Sunday Story...Get Up, Stand up

Sunday Story…Get Up, Stand Up

Yesterday two of my students were fooling around in class. This is not unusual for these two young men. As a matter of fact it is pretty much the code of the day. However, one of them almost always blames or finds that the other one is causing the disruption. He refuses to take responsibility for what is happening around him. He gets mad and frustrated when the discipline is meted out to both of them. The other one, on the other hand, takes responsibility for what is happening and accepts the consequences. He just would rather goof around than be compliant. So…which position is better?

Personal Responsibility doesn’t mean it’s my fault or I am to blame. Personal responsibility means I am not going to blame circumstances or fear or fate or failure for the way my life looks. Personal responsibility means I am going to stand up and be counted for what is happening in my life.
When I do something wrong, I stand up.
When I do something right I stand up.
When I do something that hurts someone else, I stand up.
When I do something that helps someone else I stand up.
When I do something that hurts me I stand up.
When I do something that is right for me I stand up.
When you choose to live this way the constant is that you stand up…constantly and consistently.

I often write about changing your life and about changing the world. I write about being the person you were put upon this earth to be. I write about being kind, about creating the life you want to lead. I write about living in a way that serves you and serves the people and the world around you. I write about optimum health and fitness. But all of those things take a back seat to personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility is the keystone to living life on your terms. Way too often, way too many of us are just taking what life gives us. We are trying to surf on an ocean of waves with a 2x4 and getting beat up for the effort. I don’t know about you but that just isn’t a lot of fun. I have done this. You have done this. We were just trying to get by, just trying to do what we had to do to get through one more day, month or year, thinking that if we just did x (whatever x is) everything would be ok. Guess what? It isn’t going to be OK. It isn’t going to get any better. Haven’t you noticed that every time we get x life throws us another curve ball? Just when you thought you had it all figured out the game changes? Just when you got all your proverbial ducks in a row someone decided that having your ducks in a row was the wrong thing to do. So what did you do? You chucked the ducks for the next thing it looked like life wanted from you.

How long are you going to continue this way? Aren’t you tired of it yet? I know I am. I can blame the economy for this or that. I can blame this President or the other one. I can look at my life and say I got some bad breaks, that is isn’t my fault, not really, and I can figure that I just need to tough it out a while longer.
OR I can start by standing up. I can stand up and take responsibility for my life, for what has happened to me and for what is going to happen to me in the future. I can stand up and begin to put my life in the order I want it to be rather than allowing life to shove me around like some flotsam in the ocean.

I am not saying this is easy by the way. Because it is not easy. It may sound simple but it isn’t easy. It is going to require a shift in how you view the world and your place in it. You must begin to believe that you are the captain of your ship. You must begin to believe that life is an ocean and if you don’t sail on it with purpose and direction you will end up wherever the currents and prevailing winds push you. And honestly, unless you are very lucky, that is probably not where you want to go.

The direction personal responsibility will send you will be one of your choosing. And just like sailing on the ocean you will need to make course corrections from time to time. You will need to check your compass, recalibrate where you are in reference to where you want to be and make adjustments. You might even have to change destinations to achieve what you really want. But the keyword in all of those sentences is you, I, me…the personal pronouns of personal responsibility.
I am responsible for my life.
I decide where I want to go and how I am going to get there.
I stand up for me.
I stand up for what is right and what is wrong in my life.
I do the work to fix it.
I am powerful because I am the captain of the ship that is my life.

It is never too late to take your power. No matter where you are today. No matter how old you are, no matter how poor, or rich, no matter the state of your health, unless you are dead and in a box, you can take the helm of your ship and start piloting it. So go ahead, decide that your life belongs to you and take the wheel.

Get up and Stand up.

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

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Sunday Story...Sweetness

Sunday Story…Sweetness

There is a drug so powerful that it addicts almost 100% of the people who use it. It is so insidious that the effects can only be seen over time. Yet the short term effects are immediate and noticeable in almost 100% of users. Long term it has been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, neurological disorders, digestive issues, high blood pressure, lever disease, dementia, depression, and epilepsy.

This substance is so innocuous that it is virtually everywhere in our modern world. It appears as a dangerous and addictive white powder. It is available virtually anywhere and it is cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it is used in great quantities throughout our country. We manufacture tons of it and it does not occur naturally in nature.

It is everywhere. It is in our schools, our homes, our workplaces and our recreational centers. And it is killing us. We allow the schools to give it to our children as a reward. We give it to our children without thinking. I grew up on it and so did virtually everyone we know.

Most of us are addicted to it. We crave it and will ruin our health for it without thinking. The cravings are so powerful we will ruin our health before we try and quit. If we try to quit we will have withdrawal symptoms just like a crack or a heroin addict. It may be the hardest addiction to leave behind because we have been brainwashed to believe that it really isn’t ”that” bad.

The drug in question, the white powder I am talking about is sugar...the stuff that sits in the bowl on your kitchen table. You probably have a whole container of it somewhere in your house. Right now your children may have a whole bag of it stashed somewhere in the house. Of course their bag isn’t just pure sugar; no, their bag is worse. Brightly colored wrappers, fascinating logos and combined with other things to make it even more appealing and addictive they went out and begged on the streets for it just the other evening. And we, the adults, the grownups encouraged them to go. And some of us even shared in the spoils when it got home.

You may think this is radical thinking. How can a food be addictive? How can something that we thought was so good be so bad? There are lots of studies and books and articles that prove this out. And it isn’t just excess consumption, although excess consumption is very harmful. It appears that even a bit of consumption can have far reaching effects. And it is in almost everything you eat, if you eat any kind of processed food. For the record processed food is pretty much anything that isn’t meat, vegetables, fruit, seeds, or nuts. Bread, pasta, yogurt, chips, or pancake batter all have sugar.

And yes, fruit does have naturally occurring fructose (a monosaccharide sugar). This is one of the reasons fruit intake should be limited and fruit juice should not be ingested. Fruit juice has had the mitigating fiber and “food” removed from it and results in a pretty plain drink of sugar and liquid.

You have been conditioned to eat sugar your whole life. If you don’t believe me, if you think I am full of it just try to stop eating sugar for 30 days. All of it. 100% clean. After all if I am wrong you can always go back to eating it again on the 31st day. Oh and artificial sweeteners are probably worse. They act the same way in the body, they affect the same beta sites and they create the same insulin reaction as sugar. Except there isn’t any calories, no sugar for the insulin to act upon so there is a large probability that your insulin resistance is going to get worse (this is what helps create type II diabetes by the way)

You will experience withdrawals. You will have headaches, fatigue, cravings, and generally feel bad. Yet if you stick it out you will feel better in just a few days. It is going to be way too easy to fall back into the sugar abyss. Sugar is ubiquitous…it is everywhere. And the real challenge will be over the next 2 months.

This Monday marked the start. Not the start of winter, although winter is certainly trying to arrive. Monday was Halloween and the start of “treat” season. The next 2 months will be filled with candy, irresistible deserts, favorite comfort foods, and a wink and a nod to overeating. Guilt and pressure to “try everything” will be paramount. So much of the food we associate with comfort, and home, and the holidays are sugar laden bombs just waiting to go off to the detriment of your health.

Is your health important enough to you to stop eating sugar? Or have you dismissed me as some kind of crazy, a fruitcake who has fallen into the soup of crazy nutrition advice? You don’t have to believe me. You can do the same research I have done. Go ahead and Google it…sugar addiction. Or just about anything with sugar…sugar and diabetes, sugar and obesity, sugar and hyperinsulinemia, sugar and depression the information is readily available.

Or you can stick your head in the sugar bowl and say it just isn’t true. After all the government and the major food companies only have your health interests at heart. The only person who is going to suffer is you not the FDA or the USDA or Monsanto, or Pepsi, or Coca Cola. And really you have nothing to lose by stopping for 30 days. Just 30 days of no added sugar. C’mon you can do it!

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

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Sunday Story...Wonder If

Sunday Story…Wonder If

How would life be if we took a blank slate and wondered if…
We couldn’t fail
We could love without worry
We could be the person we really wanted to be
We could learn all the things we have always wanted to learn
We danced in the moonlight with the fireflies

What would happen? How would life be different for you if you just wonder if?
What if you took that wonder and put it into action?
Wonder if I just packed it all in and started on a walking tour of the country…the world?
Then what?

Wonder if we all just quit one day and started living out of out possibilities instead of our expectations.
Then what?
Wonder if I could get up tomorrow with no agenda, no to do list, no cat to feed, no children to herd, no job to go to.
Then what?

Looking back and wondering if is easy. As I look back on my life I can wonder if…
What might have happened if I married so and so instead of so and so
What would life had been had I gone to this school instead of that one
Had taken the other job
Hadn’t had the affair
Hadn’t yelled at my boss
Had gone to the Caribbean instead of Hawaii
These questions you have probably already played in your head. I play I wonder if with my past every once in a while. It is an interesting little fantasy game that whiles away a few minutes I may not be using at the moment. But really, it is pretty non-productive. Of course things would have been different if this or that had happened differently. Would my core be any different, though? Would who I am very deeply be any differently than who I am right now? I suspect not, at least not if your core values and ethics are strong and powerful.

When we play wonder if into the future the game shifts dramatically. I am going to operate out of my core values. I am going to stand tall in who I am, in whom I am being. That part is not going to change. But when I play wonder if…

Wonder if I can re-invent myself
Wonder if I can change the world
Wonder if I can be the parent I wanted to be
Wonder if I can be financially successful
Wonder if I can write the _______ (fill in the blank)
Wonder if I can create or invent _______ (fill in the blank)

The problem comes when we start answering the question…YES, of course I can.
Then the doubts and the other questions begin…
Then what?
What will I do then?
How can I do that?
I’m not this or that enough to get that done.
What will everyone think of me if I do______ (fill in the blank again)
What will my family say?
How will I live?
What about _______ (pick something)
These are the fears coming up and destroying your wonder if.
This is what happens when our blank slate isn’t really blank. If I truly have a “tabula rasa” none of those things should ever come up. I don’t know about you but even when I try to erase the slate there are still impressions left. This morning I erased my white board and started to write something new. What I erased was still there…I could still see it and could still read it without much trouble. I wiped it cleaner and it was still there, hidden but there.

The same thing happens with us. We wipe things out. We think we are “over” it. We think we have worked it out. We have erased the fears, the conditioning, the expectations but they may still be operating underneath. They may be lurking under the rocks in my subconscious. The belief systems I have put into place over the course of my life continue to operate whether I know it or not. This is a black board that is really hard to erase. It is going to take some bit of work to shift and change a lifetime of beliefs, fears, and expectations.

Is it work worth doing? Because this work is not going to be easy. This isn’t like changing your socks or doing the dishes. This is monumental life changing world shifting work. It is going to hurt. It is going to create some cracks in your armor.

But what if doing the work could open up the world of wonder if? What if all of a sudden you could love like you have never been hurt (even though you have been), dance like no one was watching (even though they are), work like you don’t need the money (even though you really do), sing like no one is listening (even though they may be), and live like its heaven on earth (even though it isn’t).

Would you do the work now? Would it be worth the struggle, the pain, and the hurt? If not, why not? What is going to be enough to have you do the work?

I’ll bet about now you are wondering but how am I going to do the work? I have no idea what he is talking about. I have no idea how to get started. I have no way to access this crazy work he is talking about.
Yes you do. If you are getting this you have a computer. If you have a computer you have a world at your fingertips. There are blogs, ebooks, forums and much more to get started on. There are people out there who can help you (including me).

Start wondering if
Do the work
Wonder if some more
Do more work
It’s never too late for you to be who you were meant to be.


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

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Sunday Story...Wish in One Hand

Sunday Story…Wish in One Hand

There are a million excuses for you to use for whatever you are not doing, or supposed to be doing but aren’t, or for your shortcomings. One of the most common is I wish I could___________ (fill in whatever you wish you could be doing).
I wish I could get into shape but __________
I wish I could eat better but___________
I wish I could get my blood pressure down but____________
I wish I could, I wish I could I wish I could. This is not the sound of anyone who is going to get anything done. I am sure the reasoning you are applying to the things that you aren’t doing is sound and reasonable. I am sure it makes sense. I am sure that logic works. FOR YOU.

The facts are simple. If you are wishing in one hand and finding a whole lot of stuff after the but you are simply letting the world run you on whatever terms it finds timely. You are not in charge of your life. You are not being proactive in running your life.

I’ll bet you wish you could change that outlook. But it’s too hard isn’t it. But my spouse just won’t let me. But I have so many responsibilities. But I don’t have any time to plan my life. But the world just handed me a bad hand of cards. But there just isn’t anything I can do about it.

Fine. Stop reading now. You have gone far enough. There is nothing for you here.

Still reading? Good. Look quit wishing for stuff. There is no fairy godmother coming around to grant you 3 wishes, no genie coming out of the bottle, no magic beans. Your wishes just aren’t going to come true. I feel really bad about putting it so bluntly but there it is. Think back to when you found out about whatever childhood icon you believed in (Santa, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny) wasn’t real. Remember the confusion, the devastation this brought to your world view? Or maybe you had some idea before it was confirmed but you wanted to play along with the game a little longer. You wanted to believe in the magic longer because it kept things simple and easy in the little world you were living in.
If you want to be in better shape you can be. If you want to eat healthier you can. If you want to live a life of wonder and splendor you can. It really isn’t that hard.

First you better decide what definition you are going to use for the thing you want. What does healthier really look like to you? I know what it looks like to me but what does it look like to you. The more clear your definition the easier the process of getting is going to be. You need a clearly defined idea of the thing you want. I want to be rich. OK…what does that look like in the world you are living in because compared to many parts of the world (where they live on less than $3.00 per day) you already are rich. I want to lose some weight…OK how much?

Wishing just won’t make things so. You need to define what it is you want. You need to start defining how you want your life to look. This is the stop for many people. What if I’m wrong? What if I say I want this that and the other thing and I get it and then I don’t really want it? One question comes to mind…if you haven’t designed the life you are living and you really aren’t happy with it, how will getting something you design but don’t want be any different than what you have today? Just asking.

It seems to me I would be better off designing a life and then realizing I would rather have designed it differently than living on accident. If I don’t like what I create I can always make some adjustments and create something else. I mean can’t you shift and change more than once? I have had several careers over the years. I loved them all and thought they were the exact right things at the exact right times. Was I wrong? Was I building sand castles just waiting for the tide to come in and tear them down? No these were solid things, good things but I changed and shifted and then built something different. Not better perhaps, but certainly more relevant to who and what I wanted to be doing.

Just defining what it is isn’t going to be enough though. You are going to have to figure out how and when you are going to get what it is you really want. Then you are going to have to make a plan to go out and get it. It won’t happen in the face of inaction. It won’t happen in the ill defined, poorly planed environment your life has been up to this point. If you want it you are going to have to go and get it. If you want to win the lottery you had better go out and buy a ticket.

This isn’t rocket science. This isn’t brain surgery. It really is very simple. But it is going to require effort. It is going to require you to get up off your duff and do something. It is going to require some struggle; you might get frustrated and maybe even sidetracked but in the end it will be your life. The life you want, the body you want, the world you want. Sitting around and wishing just won’t make it so.

If you wish in one hand and put mud in the other, when you put them together you get a handful of mud. If you put goals and plans in one hand and mud in the other at least you still have goals and plans when you put them together.

Stop wishing and start working.

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

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Sunday Story...Resistance is Futile

Sunday Story…Resistance is Futile

Resistance training is important. Usually when we talk about resistance training we are talking about moving some amount of weight over a particular plane of movement a certain number of times. The weight resists the movement and we get stronger, our bones get stronger (more dense), our joints become more limber. That is the theory anyway. And for the most part it is true. And for the most part it is something we should all be doing.

But that isn’t the kind of resistance training I am talking about today. The resistance training I am talking about today is training yourself to do the things you really don’t want to do. To do the things that show up as hard or challenging. We all have those things. You know the ones I am talking about. The ones that if you do them will result in amazing personal growth and will move your life forward in ways you have always dreamed about but have never quite gotten to.

There really isn’t a training school for this sort of thing, at least not one I have found. There is a process or two that may be helpful in getting there but at the bottom line it will end up being all about you and your will to plow through the muck, the mud, and the sludge to get stronger in your character, more solid in your being, more grounded in your “who you are”.

Just like when we go to the gym everyday in the face of not wanting to go. When we pick up that heavier weight because we know the results will be there. When we continue to drive for one more repetition because in that last one is the success we have been striving for. We are training ourselves to fight against the not wanting to, the desire to quit, to give up to remain mediocre.

Maybe your “thing” isn’t the weights. Maybe your “thing” is something else…some other thing that requires you to push the edge of your comfort zone, the edge of your envelope. There is a mental toughness in that push, that requirement to get the last morsel, the last nugget of growth and effort. We are applying this attitude and mental fortitude to the thing we know, the thing we have committed to, the thing that is going to pay us the dividends we desire.

BUT (you knew that was coming) there are places where you are not practicing your resistance training. Places in your life that you are playing not to lose, perfectly happy with the envelope being the size that it is, perfectly perfect in your comfort zone. This is not how to win in life. This is not how you grow and become the amazing human you were put upon this earth to become.

For me nutrition is pretty easy. I eat in a way that is consistent with my fitness and health goals, I don’t find it difficult. Of course, I am an outstanding cook (Thanks Mom). The same with fitness…pretty easy for me to train hard, keep going in the face of defeat, injury, exhaustion, or simple laziness. I have no problem pushing the edges of fitness. I love the feeling of muscle straining, sweat pouring, limbs shaking training. I feel alive, centered, and focused.

On the other hand…I hate having to look at my failed relationships. I hate having to take responsibility for those relationships. This is an envelope I am very happy staying inside of. Yet if I don’t do some work I am doomed to repeat my past failures. It is the way of the world. If we don’t learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it over and over and over. I am resisting this training. I am dragging my feet, skipping workouts (metaphorically) and not putting a full 100% effort into the training. What is that about? What belief system is operating on this front?

SO…here is the exercise for those of you who want push the edge of your relationship envelope:
Write a love letter to your past lover. Pick the one that you are still most lit up, mad at, or can’t get out of your mind. The idea is to begin with fear, or anger, or sadness and end up with love.
I am so angry that you______________(fill in the blank)
I am scared because ____________________ (fill in the blank)
I am afraid because_____________________ (fill in the blank)
I love you because _______________________ (fill in the blank)
Naturally it may take a while to get to the love part. And you will need to dig very deep to discover what has you all bent out of shape about this particular relationship. You may need to do this process more than once with more than one person. The idea is to figure out the how and why you feel the way you do and then get over it and move on so that you can have a healthy relationship of this type.

This seems to be a pretty simple process. Yet I have been resisting it for several weeks. I have written a paragraph or 2 and I seem to be stuck. I just don’t want to do it.
Here is the fix (Thanks Francesca) and this is a fix you can use anywhere you are stuck…nutrition, quitting a habit, working out, personal growth or even the love letter process:

Write this sentence down:
I don’t want to write this letter (in my case) because____________ (fill in the blank). Keep writing sentence after sentence until you have exhausted all the reasons (real or imagined) for not doing whatever it is that you really know you should be doing.
Then write this sentence down:
The gift I will receive from this activity is ____________________ (fill in the blank). Keep writing sentence after sentence until you have exhausted all the gifts you could possible derive from doing the activity.

At this point you should be ready to tackle the activity. In my case…the love letter. In your case?

What are you resisting? Why are you resisting it? What are you getting, how are you winning by not growing? Why are playing small in this area of your life? Do you want to stop? There’s one small little exercise you might try …if you dare. Watch out though you might end up being great!

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

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Sunday Story...Harmonic Health

Sunday Story…Harmonic Health

As many of you know I am on a mission to find, live, and help you be optimally fit. Unfortunately there is no recipe for this. There is no blueprint, no one right and true way. And it seems that there are so many conflicting opinions, gurus, and information that we should just throw up our hands and sit down to a really bad cheeseburger and fries.

NOOO! Don’t do it. As Winston Churchill is reported to have said…”Never Give Up”. Part of this process is trial and error. What works really well for me may only work partly well for you. And yes there are those anomalies out there that can smoke and drink and eat bad food and live to a healthy 80 years old. That isn’t me and it probably isn’t you and really do you want to risk it?

So let’s step back a bit and focus on a much bigger picture. Is nutrition important? Is exercise important? Absolutely but too often we get so obsessed with one factor that we miss the big picture…in other words you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Let’s divide this harmonic health idea into 3 parts. #1 Recovery---nutrition, sleep, and other practices. # 2 Physical Stress---exercise, disease, injury, and labor. #3 Mental misfiring---losses (job, spouse child), money, trauma, self esteem. If all three of these areas are in harmony life is good. If we get out of balance life can start getting bad in a hurry.

On the Recovery side of things we find nutrition, sleep, and other practices. These are generally on the plus side of the ledger. Some sleep is better than no sleep. 9 hours is optimal. I rarely get 9 but often get 7 or 8. If you think about it this way…9 hours would be a score of 100, 8 might be 90, and on down until you get to maybe 5 and then the number starts going into negative territory. In other words it starts costing you points and might increase your other stressors as well if I end up diabetic and overweight.

The same goes for nutrition. If I am eating very clean and organic and in the perfect portions I get 100 points. And it goes down from there. When I get most of my nutrition from a box or from a fast food joint or worse it will start costing me points. If I drink alcohol I will lose points.
If I am conscientious about getting massages, taking ice baths, meditating daily, doing mobility workouts with lacrosse balls and the like I get positive points. If it is hit and miss the points go down. If I don’t have regular practices the points get a lot less. It is hard to end up with negative points in this category.

The Recovery part of the equation is the easiest place to get positive points. The other two…more difficult but not impossible.

Physical Stress…disease, exercise, injury and labor. Labor is your job, what you do every day to make a living. Do you sit at a desk all day? Negative points. Do you throw cement sacks all day or some other repetitive physical task? Negative points. In a perfect world you would have a mix of sitting, and hard work and a constantly varied routine to alleviate mental boredom and physical wasting. Injury…injury free is neutral points, injured is negative points and the severity of the injury will determine how deep in the hole you are going to be. The same thing with disease. There is a big difference between diseases and their impact on your ability to maintain optimal health and fitness. Exercise is much more difficult. Any exercise causes stress. But no exercise causes worse effects. How intense is your exercise? Are doing long slow repetitive movement? All of these factors increase or decrease the physical stress. There will be times when this will be more out of harmony than others…when training for a specific event for instance. And certain types of training are more stressful than others.

Mental misfiring…trauma, loss, money, self esteem. If you are carrying around abusive events from your childhood that you have never processed and integrated your points are going to be negative. If you just got fired, divorced or lost your 401k your points are going to be negative. If you beat yourself up every day over all the stuff in life that isn’t right (the weather, your parents, etc.) more negative points. If you are all good in this area you probably still don’t get many positive points but the negative points in this neighborhood will add up fast.

Your job is to get as many points as possible. The more points you get the closer you will be to living in harmonic health, to optimal health and fitness. We can look around us and see bad examples all the time…the body builder using steroids, the nutrition guru whose personal life is a mess, the successful business man who is overweight and diabetic, or the relationship coach who can’t get out of bed in the morning because of (pick one) depression, disease, or addiction.

What are you going to do to get more points? I highly recommend you start with the easiest things first…Recovery. How much are you sleeping? How good is your sleep? Start working on that one because the positive points add up very quickly. Do some nice things for yourself…get a massage weekly, meditate daily, get out into nature and just be. Again these things add up very quickly. Start looking into your diet…start eliminating processed foods, soda, and alcohol and increasing your vegetable and organic food intake. More positive points.

Harmonic health takes some work. It takes keeping an eye on the big picture as well as the smaller pieces. It takes doing some internal work on your psyche. It means using your brain and not doing stupid stuff. It means being conscious and integrated. It means using your brain to create the feedback loop to know what works for you in the face of lots of information.

Harmonic Health…pretty simple really, just not easy.

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

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Sunday Story...Human Hamsters

Sunday Story…Human Hamsters

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day and he was telling me about a party he had attended recently where there were 12 80 year olds still working at their jobs. By choice I might add not necessity. These were federal government workers who at been at their jobs for some time. It was a choice they were making. The next morning I listened to a story on NPR about octogenarians and their active lifestyles. BUT the point of the story was that the children of those 80 year olds (the baby boomers) expected to be every bit as active and vital as their parents if not more.

It turns out that may not be the case. Many of us baby boomers will not enjoy the healthy and active lifestyles we see many of our parents enjoying. How can that be? We work out, we eat right, we monitor our stress levels, and we are doing everything “They” tell us is good for us. Many of us have been jogging for years. We hit the gym and get on the treadmill, or bike, or elliptical for hours every week. We meditate. We eat oatmeal every morning, heart healthy spreads, yogurt, avoid red meat, get lots of fiber.

We are spending tons of time and money on our health. We are doing the research, taking supplements, trying alternative therapies for our owies and boo-boos. And we might not be as healthy as our parents! What! Really? That just isn’t right. That just isn’t fair.

Let’s look back shall we? Our parents were raised on natural foods. Often food they grew themselves or knew who grew it. Even if they lived in a big city the food was more natural. And everyone cooked their own food, even if they did so badly. If they ate fried food, it was natural and home prepared. They worked and when they got home they worked some more. A walk was not a work out but a way to get from one place to another or a means to connect and socialize. You didn’t have a machine to do everything for you. You had to lift things and carry them. Your life was active not passive.

Over the last 50 years so many things have changed from that paradigm. The grocery store has thousands of items in it today. We have machines to do so much for us…I saw one the other day that actually worked you out! The food is homogenized and sterilized. We have pills and potions to fix just about everything. We spend our day with our butt parked and then we get home and park it some more. We avoid doing manual labor. We rarely just walk to walk without an agenda.

Maybe “They” have lied to us. Maybe we just aren’t doing it right. Maybe hopping on the human hamster wheel or knocking out 3 sets of 10 bench presses just isn’t enough. Maybe all that nutrition advice is just wrong. Maybe we have bought the proverbial pig in a poke. What if all the bad choices we made in our younger years can’t be fixed with a pill or a potion? What if we need a complete life style make over? Are you willing to move from your passive lifestyle to an active one?

Think about this…you are an amazing feat of engineering. You are way more complicated than any automobile, space conveyance, or machine. You have spent a ton of money on your car, but then you complain about the price of organic food. You do regular maintenance on your car and begrudge spending the time it is going to take to keep your body in shape. You buy your car new wheels, fancy dashboard tschotkes, wax jobs and cleanings and you won’t buy yourself a coach, or a seminar, or a workshop on cutting edge nutrition, the way humans should move, or a an improvement in your form.

You have been sold a bill of goods. And you have bought it willingly…it looked easy, the promises were, really too good to be true. Just like turning an investment of $10,000 into a million in a year is too good to be true. Are you buying THAT piece of real estate? So why on earth do you think 30 minutes of “chronic cardio” three time a week is going to create a fit, strong and healthy body. How is that working for you? Still pre-diabetic? Still on the high blood pressure meds? Still suffering from the effects of your modern life? What do you say Bunky? Ready to take a look at doing something that might work?

Here it is: Stop eating C.R.A.P. (calorie rich and pathetic) food. Stop exercising (yes you read that right). Stop getting on the Human Hamster Wheel and zoning out on your phone or the People magazine or the boob tube. Stop thinking that there is going to be some magic pill or new machine or exercise video that is going to solve your health and fitness problems.
START: eating natural foods, produced on organic farms (like in your backyard) in a sustainable way.
START: training your body to perform the tasks required everyday…lifting stuff off the ground, over your head, moving around with those things, and expending massive amounts of energy quickly and playing with your children/grandchildren
START: looking at life from a holistic standpoint instead of trying to solve the symptoms that are bothering you. The symptoms are the manifestation of the sickness you are living in.
START: taking responsibility for how your life looks today and how you want it to look tomorrow.

Try this on for size: You can have world class fitness. It is right there waiting for you. It won’t be easy…you WILL have to jettison some bad habits, change your life style and your relationship with food, and generally work your butt off. It won’t take any more time out of your day…as a matter of fact it might take less…but it will be way more intense. You will have to sweat, learn new stuff, hurt a bunch and learn to love physical effort, your kitchen and your food.
Here is the bad news---You might not live longer
Here is the good news---You will live better, stronger, healthier, more joyfully.

Think about it…100 years old and vital, healthy, strong and maybe in the best shape of your life! It is possible, not easy, maybe not simple but certainly possible.


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

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