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

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

Sunday Story...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

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

Sunday Story...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

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

Sunday Story...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

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

Sunday Story...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

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

Sunday Story...Burn the Ships

Sunday Story…Burn the Ships

I have heard this story so many times and to be honest I have no idea if it is true or not but it does serve to illustrate the point of today’s missal: Hernando Cortez, in 1519, after landing on the Yucatan peninsula in what is now Mexico commanded his men to “Burn the ships.” This decision sealed the fate of the Aztec people and their empire and probably altered the course of history throughout South and Central America. His army was stunned and one man asked “how will we get back home to our families?” Cortez said, “We will conquer the Aztec army and sail home in their ships.” Simply put…Cortez created a point of no return. Win or Die.

Cortez crossed the Rubicon...the River of no return. Once I have crossed the Rubicon, I can’t turn back. I can’t decide this is a bad idea. I can’t turn around. This is a commitment rarely seen in today’s world. Yet we love the people who represent this ideal. It is the Jobs and Wozniak in their garage creating Apple Computer having dropped out of college. The image of Michael Jordan, after being cut from his freshman basketball team shooting free throw after free throw to create what, arguably, became the greatest basketball player to play the game. Remember our founding fathers? They all knew that failure was going to result in their own deaths, imprisonment or enslavement of their families and continued tyranny for their countrymen. Over and over we hear these stories of dedication, drive, and determination and we get inspired. It brings tears to our eyes.

In the movie “Facing the Giants” there is a scene where one player, after buying into a defeatist attitude carries another player on his back for 100 yards…a seemingly impossible feat. Failure was not an option. He was not given a choice he was only given the option of moving forward. If you aren’t giving your absolute best you aren’t giving enough. It you want to see the clip go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0dLpQPVjh8&feature=related
What is your Rubicon? What is your river of no return? When are you going to decide to cross it? When are you going to burn your ships?

There is always a point of no return. The place where you have gone so far that turning around is no longer an option. There is only forward. There is only through to the end. You might have to alter the route, alter the plan but there is no longer the ability to stop and go back. There is no re-set button. There is no Plan B…there is only success.

Too often we want a Plan B. We want a way out if Plan A doesn’t work. But how often do you really have a Plan B? Plan B is almost always some ill-conceived vague notion of doing something else if what we really want doesn’t work. Just imagine walking into a dark room and taking 3 steps forward when someone behind you pulls the door shut. You don’t know how to go forward and you can’t go back. The ships are burnt. It is a little late for Plan B. You better find a way out, through or get to the light switch or prepare to be stuck in that dark room for a while…until someone rescues you or you succeed. Is that your Plan B? Wait to get rescued? Is your mama going to show up and pull you out of trouble? Bad Plan. How about this one…Succeed or die trying. When I want to succeed as much as I want to breathe I will be successful.

Plan B is an excuse to fail. I mean if you have a Plan B and it is so good why don’t you just do Plan B? Maybe Plan B should be Plan A! What’s your Plan B if you wake up and you aren’t breathing? There isn’t one right? You aren’t breathing. I am not doing what I should be doing. When I want to succeed as much as I want my next breath I will be successful. What do you want as much as you want your next breath? Do you even know?

Therein lays the problem. You don’t even know where your Rubicon is. You have no idea. Losing some weight sounds like a good idea. Getting in shape sounds like a good idea. Living a healthy life style sounds like a good idea. The world is full of good ideas. The world has good ideas by the bushel. What the world needs is for you to decide that your weight loss, your physical condition, your mental or emotional state, your substance addiction, your poor relationship with your (pick one—spouse, child, parent) is so important, so critical, so integral to your being that you would rather die than fail, you would rather stop breathing than not be successful. At that point “Burn the Ships” is a reality. There is no Plan B. There is only the Plan and there is only the execution of the plan.

Maybe you need to hire a trainer, a nutritionist, a counselor, a confidante, a something to get you up and off the cabana chair to burn those boats. Maybe you need to make a wager, tell the world in a public declaration or make some grand gesture that will prove to yourself that your journey is one so highly committed, so dedicated that failure is off the table.

I don’t know what will get you that committed. I do know that without crossing the Rubicon ultimate success will elude you and me. It is in the act of crossing the river, burning the ships, creating a do or die mentality that truly amazing and powerful things will come into being.

Go ahead…Burn the Ships…end a life of putting one toe in and pulling out…Burn the Ships

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

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

Sunday Story...My House

Sunday Story…My House

is a very nice house. I have been building it for years. I know where everything is because I put it there. I built the places to put things in and the rooms for them to go into. It is my house.

I also populated it with people. The people living in my house are there because I let them be there. I asked them in, or I at least allowed them to stay for a while. Some of them are not very good house guests; others are great to have around. And still others are in hiding. They are hiding in places I have forgotten or don’t want to go into any longer.

I built this house. I created it to look the way I wanted it to look. I did it. Now way too often I was just building something without knowing what it was that I was building. It may have started out one way but then I changed my mind in mid-build and turned the garage into a bathroom or vice versa. When I look around my house it feels pretty good…after all I have been living here for my entire life.

You might look at my house and see some sort of M.C. Escher-esque creation but it doesn’t look that way to me. See it functions for me no matter what you think of it. Maybe it doesn’t quite work that way I would really like but I built and it is good enough.

You might ask, however, “what about all those rooms that you built and sealed off? What about the people living in those rooms …the ones you have forgotten about?” You might also wonder about the stairs that go nowhere, the garage that is too small for a car or the bathroom big enough for a tank. It just doesn’t appear to have much rhyme or reason.

So…the people living in all the rooms of my house are all me. After all it is my house and I am the only one living in it. There are parts of me that I tucked away for various reasons. Maybe when I was little I needed to hide and be kept safe. So I crawled into the closet under that stairs that don’t go anywhere and stayed there. The rest of me grew up and that little guy stayed in that closet, forgotten for all this time. This is especially easy to do when I don’t have to walk up those stairs and wonder what is in that closet.

That little guy in that closet got left behind. He is still there, he is still safe. But he can’t come out until I go and get him. I have to re-discover that part of the house…the part I built and then left for a variety of reasons. Then I have to coax him out of hiding. And it isn’t going to be easy. It isn’t just open the door and out he jumps. He has been in there a very long time. He doesn’t trust me or anyone else. So I am going to have to convince him it is time to come out and it is safe to come out, that I am going to take care of him now because I can and it is my adult job to do it.

This is not an easy process. It requires a huge amount of work on your interior landscape. A huge shift in the way you are building your house for the future. It is also going to require some remodeling of what you have already built. After all, how many closets did you build and then forget? How many pieces of yourself have you left behind in those little rooms?

When we speak of integration this is what we are talking about…the process of bringing the pieces of you home to live in the main house with the rest of the family. This is a life of integrity…to live in a way that is whole and in alignment with who you are today and with the vision of who you are going to be tomorrow.

What does your house look like? I am sure it is a very nice house but how many blind hallways are there? How many staircases that lead nowhere? How many rooms are there that no longer serve any purpose. How many people have you left behind to keep them safe and secure? Do you have any idea at all? Have you ever tried to step out of your house and looked back at it to see what the casual viewer from the street might see?

I know it is easy not to do this. I know that even thinking of this stuff might make your brain hurt. I know you think you have done your “work”. I know you think you are OK, that you have “worked through all your stuff”. But are you really? Or did you just close off that wing of your house. Why go down those hallways that lead nowhere anyway?

Why, indeed. It is very simple really…your life is incomplete. It is missing vital pieces that will enrich and create an integrated person driven with purpose and vision. This is the work that will inspire you and your people to become the powerful and amazing humans you were created to be.

Or you can just leave it alone and hope those doors never get opened. That those people hiding in those closets never get stirred up and decide to start making trouble in those funny little rooms. That is when life gets way past a little funky. That is when the house starts falling down on its own and has us wondering why and what did I do to deserve this and why is it happening to me.

Because you didn’t do your work. You didn’t finish your work. I know I haven’t. I keep at it. I keep finding those rooms and fixing them up, re-claiming those parts that I tucked away so long ago knowing I get back to them someday when I have better tools to get the job done.

The time is now. You and I have the tools. Let’s go to work. It is time now.

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

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