Sunday Story...Why?

When we are small we accept nothing.
Why is the sky blue?
Why is the grass green?
Why do frogs jump?
Why, why, why…closely followed by what if!


In our innocence we need and want answers for everything. We take nothing at face value, nothing as true until it is explained and we experience it for ourselves. We put our fingers in the fire to see if it is hot. When we get burned we know, through direct experience, that fire is hot. We might also learn to listen to the adult who warned us a little more closely as well. Or not.
As we age we start accepting things as true without testing them out, without gaining the actual experiential knowledge. And let us be clear, experiential knowledge may not always be the best way to gain knowledge. On the other hand we really should do some investigation before we accept things as right and true.


Just because I say it does not make it true. You don’t know how I came by the knowledge. You are trusting that I did the groundwork, the due diligence ensure that my facts are on target. And maybe I have done that. But there are lots of things we accept as true that are “common wisdom” or the opinions of experts (which is not the same as scientific proof by the way).
Don’t accept things just because I or someone else said so. Investigate these things yourself. Do some research. Experiment (if you can) on yourself. Just because I say wheat is the worst thing you can put in your body does not make it true. You can read the reports. You can stop eating it and then re-introduce it and see what happens. Don’t just take my word for it or anyone else’s for that matter. You are smart enough to figure this stuff out. And you are smart enough to do the research and make an informed opinion.


There is way too much of this sort of thing going on in the world today…a world where opinions are passed off as facts. A world where government policy is taken as scientific proof, where some talking head spouts off loudly and strongly that these are the facts, this is the absolute truth; only to find out later that maybe it wasn’t quite so absolute.


In this day and age we have access to so much information, it can be overwhelming to wade through and distinguish fact from fiction. But it is out there. You can do it. You can experiment and be your own best proof. Don’t be another sheep listening to the wolves sharpen their teeth on the lies they are feeding you.


Accept nothing, question everything.


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

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Sunday Story...Time Out

Not. There is no time out. The clock is relentless. It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t slow down, and it doesn’t rest. There is no respite from its continuing crawl.

You can be standing there, your tongue hanging out, every muscle on fire, and not another lift left in your bank and the clock is not going to stop and let you rest. This is reality. This is the truth of the matter. The clock never rests. It just keeps on ticking.

This is what makes what I (and so many others like me do)…there is no calling “time out”. The clock continues until it is done. Whether the time is done in 17 minutes, 7 minutes, or 70 minutes it is not going to stop for me. When we go the other way, in other word when I am doing x for time that timer doesn’t stop until I finish. It doesn’t stop when I am tired, it doesn’t stop when I fall down, it doesn’t stop because I fail, that timer goes until I finish. I don’t stop because I am tired, I stop because I am finished…I have completed the task set in front of me. There is no time out, no rest period, and no halftime break, there is only the task and the time set before me.

This is a microcosm of life. Your life is on a timer. Your life has no time out, no halftime show. The clock is running. It will stop when time is up. In the meantime you have the work, the task in front of you. Hurt? Tired? Sick? Beaten up? Feeling Defeated? No one loves you? I’m sorry but the clock is still running. The clock is an unforgiving task master.

You and I don’t know how much time is left on really big clock of your life. This, however, I will guarantee you…you got up this morning with 24 hours in front of you. Just like you did yesterday, and with a bit of grace the same as you will get tomorrow. That clock is going to run out later tonight. Are you going to finish? Or are you going to put up a DNF (did not finish) in today’s score card?

There are times when I am wheezing, out of breath, my breakfast in my throat, sweat rolling off my head and the last thing I want to do is one more and I look up at the horrible mistress, the Clock, and I won’t let her win. I am not going to stop before she rings the bell. I will until…
Maybe I should attack every day, every 24 hours that way, maybe even every 60 minutes, or 60 seconds. What would happen if I drove myself in life the way I drive myself in every workout? Would the result be a better, happier person? Would the result be an increase in income, an increase in productivity, an increase in happiness? I guess we won’t know until we give it a go and most of us never will. We aren’t willing to attack our day like this was the clock running on, like the sands in the hourglass were running out.

The sands are running out. Every day is one day closer to the bell sounding. What are you going to do about it today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year? Don’t be so presumptuous as to think that clock is going to run forever. It isn’t and deep down you know it.

Reach down, do it right now and give it one more shot. Decide what you want your life to look like and get moving. Don’t let the clock own you.

No Time Outs.

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

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Sunday Story...Someday

Someday in the future…
You will lift that weight.
You will be faster.
You will be more coordinated, more agile
You will know more.
You will have the body you are working for today.
You will love more.
You will have more.
You will be more.

Someday is coming. Someday is coming and it may be here sooner than you realize. Yesterday, and the day before that, and the one before that and all the days before have brought you to this day. This day where all the practice and preparation pay off.

Someday is right around the corner. It may already be here. But that doesn’t mean we get to relax or stop striving to get to where we want to be someday. The joy and the pain are in the struggle, the effort, the journey to get where you want to get. We talk of the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory. These things go together like a soup and a sandwich. The journey is the destination. You are going to get there. Just don’t expect it, don’t take it for granted. If you do that it will slip away, slip through your fingers like sand. You will stop walking the path, stop efforting, and stop driving toward the destination.

That person isn’t you. You are not going to stop, you are not going to accept almost, or close or a partial rep or a 9 out of 10 rounds. You are going to get exactly what you want, exactly what you need, exactly what you work for.

Someday. In the mean time you will continue to fight. You will continue to strive, to work, to crawl your way forward. You won’t be like the others. The ones who gave up, the ones that lost that glint in their eyes, that passion for excellence and improvement. You will be a better you. You will be stronger, faster, fitter, healthier, more accomplished.

The key is in the work…the day to day strife that moves us inexorably toward our goal. The joy is in the journey. The pursuit of the thing is what matters. Even if you achieved your biggest goal ever yesterday, today is a new day. Got your best seller done? Start another! Pulled your biggest dead lift? Set a new goal for a bigger one. Graduated from college, grad school, and med school? Figure out what is next. You cannot sit back and rest on your laurels. You are not that person.

Put the laurels up on a shelf next to all the rest of your trophies and get back into the trenches where the work happens. Today and what you have today is the culmination of all your work on all your yesterdays. Same thing for tomorrow. All your todays are adding up to tomorrow.

Someday is today. Get started on someday today.

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

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Sunday Story…Reasons

I talk to a lot of people every week. And most of what I talk about is change. Change your diet, change how you move, change what you put into your mind, and change what comes out of your mouth…change. And yet, even in the face of credible, honest, fact checked information I hear why someone can’t make the change.

They know it is good for them.
They know their life will be better…healthier, easier, less stressed.
They know it is the right thing to do.
They know there is little to no downside to making the change.
Everyone has lots of reasons (excuses) for not doing what they know (deep inside) they should be doing. All of those reasons can be distilled down to just 2.
#1 Reason
Inability
You are unable to stop drinking soda. The thought of stopping creates a rush of fear like the fear of death. The idea of never eating another French fry is so abhorrent that you get physically ill when you even think of it. You have a panic attack when someone suggests that you cut down on smoking.
This is a sad state of affairs. This is you being bested by a cigarette, a soda, a cold shower, a French fried potato. This is you being beaten by an inanimate object. This is you being owned by your easy choice. This is you living in fear.
How you do one thing is how you do everything.
If you allow this one thing to beat you, pretty soon life is going to beat you. This one choice, this inability to do the right thing is going to permeate your entire life…your work, your relationship, your morality. Your overarching desire to take the easy way, the relaxed way is going to prevent you from living the full life you richly deserve. All because you didn’t want to do something a little scary. Do something every day that scares you just a little even if it’s a cold shower.

#2 Reason
Arrogance
This is the most common and most dangerous of the two reasons. People say…
It won’t work for me.
It’s stupid.
I’m the exception to the rule.
I heard there was some expert somewhere who said all the other experts are wrong.
You are full of it (the personal attack).
None of these things are true by the way.
Whatever all of that stuff is the bottom line is this:
You don’t want to be uncomfortable. You don’t want to take the first step out of your comfort zone because it going to be slightly, maybe, sort of, you think, uncomfortable or difficult or maybe even hard. The fact is none of us want to be uncomfortable. Everyone wants a nice warm house, a body that is physical fit (and looks good naked), the ability to eat anything and everything, clean air and water, well mannered children, youthful good looks and on and on and on…without doing anything about it. This is not any reality I have ever seen.


Anything worth having is worth working for and worth being uncomfortable for some period of time. Maybe having a headache for 3 days while you quit your 2 pots of coffee a day habit (I couldn’t do that! How will I ever wake up! I like my coffee!) is an improvement over the addiction. You never know how bad you felt until you find out how good you feel. Cutting the sugar from your diet is worth the discomfort of the withdrawals for a week or two when faced with a life time of diabetes, obesity, and hypertension and all the pills and potions that go along with that (but it won’t happen to me!). The bottom line is that in order to get what you have never gotten you are going to have to do what you have never done. It is that simple. You are not the exception to the rule. You are the same as all the rest of us naked apes. Embrace it and embrace the uncomfortable.



So if you haven’t taken the plunge into the change you know you need to do…no matter what your reason …whether you are crippled by your addiction to comfort or your attitude of arrogance, I just ask one thing:
Try it for 30 days. One day at a time. Just do it tomorrow. Just do it for the next 5 minutes. Try a little discomfort on for size. You might find it to be just the right size.

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

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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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