds we run away like a bear was chasing us.

Why not run into the hard choice? Why not do the hard things the way your hero does? Why not accept the temporary pain of effort and vision for the long term joy of success and fulfillment? Why not? It is that hard? Is it so difficult to see the gain, the pleasure that you will deny yourself if continue on your empty path to status-quo ville.

This is all related to our turned upside down world. We are conditioned by our advertising, by our culture, by our socialization to accept mediocrity, to stay with the herd-think so we never have the chance to excel, to be the truly great, amazing and fantastic person we were put on this earth to be. If you step out into the light, if you step into a vision bigger than yourself, if you run into the burning building you are an outlier, a maverick, a hazard and a danger.

You want to change but it is hard, maybe you aren’t sure where to begin, maybe you are afraid of who might have to be if you change. Here are two different paths:
Path A---Go slow. Change one little thing. Choose a minor, hardly noticeable thing and see what happens. Make sure the sky doesn’t fall. If that works okay then maybe pick another ittle thing and see what happens with that one…and so on until you start on the really big ones. Don’t quit smoking…quit smoking 1 cigarette at a time. Don’t go on a diet and cut out all carbs or sugar…just stop eating a doughnut every morning and have a bagel and an orange instead. Little inconsequential things things not big scary things and the result over a year will be a major shift in who you are. If I turn the steering wheel of my car just 3 degrees in any one direction after a thousand miles I will have a whole new destination.

Path B---Begin with the end in mind. Who do you want to be at the end of 2011? What new habits do you want to cultivate, what things do you want to accomplish? Once you have the destination, the end in mind, you can reverse engineer the journey. If I want to be enrolled in a college education program in 2011, what steps must I take? Then map out those steps…do the research and start the journey one step at a time. Want to quit smoking? Set a date to be smoke free. Figure out what the best method may be for you. Try different things, talk to people, get hypnotized. This is the big step path…decide where you want to be and take the plunge.

Two different paths…one looks like putting your toes in one at a time and testing the water. The other looks like seeing the end of the pool and diving in. They will both work. It is really up to you.

The world is upside down. You can just accept it and trudge along for your 78.8 accepting whatever the fates, big pharma, big oil, big food, and big government give you and then you die. Or you can try to right the world either by standing on your head or shifting how you live in it. Your choice…there is no one right and true way but you know which way I lean.

See the world right side up … if you dare.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Takin out the trash

2010-12-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Takin’ out the trash

Recently I wrote about getting rid of stuff. About how your stuff is limiting you and holding you back. The pile of papers on the table are sucking up energy and attention and creating a hole where your essence is getting sucked into. You don’t notice this while it is happening. And let’s be honest, you didn’t put the pile there to suck you dry. You put it there meaning to get to it later and then it grew and morphed into the black hole. Until you take care of it you won’t notice the detrimental effect it is having on your life.

Maybe it isn’t a pile of papers. Maybe it is some item that has an emotional attachment, a group of memories surrounding it. Every time you look at the item you remember that day or that person or that time when… It feels like if you dump the item you will be dumping the memories. Which we all know is not true. The memories do not live in the item. The memories live in your mind and the item is just a physical reminder of that experience. But the item is still taking up room in the garage or closet or wherever you have stashed it.

You might want a reminder of that happy occasion. You might want to remember a particular event. So how to get rid of the physical item that is creating clutter and sucking up energy in your life? It could be as easy as taking a picture of the item and writing a note to yourself about the experience…the things you want to remember, the smiles, the lights, and the delights of that moment in time. Put those items in a scrap book for your enjoyment later. The item is no longer taking up valuable real estate in your life and the memories are preserved. The act of doing this will create joy in your life. You will be releasing something that no longer serves you, you will be re-living the experience the item represents, and you will be preserving something that is important to you.

Or you might choose to just release the item and bless it on its journey. The memories will still be there. Granted they will fade and become less sharp and poignant but they will remain. In some ways this may be the better choice. Even the scrap book will contain a certain amount of psychic baggage and energy that may limit your ability to move forward. Better to just let it go with love and gratitude, especially if it is an item that can be used to create memories for someone else. This is the use it was intended. It was never intended to just gather dust in a corner of your garage. Let it go.

Then there is the stickier issue; the one about all the stuff rattling around in your brain. This stuff just can’t be thrown out and put on the curb for the trash man. What to do about the memories, hang ups, and stories that are holding you back, that are sucking up space on the hard drive in your brain. How do we release, how do we let these prickly little things go?

The process comes in 3 parts. First (and obviously) you must find them and decide they no longer serve you on your journey. They are not part of your purpose any longer. Second, you must enter a space of gratitude and happiness for whatever part those things played. They were important and served a valuable purpose at the time you created them and decided to keep them. Third, release them to the universe, the divine. Say it aloud…”Thank you for your service, I release you back to source.”

Unfortunately these memories won’t just be gone like the trash on pick up day. You may need to release them again and again. The stories you have told yourself? The ones about not being worthy, of not being lovable, or not being good enough my require you to rebuild new stories.

Let us suppose that your experience in life has you thinking you are not worthy of love. First go back to the experiences themselves. And take a snapshot of what actually happened. Not the story you are telling yourself but the actual event…as if there was a silent camera recording the event. Second, ask yourself if there isn’t another story you could create about that event? And third tell a new story. This is how we change the past by the way. No longer am I unworthy of being loved. Rather, I have kept my love safe until now, when it is ready to bloom and blossom under my new tutelage and with new stories.

I am not going to tell you this is easy. It is not. You have been living with these stories for many years. And these stories have been serving you well. They may have been keeping you safe for those years. They may have been integral to your growth and evolution as a human. But it is time to let them go, just like we give up the childish things as we grow, so too must we give up the stories we told ourselves when we are children. It is your life, your movie…don’t you want to write the script? What happened to you happened to you. It was not good nor was it bad. Good and bad are the stories, the judgments you are making around those events. Make a different judgment, tell a new story, one that empowers you and serves your adult, grown up purpose today, now.

I mean really, what have you got to lose? You can always go back to the old stories if you don’t like the new ones!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Stuff

2010-11-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

Sunday Story…Stuff

I have a lot of stuff. Books, cds, knick knacks, bric-a-brac, tschotkes, junk, stuff. I have tried to eliminate a lot of my stuff but it just seems to continue to multiply. I fear it may take a concerted effort on my part to really get to the bottom of all my stuff and get rid of it. It will take a decision to jettison it, to release it back from where it came. And in that release I will let go of all the things that stuff carries along with it. The memories, the little tendrils of hope and pain and success and failure. Because tied up in all that stuff is a life that has been lived. Maybe that is why all that stuff is there…it represents the life that has already gone before.

There is other stuff I am carrying around in my life. It is the stuff I carry inside of me. The stuff I have picked up over the last few decades, especially when I was a little person. This stuff I picked up to keep me safe, to keep my hopes and dreams alive, to keep me functioning in a confusing and difficult world. This stuff is the decisions I made as 5 or 10 or 15 year old about the world and the way it works. And now at 50+ years old my life is still being ruled by the decision a 5 year old made based on some event (good or bad) that happened to him.

Huh? I mean seriously…a 5 year olds decision is running my life? Think about it…Maybe one of your parents left you at that age…your 5 year old made that mean something to him or her. That child made that event mean something…love isn’t real, people who love you leave, I am not worthy of love, I don’t count. And from that meaning that child begins to live a life. And he or she makes decisions based on those meanings. And for all the years forward the decision that get made are made with that meaning in mind.

This is an integral part of our human condition…we make meaning. We create a story about events so that we can make sense of the world and understand our place in it. These stories become our stuff. And our stuff becomes more ingrained into our lives and gets really difficult to change as time goes on. That is assuming we can even recognize it as stuff. Because we train ourselves to think that this stuff is real and real important to us. We even let this stuff become who we are…it defines us.

Does your furniture define you? Does the house you live in or the car you drive create the person you are? No they don’t. The person you are defines the house and the car not the other way around. But we let this other stuff, stuff we picked up 10 or 20 or 30 years ago drive our lives and set the parameters or who we are capable of being. What if you had other stuff? What if you decided today that the stuff you are carrying around isn’t really yours anymore? What if you just took all that stuff out to the curb on trash day and left it to be taken away? Now what?

Now you get to decide who and what you are to be. You see getting rid of that other stuff…the boxes in the garage, the bags hanging around in the closet, the piles of things gathering dust on the shelves are holding space for the things that might really please you, might really bring joy and harmony to your world. Getting rid of your psychic junk does the same thing…if you create a new meaning, new story about the events in your life you are changing your past. And when you change the past you change the future. By eliminating all that old stuff you get to make room for the stuff that is going to serve the you that is here now, not the you of 45 years ago. The question is…do you dare?

Do you have the courage to recreate your life? Do you have the courage to be the person you really and truly want to be? Most of us are so in love with our stuff, so enamored of the people that our stuff has had us become that chucking that stuff away is just too frightening. This is the creation of a new you, one that does and says things in an adult way in a way that serves the integrated whole.

Do you dare become who you really want to be? What will you do without all that stuff holding you down and molding you into some person a 5 year old thought it would be safe to be? Do you really want to go on being that person? It’s safe and comfortable, granted, but is it really serving you in a way that has you living a life of optimum health and fitness? You see health and fitness isn’t just about your physical body…it is the whole package...mind, body and soul. All healthy, all fit, all working at their very highest and best.

Why not take all that old stuff and put it on the curb? Start with the physical stuff…all the junk lying around your house and garage and get rid of it….make room for stuff that will be more fun and alive. Then go upstairs in your mind and start cleaning out those old stories and ancient movie reels and make room for some new ones. Then get started on your soul. What beliefs and suppositions are you walking around with that really aren’t yours anymore. You might as well find some new ones of those too.

Riddle me this Batman…Who are you going to be when you get to be who you really ought to be?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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