Sunday Story...You are in Charge

Your health care is up to you.
What you eat is up to you.
How you spend your time is up to you.
Who you spend your time with is up to you.
What you put in your mind is up to you.
Your fitness is up to you.

Self control says that we are in charge of what we think, say and do. And we are, except when we abdicate our responsibility. Which way too many of have done way too often over the course of our lives.

Somewhere along the way someone started piling on “shoulds” onto our lives. Somewhere we thought we could get a magic pill to be skinny, fit, funny, and rich. There is no magic pill. There is no magic formula, no secret that is going to make you millions of dollars if you just think or say a certain thing. There is no expert who, if you just do exactly what he/she says all your prayers will be answered and your life will perfect from now on forward.

Too often we want to give up our self-control and just take the easy way out. Let someone else be responsible for once, let them tell us what to do and let them take the blame when it doesn’t work. This is not good for you. This is not a recipe for success. This is not a way to have the life you want to have. This is the way to try and live someone else’s life. This is the road to frustration and unhappiness and this road is paved with good intentions, shoulds, and the broken shards of other lives.

Do want to be healthy? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get off your medications? Then start taking responsibility for the way you look and feel right now. Fat is not genetic. Sure you can be heavy and healthy and you can be skinny and sick. But health is best measured by fitness. Your physician is in charge of your sick care. You are in charge of your health care. You are in charge of your fitness. You don’t have to be an Olympian, unless you want to be an Olympian, that is. But, honestly, you should be able to lift things over your head, pick stuff off the ground, not be afraid to fall down (because you can’t get up), and you should be able to walk for an hour or two without thinking you are going to die.

The facts are pretty simple…you are the most important person in your life. To put it in another way…in the movie of your life you are the star not a bit player. Your doctor is not the star, you kids can be very important but they aren’t the stars of your movie, they have their own movies to star in! Take responsibility for what your life looks like right now. You have made it what it is at this very moment. For better or worse it was all your doing. You don’t have to, though. You can blame your parents, your doctor, your employer, your spouse, your kids, your dog, your whatever or you can say wait a minute I am in charge of this thing and I am going to make it right.

Listen up…if what you have been doing isn’t working…CHANGE IT! Why do think that if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again you will get a different result? You have just defined insanity. You have been going to the gym 5 day a week for years and you still are as unfit as ever? Gee...maybe you need to do something else…YOU THINK? You have tried every diet known to man and nothing ever works a permanent solution? Maybe you need a different food LIFESTYLE! You doctor says you must be on this pill or that pill even though your symptoms have abated? Why? Because he knows you have not changed the thing that caused the symptoms!!!! Once you change that you won’t need the pills anymore! But that is up to you not him or me or anyone else.

If you want what you have never had…you must do what you have never done. You Must Do What You Have Never Done to Get What You have Never Had. Simple but it does require a quantum shift in your perspective. A shift of epic proportions, maybe, but a shift nonetheless.
Let’s get busy and be the star of our own movie!

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

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Sunday Story...Excuses

“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.”

I have a pocket full of excuses, both mine and the ones I hear every day. There is no shortage of excuses anywhere in the world for any endeavor. The list is long and very imaginative. And they can be used to rationalize just about any failure to perform or even to attempt.

I am not going to catalog the parade of excuses here although I have to admit to being highly amused by many of them. The fact is simple: if you want to have an excuse for not doing something it won’t be hard to find one or two or one for everyday of the week. The problem arises when you employ a year of excuses and look down at the growing belly hanging over your belt, or your continuing health problems, or your poor financial condition. Those excuses are building a house of failure. Those excuses are an anchor tethering you to the bottom of an ocean of despair and desperation. Those excuses are killing you.

Here is my favorite excuse: “Everything in moderation.” Really? Heroin in moderation? Bank Fraud in moderation? Meth in moderation? Ask Lance Armstrong…a little blood doping in moderation? Maybe a bee sting for those of you allergic? Does that epi-pin come in a moderate size? How about a little pesticide in your cereal? It’s in moderation! Most things are not good in moderation. Everything in moderation is an excuse for being non-compliant on your diet, exercise program or attitude. How about your bad attitude…OK…in moderation? Really?

We see this a lot around food…you are lactose intolerant but anything in moderation, yes? How is your bellyache? Moderate? How about the brain fog you get after eating gluten? Moderate? I mean you can’t tell me to eat dairy in moderation when one bite will start the process of my intestinal distress. Everything in moderation is the worst thing you can tell yourself. Just a little bit won’t hurt, right? I mean everything in moderation! NOOOOOO! Not everything in moderation, nothing in moderation…just don’t do it…don’t eat sugar, not one bite, not one because it’s Halloween and you love peanut butter m&m’s or peeps on Easter and you always have to eat some of Aunt Jane’s fudge and we wouldn’t want to offend her even though a lifetime of eating fudge has, well, let’s not go there shall we?

We are going into what I refer to as the candy season…Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years are all going to pile temptation after temptation upon you. If you take the moderation approach you will still end up with that house of Failure on January 2nd and a New Year’s resolution that is going to look a lot like every other year’s resolution. Don’t go there. Just SAY NO.
This leads us to the real point:
“Today I will do what other people won’t so Tomorrow I can do what other people can’t.”
Results are the bricks that create the foundation of a house of success. So go out and start building that house.

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

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Sunday Story...Here Comes da Judge

So, I’m out shopping the other day at my local grocery store (a place I don’t go very often) and while I am in the checkout line I look around at my neighbor’s cart. And as much as I hate to admit it, I am looking at the contents of the cart and looking at him and making a cascade of decisions about who he is and why he is the way he is. Keep in mind I have never seen this person before today. Yet here I am deciding what kind of diet he is eating, why he has a 30 pound keg hanging over his belt and maybe even throwing in a couple judgments about his education, career, and child rearing.

This is horrible and wrong of me. There is no other way to put it. And what is even worse? I also get up on my high horse about what’s in my cart and who I am. This is arrogant and ugly. I have no business being this way, my mother taught me better than that. I teach my students better than that. And, in my heart of hearts, I know better.

But I can’t help it. As hard as I try I look over at that cart laden with soda, boxes of crackers and breads, frozen prefab food and I smirk a smug little smirk. I get to feel superior with my meat and bacon and coconut oil and odd vegetables and lots of green things. All because I am sure my eating habits are vastly better, more well thought out, and healthier.

Honestly I do the same thing in any number of other places.
And to be totally honest, with yourself, so do you. Maybe you are looking in my cart and smirking the self assured smirk of the committed vegan or vegetarian. Maybe you look over and see self abnegation and no fun in my cart. And you judge. Sometimes harshly sometimes relatively kindly but you still judge.

I suspect I will never break this habit.
The part of it I (and you) need to temper, to dial down, is the critical condemnation of the other person. Judgment helps keep my safe in certain circumstances. Judgment helps me discern the behaviors that align with principles.
Being critical of others does not help me with my own principles. As a matter of fact, it is in direct conflict with many of those principles…compassion, understanding and empathy come to mind.

I don’t know where the other person has been to get where they are today with the cart they have. For all I know they used to eat only ice cream, Oreos and chips and drink coca-cola exclusively. Their cart today is stupendous improvement over that. And maybe that keg hanging over the belt? Used to be 2 kegs. I don’t know. And I am wrong to be critical of who that person is being today since I have no concept of who they were yesterday.

My judgment says more about me than it does about the other person. What I do with that judgment says everything about me. Do I use it to find compassion, to find a way to be of service, to be understanding and empathetic? Or am I using it to feel better about myself, to let my arrogance and snooty nature rear up?

You get to decide. In the meantime don’t let your cart judgment get away from you…you never know who might be sitting in judgment of your cart!!!

Happy Shopping!


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

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Sunday Story...56 Birthdays

My birthday was Thursday…again for the 56th time on the 4th of October. This is something odd about being this particular age at this particular time.

I have had a hard time with my birthday for a long time. Some of it is the time of year…early October and the seasons are changing. Shorter days, colder mornings, crispness and a nip in the air signal winter is coming. I love summer, the heat and the sun and the water and the seemingly free feelings that go along with my memories of summer. So there is a certain melancholy around now that I have a hard time shaking off. So when my birthday arrives, for me, I know summer is lost and winter is just around the summer.

That being said, I do love the early fall….fresh apples, pumpkins and squash, falling leaves and the warm, warm afternoon sun. A time we often refer to as “Indian Summer”. And, although winter is coming there is sweetness in the air that comes before the winter’s long sleep. So, for me my birthday time is a bittersweet neighborhood that I often have a hard time enjoying.

Some of my trouble around my birthday is sadness for the things I have not done, have not yet accomplished. And it seems, the longer I live the longer the list is of things left undone. I can’t change this. Some of those things will never be done…they are the province of a much younger me. A me who didn’t have the will, or the wherewithal, or the drive to get those things done and looking back probably didn’t even know he should have been doing them. Such is a life lived, a life viewed in the rear view mirror.

This year I had no big plans, no “thing off the bucket list to do”. I have jumped out of airplanes once or twice for my birthdays, gone helicopter snow-boarding (no, not in October, later), and several other adventures (OK I did do the Tough Mudder a couple weeks ago). Not this year. This year I am on a mission…a mission to go to the CrossFit Games. This is a 12 month long quest to improve my fitness across the board. At the “open” part of the Games (the qualifier) last year I was 53rd in my age group. To get to the games I have to be in the top 20. There were over 500 competitors in my age group last year (55-59) worldwide. I am sure there will be more this year and I am sure they will be stronger, faster, and better than last year.

My diet has to improve. For those of you who know me you may find that one hard to believe. But yes it needs to get even more dialed in, even more exact with less room for “cheats”.
My rest has to improve. This is a huge hurdle for me. Like many of you I came up in a time when we bragged about how little sleep we could operate on. ‘I got 4 hours of sleep and I have been going for 16 hours now…”this is bad juju folks. You cannot improve performance on less sleep. Your cortisol (a stress related hormone) goes off the charts and your diet becomes less effective and your performance goes down the tube. Your body and your mind can only take so much of that and then bad things begin to happen. Too much cortisol and you put on weight. Too much cortisol and you get injured. Too much cortisol and your emotional state goes from “happy-go-lucky” to “there’s a dark cloud hovering over my head”. None of those things will contribute to peak performance.
My technique has to improve. This is a practice thing. This is showing up every day and working on movements that are difficult and challenging. Even in the face of failure. Even in the face of often going backwards or having to take 3 or 4 steps back towards the beginning. This is approaching things with the “beginners” mind...listening to coaching and implementing the suggestions.
My strength has to improve. That means increasing the volume of work. That means moving more weight longer distances. That means finding reserves of strength that I don’t know about at present. That means getting up in the morning and hurting from the previous day’s work and doing even more today.
Overall, my general physical preparedness needs to improve. Then my ability to perform on demand needs to improve. Then my mental fortitude needs to be strengthened. This is my quest this year.

This morning I did a workout called “Grace” it was part of a fundraising effort in the CrossFit community to provide mammograms for low income and uninsured women and men. The workout was simple…take 135 pounds, pull it off the floor to your chest and then jerk it overhead (a clean and jerk). This year I finished in 5:20…an improvement of over 2 minutes and 30 seconds from last fall and I will need to be faster yet. It is possible to get stronger, no matter how old you are. It is possible to get faster, no matter how old you are. It is possible to get better, no matter how old you are.

Someone asked me what I wanted for my birthday…how about a donation to Barbells for Boobs? Go here: https://support.barbellsforboobs.org/individual-fundraising/JMariotti/
Support the effort. My good friend, Wendy Tustin, has, in 1 year, gone through hell with breast cancer. Support this effort so other people can get early detection and maybe experience less hell than she has.

In the meantime, I will get better. And in April I will be ready to qualify for the Games. And in July I will be ready to run with the big dogs and yes give them a serious run for the top dog slot!


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

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