Sunday Story...Get Fit or ?

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/

Sunday Story...Let Them Eat Cake

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/

Sunday Story...Opening Night, Closing Day

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/

Sunday Story...The Willl Garden

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/

Sunday Story...Shift Happens (or not)

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/

Feel Good Friday...The Fukushima 50

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

Follow me at:
Twitter --- http://m.twitter.com/jmariotti
FaceBook --- John Mariotti
Blog Spots…John Mariotti
http://feel-good-friday.blogspot.com/
http://sunday-stories.blogspot.com/