Sunday Story...What If

Sunday Story…What If?

There once was a girl I knew quite well. As a matter of fact I wanted to marry her. I was smitten. We are talking head over heels in love. I ignored several signals that were probably pretty obvious had I been in my “right” mind. And, on another level, I held back from jumping head first into the pool. Finally I realized it just wasn’t going to work. The letting go was the hardest part. I found it very difficult to disconnect from her. Today I still think of her and wonder…what if?

What if it could have worked? What if I had only ________? What if she had _____________?
What if? What if? What if?

This is a question that comes up a lot in my life. When I am teaching, inevitably a student will ask something like…What if a bad guy has a gun. Or what if he has some buddies? Or what if he is a ninja? What if is a game that gets played out a lot in these young minds. And mine as well.
What if does not play well in our present moment awareness. How can we be in the present moment and wondering what if I had done this or that or said this or the other thing. What if I had somehow changed my life to create more space for that girl? What would have/could have been possible??

Yet we all play the game to some extent. We all try to project what is going to happen in the future. If I go to this school and get this degree then I can do that thing over there. If I invest in that thing I will be rich. If I marry that person I will live happily ever after.

Isn’t that what all the stories and legends are all about…Once upon a time and happily ever after? Not the present moment awareness is happily ever after. Yet if all do is live moment to moment how will I ever get anything meaningful done. Even in the planting of a garden I am in some small way living into the future. I have to plant to today to reap tomorrow. Aren’t I outside the present moment when I am doing that? Yes I am.

Yet there is no way to plan for the future without being outside the present moment. There is no way to create a legacy, build a business, or even build a house without making future plans. So how am I going to be here now and still project myself into event in the future?

I am going to be 100% committed to what I am doing right now. Even if what I am doing is planning for the future. Even if what I am doing is playing what if? Now there may be some what if games that are more productive than others. But I need to be 100% attentive to the moment I am in, even if the moment I am working on is future related. There is no way to live in this world and do nothing other than be completely, totally focused on only the present. I need to do things that will have an effect in the future on things that will affect me and other people. I am not a monk in a cave, meditating on the nature of the present.

But I need to be careful how much energy I put into the what ifs. It is one thing to plan for the future, to create a vision and a mission to live into. And when I am doing that activity that is my focus. But how much energy do I want to put into playing fantasy games? What if that truck had hit my car? Do I really want to focus on that possibility? What if I had gone to different school, taken a different job, fell in love with someone else? There is no mileage in this game…I cannot change the past. I can plan for the future, not plan for the past. And I cannot allow the past to dictate the future. So If I want to live in San Diego I need to get present to that possibility and start designing a life that will take me there. This is diametrically opposed to fantasizing about what life would have been like had I moved there 20 years ago.

Present moment awareness says I can create my life by being focused on the activity I am doing now, provided that activity is moving me toward the outcome I want to reach. I often see people spending a huge of amount of energy worrying about what might happen…spiraling out of control into depression and self abuse. This is not present moment awareness.

I start every moment with a breath. And I finish that moment with a breath. In between is all the rest. In the beginning and the end is breath. When in doubt I go back to breath, completely focused and in that moment. So when I start wondering about what If…I go back to my breath. It may take more than a few, by the way, but eventually your monkey mind will stop hopping around, stop zooming here and there and you will begin to return to center. Then in your breath you can begin to plan and work and work the plan.

Now what if I stop breathing???

This week’s recipe….
The Smoothie is one of my favorite ways to get fast nutrition.
1 frozen banana (a way to use those ripe bananas…peel and freeze)
Handful of frozen blueberries
You can use cantaloupe or strawberries or just about any fruit you want just don’t go overboard!
½ cup Plain yogurt --- I like Greek yogurt or goat yogurt
1 organic free range local egg (Thanks Toni)…not everyone will eat a raw egg so you can leave this out if you want
1 tbsp flax seed oil
2 tbsp of your favorite protein powder…egg, whey, hemp, whatever as long as it’s high quality…use more if you want especially if you didn’t use the egg.
2 tbsp of psyllium powder for fiber..this is optional
1cup pomegranate juice…you could use just about anything here but I like pomegranate or acai for their antioxidant properties.
A handful of ice
Blend until thick. Drink slowly so your brain doesn’t freeze!

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

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Sunday Story...You Made Your Bed

Sunday Story...You Made Your Bed


So you got up this morning and made your bed, brushed your teeth, and washed your face. Prepared your morning beverage and breakfast. When you looked out the kitchen window you saw nothing. There was nothing there. A blank slate. No trees, no sidewalks, no back yard, nothing. Just a big empty world, almost as if a giant pencil had erased everything you once knew and expected. Fear arises in your throat, almost choking and gagging you, like blue green sputum meant to be expelled. What now??

Every day is like this. You get to decide what your life is going to look like from here on out. It looks the way it looks because you designed it that way. Think of your life like a picture you drew when you were a child...the grass may have been blue and the sky green. Maybe you colored in the lines and maybe there were no lines...your art looked the way you wanted it to look. Your life is the same way...you are creating art every day you wake up.

Every day you get to live your mission. Even if you think you don't have one, you are living one...maybe someone else's mission, or the mission someone else picked out for you...but you living it nonetheless. So this morning as I looked out at that blank slate, that new world waiting for me to color it in, I got to decide how it would look.

My life looks the way it looks because I have made the decisions over the years to create it that way. Many years ago I wrote an advance biography of my life for a school project in the 8th grade. It is scary to look at that report and see all the things that have come true. My life was designed by a 13 year old kid. What!!!! Are you kidding me? Who put him in charge? And who left him in charge? Who wrote the report on your life? A 10 year old? Maybe a 4 year old? And when are you going to wrest control back? Isn't it time?

Do you have a written mission statement? A written vision statement? A set of goals that you have written down. Or are you living out of a vague sense of where you want to be? Some long lost career path that you went to when you were 19 or 20? Or worse yet are you just trudging down the path, myopically moving toward the day when you can “retire” and do nothing? Nothing? Really? If you aren't on a path now what makes you think you will be on a path when you “retire”? Or maybe your path is just one long trip in a rut that will end up as a grave after your 78.8 is up?

If you don't know where you are going, you can pretty much bet you are going to end up there. And if you keep doing what you are doing you can bet you are going to keep getting what you have gotten. So what are you going to do about your blank canvas that is the rest of your life, or even the rest of your day?

My mission statement is pretty clear...To lead an authentically transparent life purposefully designed to teach focus and inspire transformation. This is not the life I envisioned when I was 13. or 33. I am not living in the place I thought I would live. But I am living the way I knew I always would..with purpose and intent. And I fail often. More often than I would like to admit...but every once in a while I hit it.

You see, I always said I wanted to change the world. And about a dozen years ago I decided I better start right where I was, so I did. And yesterday a mother, after watching her children test for their first belt, came to me with tears in her eyes.
Her gratitude was evident and she was so happy with the transformation her children made in just a few short weeks. More focus and more confidence, more joy, and more respect. This is changing the world. I don't have to be Gandhi, or Mother Theresa. I don't have to mobilize thousands to my cause. If I can shift one attitude just one degree the effect over a lifetime will be immense.

The canvas is not so blank. I am painting it with the attitudes and shifts in consciousness I want to see in the world. Is my mission fulfilled ? Not yet? It will never be done. You see it is a quest, like the one for the grail. Elusive and stubborn, the ultimate goal will may never be reached, it is the journey, the path that is the joy, the lesson. In the painting I am painting the people in the world are focused and transformed into the people they were designed to be. Not who I think they should be or who anyone else thinks they should be but the people they were designed by their creator to be.

What are you doing to your canvas?

Namaste

John
"Teaching Focus Inspiring Transformation"

www.martialartsnevada.com
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://mondaygift.blogspot.com/

This Week's Recipe

Grilled Veggies

This is the time of year my outdoor grill gets overused.
And it is the time of year for fresh veggies!

These two things combine for a miraculous combination...

Grab your veggies...broccoli, carrots, beets, onions, cauliflower, asparagus, peppers whatever you can find...cut into pieces about 3 inches long so several will fit into the chard leaves (see below). Throw all these in a baking dish and drizzle with your favorite olive oil. Sprinkle crushed red pepper and maybe some powdered garlic. Chop some fresh rosemary and basil and mix. Toss it all together. Get some really big Swiss chard leaves and place the veggies in a leaf and wrap. Fasten with a skewer or toothpicks. Place in the tray above the grill if you have one. If not turn the heat down low and place the skewers on a pizza plate. Let the veggies roast/steam in the leaves for about 15 minutes. Unpin the leaves and squeeze lemon juice over the veggies. Serve with your favorite fish or chicken (also grilled!)

Sunday Story...Intensity

Sunday Story…Intensity

Recently I took the Crossfit certification course. Crossfit is an exercise modality that consists of highly varied, functional movements done with high intensity. Basically, the routine is that there is no routine. Whatever the workout is it is different from any other. Repetition is the enemy. This is a very different exercise modality than what most of us have been doing in the gym over the years.

In many ways what Crossfit does flies in the face of the current exercise common thought. The bottom line is fitness. Not looking good. Not having big muscles. Not spending hours on end doing mindless exercise. No, Crossfit is a training ground for athletes. And every one of you is an athlete. Somewhere inside of you there is an athlete lurking, waiting to bust out of the hard shell you have trapped them inside of. This is part of the reason we marvel at athletic games, especially the world cups, super bowls, and other championships. We love to watch highly trained people do things at the top of their games. And secretly we all want our bodies to do some measure of what those people can do.

Guess what…you already do. The difference is intensity. Every day you get out of a chair. Every day you bend over and pick something off the ground, reach over your head to put something away, walk from the store to your car carrying bags of things, pick up a child or bend over to talk to someone smaller/lower than you. These are all functional movements. Compound movements using more than one joint that cannot be broken done to any smaller movement. Things you do every day. Things you would want to do more often, easier and with more comfort.

I cannot dunk a basket ball. But I can work on my jumps. And I can be focused on what I am doing while I am doing it. And I can be very very intense when I am doing it. A professional athlete trains because he is called to do it. He or she will do it even when it is hard, or they just don’t feel like it. And they will train hard no matter what because they know that their competitor is training hard. An amateur trains when they feel like it. When it looks like fun and sometimes is just not connected to doing whatever it is they are doing.

This is the wrong attitude. I train to inhibit, to slow, to derail the process that is happening everyday to my body. I am getting older, so are you. Since about age 30 I have been on a slow yet slippery slope of degeneration and decrepitude. So have you. I am competing against time, age, and nature. I may not win but I believe I must try. And so I train with intensity and focus, like my competitior was on my tail or worse yet in front of me.

Many of you have given up the race. You have admitted defeat before you ever really got in the game. The good news is that you can still get back in the race. The human body is an amazing thing. Your bones are 4 times stronger than concrete. Your blood travels 60,000 miles on its journey. Your liver can de-toxify almost anything. Your job is to give your body the tools it needs to maintain and repair itself.

And one of those tools is focused intensity around exercise (the other two tools are rest and nutrition). Just getting on a bike and reading a book is not going to do it. How many people do you know that have been doing that for years and have not gotten any better and may have actually put on weight or inches? No intensity.

You know all those television preachers? Screaming and yelling and ranting and raving? Intensity. An NBA basket ball coach screaming on the sidelines? Intensity. An Olympic power lifter getting ready to deadlift 1000 pounds? Intensity. Two fighters facing off across the ring? Intensity. A single minded focus upon one thing. No multi tasking, no distractions, no maybe, no sort of, no hedging or playing it safe. No questioning why…just to do or to die. Intensity.

Where are you applying intensity in your life? Watching TV? I think not. Going to the job you hate? I think not. Friday night out with your friends? I think not. Where then? Where are you playing full out? Where?

It is time for you to start playing a full out, championship style game. Pick a place and start turning your powerful laser beam focus on to that spot. Fitness? Food? Education? Where will you be the next Jordan in your life? Where will you give a herculean effort to the endeavor? What would you do, what would you be if you knew you could not fail? If you know your focus and intensity was going to drive you to heights you only previously dreamed of? How intense could you get? Would it be worth it? In a word…YES?

Highly intense. Constantly varied. Functional movement. Sounds a lot like life doesn’t it? Or it would if we got off the couch and into the world and started living into the power and purpose you were sent here to perform. You can do this…you just have to decide and take one step. The rest is simple (not easy).

This week’s recipe….
It’s summer…start picking stuff!
Grilled Pepper encrusted Ahi Salad
Take some black peppercorn and a tablespoon of rosemary and crush the two of them together.
Get some Ahi Tuna (I buy mine at Costco) and rub the pepper rosemary mixture on it.
Throw it on the grill for 5 or 6 minutes. (3 minutes or so each side) ---more if you want it more well done.
Get fresh greens, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers raw zucchini, cilantro, and anything else you pick in your garden and make a big salad.
Slice an avocado (eat ½ or 1/3)
Dice up a mango
Fan the avocado on the side of the plate and put the diced mango in top.
Cover the rest of the plate with the greens.
Slice the Ahi and fan over where the salad and the avocado meet. Serve with a nice sparkling water.
Salad dressing: 1/3 olive oil, 2/3 vinegar (I uses ½ balsamic and ½ apple cider with a tsp. or so of plum vinegar)
Simple and easy and healthy.
Enjoy!!!


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

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Feel Good Friday...The Throw-away Society

Feel Good Friday…The Throw-away Society

We throw away so much stuff every day. The size of my trash can is an embarrassment. Even though I only put it out once a month or so it still feels like way too much. Why do we feel the need to use paper towels or disposable cups? Trash bags to fill with trash to put in the trash can? And then where does it all go? Even if we ship it ½ way across the world it is still in out own backyard. Because we are all connected...one to another across the entire earth. We really need to get this into our consciousness, that we are all connected and what we do here on this continent in this little town affects people 10,000 miles away.

Julia Butterfly Hill has been an activist for a long time now. In this video she talks about the disposability consciousness:

http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=1829

As usual very thought provoking.

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

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Sunday Story...My Father

Sunday Story…My Father

This is an ode to my Father, who reads these stories each Sunday. My mother prints them out (using larger typeface, I suspect) and he reads them at his leisure. He has health and physical challenges that break my heart as he lives through the twilight of his life. As I look at his life through the lens of my own I want to honor him and let him know, just a little bit, the impact his life has had on mine. So Dad, this one’s for you.

My father was first and foremost a teacher. He taught school for most of the years that I was growing up. But mostly he taught me and my brothers what it means to be a man and how to walk in the world.

I learned many important lessons…how to pluck and dress a bird after you have killed it, and how to gut a fish. Checking the oil and fluids in the car every time you fill it up with gas and how to drive a nail. Mowing the lawn and cleaning the pool, reading, writing and arithmetic. But these lessons could have been gotten almost anywhere.

No, the education my father really taught me was much more important than those day to day things. Little things like empathy and compassion. The power of a promise and keeping your word. Knowing the difference between commitment and involvement. Holding your center and staying the course. Doing well by doing good and taking care of the least among us.

When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, my father used to fish for catfish with a man who, I believe, was the janitor at one of the schools he worked at. Now remember this was the early 60’s and this man was black. And when I asked my father why he went fishing with that “nigger” the look of sadness that came upon him was palpable. He asked why I would use that word and where I had heard it. In that day and age that word was common in the school yards and many other places. I had no good answer, not knowing the various meanings and import of that particular word. He gently explained to me that this man was a good fisherman and a good man and the color of his skin had no bearing upon his abilities, or his character. He considered this man his friend and as such was my friend as well. This man was a man who deserved respect and honor. He raised his family and worked hard and was honest and loved. He was the same as I was, the same as my father. Thanks Dad.

Apparently I didn’t quite get it because several years later my father was teaching special ed in a little town in central Washington. No in those days special ed was much different than today. Most of these children had noticeable and severe challenges, ranging from Down’s syndrome to developmentally disabled as well as physically disabled. And I asked why he was teaching those “retards”. This time the anger that arose was truly frightening. To this day I consider myself lucky to have gotten the answer instead of a smack upside the head (which if I got I have forgotten). I still remember her answer…”those children deserve our love and care. They didn’t ask to be this way and there is very little reason you or I aren’t the same way. They are some of the most precious souls on the planet and they teach me something every day. Maybe you should spend some time with them and find out who they really are.” Today every time I hear the word retard I visibly cringe and correct the speaker…and it seems that it is a common insult on today’s playgrounds. I tell this story every time I hear it. And I have learned more about love and happiness from the time I have spent with those wonderful people than anywhere else. I highly recommend it as a lesson in humility and unconditional love. Thanks Dad

There were the coaching moments and the ball games and many many more. There was the lesson in allowing me to go my own way and ignore his very good advice…several times. And when I parented my own children I would often ask myself what would my dad would do or say.

When my brother died some time ago I learned one of the most important things…to allow yourself to be moved, to feel. My brother, Jay, was a hellion. Yet in his 30’s he had settled down into family life like many of us. His passing was sudden and accidental in many ways. When I hugged my father after the service he broke down and cried. In that moment I learned that a real man can feel and show emotion and still walk as a man. There was no weakness in loss and no escape from the depth of sadness necessary. It was, in fact, the best example of manhood in the world…Strength fashioned from core values of love and respect and honor and compassion and love. We cried together and in that moment I understood once and for all what this thing of being a man was all about. Thanks Dad.

I struggle every day to live into my Father’s legacy. He wasn’t perfect but he left me with the pillars of who I am today. I often am asked why I do the things I do…the community garden, the commitment to change and transformation, the desire to help those who struggle, the need to constantly be looking to evolve and grow. The answer is simple…My Father expects it of me.

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

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