Sunday Story...A Second Life

I will bet many of you read that title and went right to the resurrection, living dead, or reincarnation. But that is not the second life I am talking about. Those things are out of my purview. The second life I am talking about is the one you can have now, the one you could have had all along if you only knew you wanted it, knew what it was, or knew you it was just around a different bend in the road.

Maybe you get lucky one day and get a slight glimpse of that other life in passing. Maybe you are really smart and you realize the life you are living is not the life you want. Maybe you just happen to be in the right place one day and fall into your new life. Maybe you know it and you work really, really, really hard to create that second life for yourself.

The fact is simple…most of us live lives we think we are supposed to live. We were told our life had to look a certain way, that we had to do certain things, that without a particular piece or two our lives would be without meaning and purpose. We get these notions from our parents, our cultural upbringing, our peers, from lots of places. But, really, the person we get this idea of what life is supposed to look like is from ourselves. We think we are supposed to do certain things, be a certain way, and live in a certain place surrounded by certain people.

But over the years we begin to realize the color of the life we are living isn’t really colorful at all. Rather, it is just various shades of gray, some lighter and some darker but all of them just a drab, unchanging, drizzling shade of overcast gray. We know the true color of our life is somewhere else. We expected it to be here, right where we are but it isn’t. At least it isn’t anymore. And we begin to look around a little more carefully inspecting other lives, other ways of being, looking for a life of color, one that excites and incites passion.

Then one day, perhaps like a slow dawning of light or maybe like the crack of a thunderbolt we see our second life…the life of passion and intent and purpose. The life we really were meant to lead. The life we had been meaning to create all along, before we allowed our fear and carful constructs to place us here in this life of cinder block gray. It is never easy to admit we were wrong, it is never easy to say this path is not my path. But if you want that second life you will. If you want that full Technicolor version of life, the full flavored, exciting life you really should be living you are going to have to let go of all those pre-conceived notions of what it is supposed to be and figure out how to let fly into the great unknown.

If you are alive, keep working at it. That second life is out there for you if you are willing to break out of the cocoon you have encased yourself in. There is hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. You will reach it and when you do and you emerge into the light of your second life the world will be a much better place for your presence.

We are waiting. You are the one we are waiting for.

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

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Sunday Story...1 More

You can always do more than you think you can.

Sometimes the difference of 1 more can make all the difference. I am sure this has appeared in this blog before but there is a short movie out there called “212: The Extra Degree”. You can see it here: http://play.simpletruths.com/movie/212-the-extra-degree/ .

The bottom line is that it is often just that one extra degree that separates the good from the great, the average from the extraordinary, and the mundane from the amazing. At 211 degrees water is just hot. At 212 degrees water boils and boiling water transforms into steam and steam can power a locomotive. Just one degree transforms water into something else entirely.

This is a very powerful concept when you think about it. That single degree changes the expectation we have for water. As matter of fact steam engines transformed our entire industrial revolution. And one degree can take your life to places far beyond the ordinary, far beyond your expectations. If you can grasp this concept, if you can own this principle, if you have goals that are clear and reachable, if your attitude is unimpeachable, if you take action and stay in action, then your life will change in ways unimaginable. It’s your life, they are your results, you get to decide on the direction it is going to go.

Think about this very simple idea…if you are going 70mph on the freeway and you adjust your steering 1 degree, how long will it take before you are in a different lane and heading off the road? I am sure there is someone out there who can formulize this but the bottom line is not very long. This is true of so many things in life. But the bottom line is doing just one more can make all the difference in the world.

It might be one more step on your walk. It might be one more rep on your work out. It might be one more page on your reading, one more problem on your homework, one more kind word, one more act of kindness. One more might not just make all the difference to you but it might also make an even bigger difference to someone else.

I know time is going to run out. I know you are going to be tired. I know your body is telling you to stop. I know you really don’t want to go on, I know you really don’t think you can do one more. But you can. You can reach down deep and find that little bit left that will give you one more. And in that one more you will find something truly remarkable. You will find yourself doing what you have never done before. And even in the attempt to do one more you will discover the spaciousness to get even more next time.

If you want what you have never had, you must do what you have never done. And sometimes that means doing 1 more.

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

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Sunday Story...Like a Baby

We all expect babies to sleep…a lot. We know they are growing, we know that they need sleep to be healthy. So what about you big babies? You need sleep too…and more than you are getting if the stories I hear are correct. We have talked about this before and here we go again.

When you body doesn’t rest for hours in a stretch it never gets a chance to become healthier and to recharge and rejuvenate. If you are eating healthy (and I know you are!), if you are working out your entire body (this includes your central nervous system), and you are not sleeping for 8 to 10 hours in a stretch, you are not as healthy as you could be. It is really that simple. Your legs need to rest after a big squat day and your nervous system need to rest after an intense effort of sprints or metabolic conditioning. Just like eating processed junk will feel good as an initial rush, that rush wears off at great expense to our internal organs, so, too, does lack of sleep exact an enormous cost on our nervous, endocrine (hormonal), and emotional systems. If drinking coffee all day, falling asleep in the mid afternoon and sucking up 5 hour energy drinks is your modus operandi you are not giving your body the tools it needs to perform at optimum levels. And sooner or later things are going to fail…and this means it is going to be harder to lose weight and will even cause that insidious belly fat we all love to hate.

Make sleep a priority
Turn off the electronics. Do you really need to sleep with your phone under the pillow or by the bed? Really? Do you need the flashing lights of the clock or the TV playing all night? If you think so, you have brainwashed yourself. All of these things will affect your cortisol level. And cortisol is the hormone closely tied to stress. If a bear is chasing you, your cortisol would go through the roof. This is going to create a state of confusion in your body. It won’t be able to shut down and rest if cortisol is present. Additionally the presence of cortisol starts a cascade of other reactions, the result of which is an inability to lose weight or gain muscle.

The one thing to do in order to reset your sleep cycle is to start living life more closely connected to the outside world. Get up in the morning and get some real, direct outside light. This will tell your brain it’s time to get up and go. At bedtime the same thing applies, turn down the lights, and turn off the computer, the TV, the phone, and the rest of the gizmos. If you don’t set up correctly you won’t be successful (just like when you are lifting weights!)

Get a routine
In the morning after getting a dose of bright outside light (if possible) and getting a bit of a cold shower (3 minutes is a lot or just get in and let it warm up on you!) get some protein in your body. This will help re set your cortisol response. It will also start your day free from cravings and hunger issues.

The pre-sleep snack
Before you hit the hay protein is not going to help. Fat will assist in regulating blood sugar through the night and a slow digesting carbohydrate source help the serotonin to level up with the dopamine in your brain. What are we talking about? A sweet potato with coconut butter is a big winner here. Believe it or not when your night time hormones a firing the way they are supposed to your dreams will tell you all is alright in Who-ville.


GOING TO BED HUNGRY IS THE DUMBEST THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR BODY!

I know a lot of people think eating after 6PM is a big no-no…and this may be true if you are going to bed at 8PM. But you aren’t. Hunger is stress and stress causes cortisol to go up and cortisol wakes you up. Now your brain is awake. And your brain is a revolving door of thought that is going to keep you up all night.

Before you go to bed do these things:

One hour before bed:
Start your routine…brush your teeth, wash your face, turn the lights down, no media. There is a direct correlation between good sleep and longer life.

30 minutes before bed:
Drink a herbal tea or another decaffeinated natural drink, spend a bit of time with family or roommates, read an passage from a good uplifting book.

Bedtime means Lights Out!
Complete darkness is the key here. Lose the little light in the corner; get blackout curtains to cut the street lights, make sure all the various noise making devices are silenced, and keep the temperature (62-65 degrees) down in your bedroom if possible. It will take a bit of getting used to this. Years of bad habits don’t disappear overnight. It is going to take your body and mind some bit of time to catch up to this more natural state. This is your time…the time for your body and mind to recharge and rejuvenate.

Plan on setting aside 10 hours for this process…1 hour of preparation and 9 hours for sleep. Maybe you won’t go the whole 9 hours the first week but if you give it time you will and even if you only sleep for 6 or 7 hours straight that will be 6 or 7 hours of official rested hours…which is more than you are getting now I would bet. The worst thing would be to get 7 hours of sleep and then get up. You will get much more done after 7 hours of sleep that you would trying to get things done after being up for 12 hours.

If you are doing all of this but still can’t sleep
Sometimes medical intervention is necessary to jumpstart your cortisol reactions and to reset your circadian rhythms. Get a 24 hour cortisol saliva reading. Don’t just get a sleep aid. Get to the bottom of the issue first. Make sure you are doing all of the above things first. And stop ingesting caffeine for 30 days. Caffeine creates a stress reaction in your body and what happens under stress? Cortisol happens. Gaining weight happens. If you are already stressed out, do you really want to add more stress in the form of caffeine to your life?

Sleep Well, Sleep Long.

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

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Sunday Story...183

This week, as many of you already know, was the opening of the CrossFit Games. This is an event I have had my eye on since last year. Last year I ended up 53rd in my age group in the world. This was not bad considering I really had no idea about what the competition was about or how to strategize the workouts. So I set myself on a mission over the year to improve my performance in every area…strength, coordination, speed, balance, flexibility, cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, agility, power, accuracy. I knew I would need to improve at least 20% across all of those domains to even think about getting to the “big show” in July.

I needed to improve my gymnastic skills, increase my strength, get faster and get in better condition. All of this in the face of an aging body and still get better at TaeKwon-Do and Jiu-Jitsu. I got help from lots of places…Jim Fitzsimmons at UNR CrossFit, Jason Swanson and Alena Yancey at Battle Born CrossFit, the staff at CrossFit Brand X in San Diego, Kelly Starret the joint and mobility guru from MobilityWOD, and all the athletes here at Relentless Martial Arts…Ellie McKenzie, Brian and Linda Pike, Denise Schnauer, Monique Lovrin, Dani Northington, Heather Robie, and a bunch of others. These folks have watched and cheered and seen my struggles every day. And worked out with me and cheered me on. And put up with some particular brand of cranky from time to time (hardly noticeable, really!) They believed. Of course my Mother and my daughter Shelle have been so encouraging and promised to get to Carson CA when I get there. They believed.

This piece today isn’t about training methods or max effort lifts, or how to improve this or that although I can tell you that nutrition is the biggest foundational piece, closely followed by sleep. Today isn’t about what you should or shouldn’t do in these realms of physical fitness although I could certainly shed some insight on the subject.

Today is about answering a simple question that Coach Jim Fitzsimmons asked me first…Why do you want to go to the games? At the time I had a flip answer about wanting to wear the cool pants like all the rest of the cool kids. Another friend asked…What was the motivation, why would I want to work so hard for something, to get somewhere that might not even be possible for me? Again my answer was flip…”Because I can.”

The answer to those questions is simple really and I find it in a quote from Coach John Wooden:
“Success is the peace of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
So…Why the games? To be the best I am capable of being in this particular arena. The games is an open measurement of improvement from year to year. It isn’t about beating someone else or being better than they are, it is about besting your own performance, about doing the best you are capable of doing. This requires dedication, a plan, coaching, a focus on work and perspicacity (a clarity of vision or intellect which provides a deep understanding and insight). It really isn’t about getting to games. It is about getting to the level of improvement that allows me to be the absolute best I can be. Am I there? I may be as good as I can get right now but I am not as good as I am going to get. There are more things to improve. There are more things to get stronger at doing, more things to get faster at doing, skills to get even more skillful at doing.

This is something any of us can do…this drive for success, this drive to make the effort to be the absolute best you are capable of becoming. It isn’t about athletic performance. It isn’t about business performance, it isn’t about any one thing…it is about searching for the best you are capable of in whatever area you choose to seek it.

Guess what you have to do first?


BELIEVE.

By the way…183 is the number of repetitions from the first Workout this week. I did it twice and improved by 35% from Friday to Sunday. My best this week.

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

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Sunday Story...Out of the Bucket

People are crazy-making sometimes. We hear it from all kinds of places, our friends, our relatives, our co-workers, our significant others and strangers. They say things that try to undermine your goals, they say things that ridicule your efforts, and they say things that try to pull you back down in the bucket. Like the story of the crabs in the bucket…when one tries to crawl out the others reach up and pull him back down. Whether its diet, working out, learning new skills or changing your outlook and perspective you can always find a bunch of people who will tell you it can’t be done, that you can’t do it, they tried it and it won’t work or that you aren’t good enough. My favorite is “you’re obsessed.”

You are right I am obsessed. I am not balanced. I have make a conscious choice to pursue something I think is worth giving my entire being over to, at least for this time being. The people who are harsh and intimidating, overbearing and rude can get out of the way. They are the nay-sayers, the status quo crabs trying to keep us down in the bucket.


These are the people who question everything you are doing, the y question valid scientific results, they question your results. These people need to be shut out of your life after you learn from them what not to be. None of what they are saying is going to help you on your journey toward optimum health and fitness, toward your goals of learning new skills or knowledge, toward your building of the life you desire. These people are trying to make you feel stupid and trying to get you off your track.

Although they may wear on you, although they may even have you cast doubt on your mission, you must not let them move you off your path. You must have a strategy to deal with them. What have you done in the past? What will you do in the future? Mediocrity is rampant in our society and misery loves company. When everyone is unhealthy it is easy to be just like them and commiserate about the cost of prescriptions and doctor’s visits. You are the “outlier,” the one outside the box, the one that is forging new paths in new frontiers. You are scary to the crabs in the bucket.


I can’t control those people. They are doing what they are doing because it is what they are doing. It has no bearing on me UNLESS I allow it to pull me from my goals, to avert my eyes from the prize.

Here are a couple ideas:
Don’t take it personally. They are doing it because of them, their fears, their concerns, and their lives, NOT yours. It has nothing to do with you. Their opinion of you, our methods, and your goals is none of your business. Your business is achieving your goals.

Communicate, communicate, and communicate. You might be the one to have been hard or rude to someone in your sphere. Maybe you have invited the criticism by being overly didactic or sarcastic or something. If so, fix it. Take control of your actions and your words. If you want to be your best you must be your best in what you say, what you do, and what you think.

Stay the course. Be the person who keeps attacking, who never gives up, who gets up after falling down, who ignores the slings and arrows of personal attacks and hurtful words, who believes in the aristocracy of individual effort and vision.

You can do this, you can get it done. I believe in you.

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

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