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

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

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

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

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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