Inner - Expression

Top Ten Most Influential Women in Sport

2012-01-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

What qualifies a woman as influential in the sports world? Is it her athletic ability, verbal skills, looks or her ability to lead into new frontiers? Does influence require years of training, bold new ideas or both? Below you will find our opinion of the top ten most influential women in sports.

Women in Sports Media

Christine Brennan

Brennan is a best-selling author, renowned columnist and commentator. She was the first female sports reporter for the Miami Herald before another first as the first woman to cover the Washington Redskins. Her figure skating book, Inside Edge, was named one of the top 100 sports books of all-time by Sports Illustrated. Brennan also broke the story of the pairs figure skating scandal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

Linda Cohn

Almost 20 years into a TV sports reporting career, Cohn excels at versatility. Whether it’s baseball, basketball, hockey, racing or golf, Cohn covers the sport with ease. In 1987, Cohn became the first full-time female sports anchor on a national radio network (ABC.) She is the author of Cohn-Head: A No-Holds-Barred Account of Breaking Into the Boys’ Club. Cohn’s Twitter profile exhorts her followers to “Go after dreams.” It’s not uncommon for Cohn to make a fan’s dream with a retweet or mention.

Laura G e ntile

Gentile is vice president of espnW. As a collegian, Gentile led Duke to their first-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament and was named to the ACC’s 50th Anniversary field hockey team.

Jemele Hill

Hill is an ESPN columnist and TV analyst with previous stints at the Detroit Free Press and the Orlando Sentinel. Her Twitter profile reads: “I average 36 tweets a day. This makes me awesome.” Well, then.

Georgie Thompson

Thompson is Sky Sports presenter and A League of Their Own panelist. She has better than 378K Twitter followers and is on the first page of leading Twitter directory, Twellow.

Influential Sports Executives

Jeanie Buss

Buss is the Executive Vice President of one of the world’s most popular franchises, the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2010, she authored “Laker Girl.”

Wendy Lewis

Women in Sports & Events awarded Lewis with one of its three Woman of the Year Awards in 2011. Lewis is Major League Baseball’s senior vice president of diversity and strategic alliances. She explained some of her job responsibilities to espnW: “It’s more than just having more representation of a particular race or women, but making sure that we are working more toward achieving sort of the ultimate balance. We are doing that by taking a real, very strategic and very micro look at each one of those establishments and the pipeline of folks that they actually have coming in…”

Circe Wallace

Wallace followed a pro snowboarding career by representing similar stars at the Wasserman athletic management group, where she is a senior vice president. Wallace was also the force behind action sports shows on MTV and BET.

Pioneers for Women in Sports

Billie Jean King

King received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2009. She captured a record 20 titles at Wimbledon. Her Battle of the Sexes in 1973 against Bobby Riggs was a catalyst for the women’s movement. King is the Founder and Honorary Chair of the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Pat Summitt

Summitt’s career has spanned almost four decades. Summitt’s Tennessee Lady Vols have made 30 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. She was named Naismith Coach of the Century. Her teams have a 100 percent graduation rate for all Lady Vols who have completed their eligibility at Tennessee. She earned a spot among “America’s Best Leaders for 2007″ published by U.S. News & World Report.
Don’t miss following women these, either! Lisa Andersen, Aimee Mullins, Amanda Rykoff, Annika Sorenstam, Sarah Spain, Dara Torres, Venus Williams
Whether the ladies are seasoned professionals or relative newcomers in the sports business, the industry’s future looks bright, thanks to them and other leading ladies.

Post-Career Athletes and Money: How Athletes Can Protect Themselves from Financial Ruin

2011-10-04T11:58:00.001-07:00

We’ve all heard the grim statistics about broke post-career athletes – 78% of retired NFL players are broke or experiencing severe financial stress after just two years. The NBA isn’t much better with an estimated 60% broke within five years.

Most athletes, when they’re just starting their sports career, say that fame and fortune will not affect them – they swear they will remain the same humble, lovable darlings as they were during childhood when they played on obscure mud fields.

What happens on the journey from obscure to stardom? One must take into account inflated incomes and egos, and the fact that athletes trust unscrupulous, suited up, slick-talkers without doing due diligence. Blind investing and irresponsible squandering of financial resources lead to post-career athletes’ demise very rapidly.

Although pro athletes make a good haul in multi-million dollar incomes, they are all just one play away from a career-ending injury. Just ask Joe Theisman. One snap…one tackle…one wrong fall…career over. Some blame the hectic demands of the season schedule and naivete about financial planning while others point to players believing there will be just one more contract extension to fund their exorbitant lifestyles.

Post-Career Athletes can Find Solutions

I asked one of my NFL Player Development contacts where he thought the disconnect lies. Here’s what he had to say,

“I really feel like some of the players think, “That won’t happen to me.” Some have relied on what they do on the field to define them so that when it comes to something off the field they may feel like, “That’s not me” or “I’ll be that guy when I’m done playing.” Reality as we know it is that one day ALL players will be done playing.

One of two paths then has to be chosen… the athlete has to ask, “Do I rely on who I was on the field to define me or do I create a new me from here on out?” Both can be successful but I have found that the player who continues to redefine himself does much better. Go forward and create the new you and along with the old you, you will be successful.

So utilization of Player Development resources tends to come too late. We are not the enemy but can be seen as a nagging voice who constantly is reminding them of the inevitable. I have not yet met a Player Development Director who doesn’t want the best for his/her players, during and after football.

So, what’s the answer? One viable way is to hire a reputable financial auditor to make regularly scheduled checks of financial accounts and investments to make sure money is allocated where it’s supposed to go. And, it’s not supposed to go in Uncle Elmo’s pocket or Mr. Slick Word’s vacation resort in theBahamas.

One of my clients, MH Silverman, is one such auditor. Marc Silverman is a former Big 4 Audit Partner and specializes in protecting athletes from being financially exploited. His firm provides the checks and balances needed so current and post career athletes are not defrauded of their fortunes. Some of the services he offers athletes are:

- Pre-investment due diligence

- Portfolio audits including investment verification and valuation

- Cash receipts and cash disbursements audits

- Royalty audits

- Contract compliance examinations

Marc states, “Waiting until there is a suspected problem is waiting too long. The money is already gone. It’s essential that athletes take a proactive approach with the checks and balances to ensure everything stays where it should – in the athlete’s hands.”

If you’re an athlete or you know an athlete, you can contact Marc Silverman at 908-794-5881 or silverman@mhsilverman.com to discuss how they can put auditing practices in place to make sure post-career athletes don’t say, “I never thought it would happen to me.”

Michelle Hill

7 Ways to Use Resourcefulness in the Sports Industry

2011-07-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

Are you seeking a career in the sports industry or are you already steeped in it? No matter where you find yourself, I have highlighted seven helpful ways to use resourcefulness so you can gain an advantage in the sports field.

1. Preparation Is Everything. It’s always a good idea, whether in your career or in life, to be proactive instead of reactive. The more resources you have prepared ahead of time, the better equipped you’ll be when life gives you a present; expected or unexpected. If you’re seeking a sports career, be proactive by making sure your resume, cover letter, and reference list are polished and ready to go.

If you want to take your current sports career to the next level, prepare by taking relevant classes or workshops to increase your industry knowledge – your professional accomplishments will shine bright. Remember, prevention is better than cure. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Seneca

2. Make Time Work For You. Write down how you spend your time; during the week andon the weekends. Just like a food or financial diary, keep a time diary for one week to pinpoint exactly where your time is going. Assess what pockets of time you can capture and re-direct toward your career goals. If you need to enlist the help of others, don’t be shy.

Think about who you know and trust and ask them if they’d take on a temporary “assignment” to help you with a task or just to exhibit an extra dose of patience while you laser-focus on your career. Don’t take advantage of the good nature of your family and friends and always show your utmost appreciation. “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.” Harvey MacKay

3. Clarify And Define Your Challenges. Use your resourcefulness to find solutions to specific career challenges that arise instead of wasting precious energy worrying about them. How severe is your challenge? Do you have a career crisis on your hands that needs an immediate solution or just a minor setback that allows you some time to develop an appropriate response?

4. Creative Thinking Is Your Friend. Brainstorm for logical, non-logical, and just plain crazy ideas. Make a list of companies you have only dreamed of working for. You might want to take some time and create a vision board of your ideal career. Choose pictures of what you want your ideal career to look like. Letting your brain travel outside the box is the perfect location for inspiration and workable solutions. Perhaps you simply need a temporary fix if you’re in an intolerable situation so don’t limit yourself by thinking you need a permanent solution this minute.

5. Don’t Repeat History. The saying by Sir Winston Churchill says, “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” No truer words were spoken when it comes to your sports career. If you continue making the same career mistakes, you will stall your career progress. Use your resourcefulness to make sure you don’t repeat your mistakes.

6. Access Your Current Resources. Resources come in many forms. Think about how you can utilize and leverage the following:

People in your immediate circle
Social Media
Information
Former bosses, co-workers, and vendors

7. Don’t Think, Just Act. If an opportunity presents itself, don’t overthink it. An opportunist takes advantage of open doors before they close tight. This doesn’t mean you take haphazard, unwise risks, but rather take one giant step through an open door instead of allowing indecisiveness to create a career stalemate. Take to heart the famous words from Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Also, listen to the words of Muhammad Ali, the greatest boxer of all time, “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”

This article can serve as one resource to help you take your sports career to the next level. Use the steps I’ve outlined to assess your current position and to forecast where you want to take your career. Inactivity breeds inactivity. Instead, implement what Wayne Dyer has said, “Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your decison.

Michelle Hill

The Beautiful Game goes Scientific

2011-07-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

The beautiful game, football (soccer), has been undergoing a quiet revolution in the land of its birth – England.

English clubs have always sent football talent scouts the length and breadth of the country and further afield too. Decisions on footballing matters and transfers were once based on nothing more than a hunch, a gut feel, and an ‘eye’ for talent. Admittedly there have been numerous success stories from these unsophisticated methods – I think of the late George Best being plucked from Belfast at the age of 15 by Manchester United scout Bob Bishop. Best went on to become a successful player winning several team and individual honors and was notably the European Footballer of the Year in 1968.

As for today, across England a data revolution is taking place as various top Premier League clubs are starting to realize the benefit of data and statistical analytics. You could say that football has finally embraced the premise of Moneyball (now a movie with Brad Pitt, which is set to be released in September). English football has become scientific.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, written by Michael Lewis, proved that data does matter in sports and can often be the difference between winning and losing. Lewis’ book focuses on the Oakland Athletics baseball team of the early 2000s, who, under General Manager Billy Beane, assembled a winning team by focusing on an analytical approach to evaluating player performances. Beane concentrated on statistics like on-base percentage as an indicator of offensive success, going against the conventional thinking and trusted player performance measurements of the time.

Much like at the Oakland A’s, number crunchers at various English Premier League (EPL) clubs are now playing a vital role in footballing strategy. Player statistics that truly matter have been isolated. Presentations you’d expect to be given by a “quant” at an investment bank are becoming the norm. Nearly every minute aspect of a football match can be recorded and analysed. The ‘nerds’ are ‘over the moon’, as pundits and players like to say in England. Numbers are beginning to give clubs an edge.

There are numerous advocates of the data revolution.

Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal FC, an Economics graduate and keen mathematician, was an early pioneer of using data to make decisions on player transfers. Even at Monaco in the late 1980s, before his success at Arsenal, he had realized the importance of data and was collating and using factual evidence on players. Manchester City now has a performance analytics division, while Chelsea has a performance director – Mike Forde. The role of a performance director, like Forde, is to support the coaching team by looking at all facets of performance outside of coaching and bring structure, policy and procedures to it.

In a recent Financial Times article, Forde, who studied Psychology in Beane’s hometown of San Diego and has studied American sports, illustrated the staggering amount of data at his disposal:

“We’ve somewhere around 32 million data points over 12,000, 13,000 games now”.

Other clubs, such as Bolton, have also adopted the more scientific approach. Former manager Sam Allardyce is an old school football man and is somebody you’d probably expect to favor the more traditional methods – like intuition –but he too is a disciple of data. The approach certainly worked for him at Bolton. Not a historically fashionable or wealthy club, Bolton enjoyed a period of unprecedented success under his management with the team never finishing outside the Premiership top ten from 2002/2003 – 2006/2007, as well as qualifying for the UEFA cup in 2005/2006 and 2007/2008. This was an extraordinary achievement for a club of its size and limited financial resources.

Allardyce’s signing of Welsh international Gary Speed, aged 34, for Bolton is a prime example of how he used data to evaluate a transfer decision. Many would have expected Speed to have been a dud at an age when most players have hung up the boots. However, Speed’s physical data compared favorably with younger, more celebrated and, more importantly, more expensive players such as Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard. Allardyce had no hesitation in signing Speed, a relative bargain, who went on to play until he was 38 at Bolton. Speed incidentally is still playing today for Sheffield United. It is little surprise too that Mike Forde, now at Chelsea, was at Bolton with Allardyce.

So what are the numbers and statistics that really matter for football success?

There is probably no holy grail and if there is, it hasn’t been found. Possession doesn’t necessarily win matches in football (unlike in, say, rugby) and finding a relationship between distances covered by midfielders and winning has not been proven either. Most of the key statistics now being used by top clubs have not been shared, which isn’t surprising. We do at least know that clubs are focusing on the distances covered by players at high speeds which they term ‘high-intensity output’. Another approach is to measure a host of data on a player, including the number of passes, tackles and distances covered, and then monitor those data sets over a number of years. This at least reveals when a player regresses and is comparable to a risk management methodology by clubs. Another challenge for the number crunchers is comparability. Can you realistically compare a striker scoring a heap of goals at the top of the Championship with a striker plying his trade in the basement of the Premier League?

Is data really making a difference?

It is probably too early to conclude whether or not the number crunchers in English football are holding the keys to the unlocking of sustained success. At times talent is so obvious that you don’t need data analytics to support a decision in football. I doubt whether Barcelona FC needed any statistics to support their decision to sign a young Argentine by the name of Lionel Messi when he was just 13. You might also argue that statistical analytics has hardly been working at Arsenal recently as the North London club last lifted a trophy in 2005.

However, surely anything that gives you an edge in football – a multi-million dollar industry where the margins between success and failure are so slim – is worthy of embracing. It is for that reason that data analytics in football is here to stay.

Chris Conway

Finding a Sports Agent

2011-05-22T13:33:00.000-07:00

This article is for all the young athletes who depend on Sports Networker to provide resourceful tools for your future sports career. You’ve got hustle, talent, and on your way to the pro level. How do you find a sports agent who has your best interest in mind? Here are some tips to help you find the right agent who will represent you, the athlete…and you, the person.

1. Ask fellow athletes and professional level personnel for referrals.

Word gets around quickly and good agents come highly recommended, based on experience and a stellar record of matching athletes to the right team and the best package.

2. Hold out for the best.

Many will attempt to woo you to sign with them. They will offer money, LOTS of it. Don’t just sign with the first agent you talk to. Interview many agents and ask a ton of questions. Believe me, they’re used to it.

3. Perform a background check.

Do your homework! Ask for references of peers and a list of former clients who obtained successful contracts through that agent. Take time to call and check out the agents’ credibility. If they’re reputable, they will not have any problem with you doing a little investigation.

4. Utilize the Sports Agent Directory.

This is a comprehensive listing of agents and their contact information. Still – do yourhomework. Just because an agent is listed in a directory, doesn’t mean he or she is reputable or the right match for you and your sports goals. Don’t do any business with an agent unless he’s an educated, certified agent.

5. Don’t sign on the dotted line just yet.

If you’re planning to play college ball, signing with an agent will wipe out your eligibility. Don’t let an agent tell you they might not be available when you’re ready to sign. There are enough good agents in the world to go around.

6. Make sure the agent is adept at CBA’s and is well connected.

A great agent is well connected in the industry. He has thousands of phone numbers of coaches, general managers, scouts, and athletic managers. He’s on the cutting edge of proposals and he’s at the top of his game with negotiation skills.

7. The agent must be a master communicator and networker.

The agent you ultimately decide on must have top-notch communication skills and be able to talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime. After all, he’ll need those skills to successfully negotiate with team owners, coaches, and sponsors. He must be able to build honest rapport with virtually anyone and his networking skills must be unsurpassed.

8. Honesty, integrity, patience, determination, and drive must dominate the agents’ entire persona.

The agent you decide on HAS to be driven by these qualities in all areas of his life.

9. An agent should meet and exceed your needs as a client.

An agent will excel in all areas of client requirements such as endorsement deals, restructuring of contracts, doing your taxes, or simply providing an ear to you, your significant other, and perhaps even family members who have concerns. He sincerely cares for you, the individual.

10. Only the 100% committed need apply.

If you’ve narrowed your choices for an agent, put each to the test. Call at various times of the day to see if the agent picks up the phone or how long it takes him to call you back. The agent you want is the one who is available 24/7/365 and responds with enthusiasm, a can-do attitude, and stats to back up what he’s promising.

Michelle Hill

The Makeup of Becoming a Champion

2011-02-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

The parallels of traits between successful business entrepreneurs and championship athletes are always present. And as a two-time national soccer champion on two different collegiate levels, I am a believer that there are certain characteristics that separate an athlete from a championship athlete.

How many of these traits listed apply to you, your athletes, your employees, or your co-workers? Do you have a champion in your office? Caution: These traits are sometimes best handled in small doses and not all at one time.

“Everyone tells me that the Italian championship is the toughest in the world, but I’m not afraid. In my career, I’ve always scored goals, wherever I’ve been.” – Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima

“Everybody on a championship team doesn’t get publicity, but everyone can say he’s a champion.” – Magic Johnson

“More than anything, I have learned a great deal about the amount of hard work and dedication that it takes to be a champion.” – Nadia Comaneci

Here are the 10 Degrees of Separation listed in no particular order:

Dedication

Definition: wholly committed to something, as to an ideal, political cause, or personal goal

Not every day on the field is pretty. Not every day on the field is pain free. Not every day on that field is going to be flawless. But you have to stick through it every day through both the good and bad times to reach your end result.

Passion

Definition: having, compelled by, or ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling.

Having passion for the game that you are playing is crucial to your success. It’s not just something you do 9-5 or only 40 hours a week. You not only do it every day because you have to, but because you want to.

Confidence

Definition: belief in oneself and one’s powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance.

This is the belief that you CAN do it.

Arrogance

Definition: making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights; overbearingly assuming; insolently proud

This is the belief that no one else can do it, but you! This term receives such a negative implication, but sometimes a very necessary quality for successful athletes.

Drive

Definition: being under compulsion, as to succeed or excel.

What drives you to succeed? The actual element that drives a champion can be different for each person, but that ingredient is always present. Every now and then this drive is a reflection of a rough childhood, maybe proving others wrong, or simply a competitive drive to win.

Selfishness

Definition: devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others.

An intelligent call has to be made on behalf of an athlete about when to be selfish in the moment of the game; this includes when to take the ball themselves, not pass to a teammate, and just shoot for the goal.

Fear

Definition: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

This includes: the fear of a coach, the fear of losing, the fear of an opponent, and the looming fear of failure. These can become incredible driving forces for achievement.

Vision

Definition: the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be.

There are just some athletes you watch in awe as you enjoy their ability to have amazing vision of the field. You also have to know what you want, your own vision for yourself before you can make it a reality.

Selflessness

Definition: having little or no concern for oneself, especially with regard to fame, position, money, etc.

While it is important to be selfish, the opposite is also true. Despite the fact that finding balance might be difficult, this is where ultimate success may lie.

Respect

Definition: esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.

Holds true for respect for yourself as well as respect for others.

10 traits actually make for a very short list of characteristics. What traits do you feel are missing from this list that should have been included and why?

written by Kristen Sonsma

Athletes in the Zone - Reality or Myth?

2011-01-30T16:08:00.000-08:00

I coached athletics for more than 33 years. During that time, I saw some unbelievable performances by many athletes. Many of the athletes involved in these performances claimed that they were in "the zone."

However, because of the small athletic stage available, only those in attendance were able to see these. Many of the greatest stars in sports, players like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Brett Favre and Wayne Gretzky, have reported experiencing this state of mind while playing.

The Athletic Zone is a state of mind where time slows and mental focus is absolute. It is a combination of physical exertion and mental focus, usually occurring in those individuals participating in sports, that require mental fortitude. It is an extraordinary state of mind, that places you in a mediative state of being. You are void of distraction or disruption from others around you. Even your own mental clutter can't can't affect the way you perform.

Does this state of mind really exist or is it just a myth? If it is for real, can anyone from any walk of life enter this zone? Imagine a business employee, entering this zone at work. Imagine a math professor, working on an important equation. Being in "the zone' could be very beneficial to these type of individuals, when it comes to production.

Robb Wolf is a sports nutritionist. He feels that diet plays a very important part in reaching the zone. He believes in the (40/30/30) percent of calories from carbohydrates, proteins and fats. This is called the zone diet. Wolf claims that no scientific studies have ever been done on athletes that are in the zone. However, there has been studies on the zone diet. The zone diet deals mainly with a low carbohydrate diet.

This would mean that diet plays a major factor in both physical and mental performance. It is assumed that the zone begins with a mental state of mind. From there, it expands to other areas of an athletes awareness, including performance and skill execution. It also affects decision making in times of stress and confusion.

Probably the best example, that I have ever witnessed, is that of Michael Jordan's performance in the playoffs. Jordan, suffering from the flu, had a temperature of 103 degrees plus. During the 1997 playoffs, Jordan put on a remarkable performance scoring 38 points against the Utah Jazz in game five.

During this game, he was unusually quiet verbally. His mental focus was exceeding that of anytime he played. You can view highlights of his performance at a YouTube sight.

The answer to my original question is that we recognize the zone, but no scientific studies have ever been done. It appears to exist, but there is no proof.

Bill Hinks

The Zen of Football-USA Today

2011-01-20T17:54:00.000-08:00

Headline news in USA Today: "The Zen of Football"

Front page of the Sports Section- Rodgers: "Foreseeing is Believing".

In this article, Green Bay Packers Quarterback, Aaron Rodgers talks about the power of visualization. He credits his daily mental practice in helping the Packers reach the post season - and for pounding the Atlanta Falcons, the #1 seed, 48-21 last weekend.

Rodgers says he learned how to visualize from a coach, which he was in 6th grade. He also says most of the big plays he made in the upset victory over Atlanta, he pictured in his imagination first.

It’s amazing to me that this story is headline news in today’s world. You would think with all the information available on the power of your creative imagination that this would not be in the news. After all, how many great athletes don't visualize in one form or another. Some use self-hypnosis. Some visualize while lying down. Some while sitting. I even teach people to do it while standing still or moving.

No matter how you visualize though, it won’t work unless your practice creates what Dr. Maxwell Maltz called "The Winning Feeling."

Many people visualize but don’t feel anything. This is a red flag that something they are doing is wrong. Visualization without a change of emotion isn’t the proper use of your creative imagination.

I believe the more powerful approach to mind training is to change the feelings before you visualize. This can be accomplished thru deep breathing alone - or through stillness or through movements that integrate the breath.

E-motion stands for energy movement. It's great to sit or lie still and picture what you want. But it's much more effective to train your mind like a fighter who shadow boxes an imaginary foe.

Shadow boxing is just a term to describe a practice used by top salespeople, speakers, golfers as well as surgeons.

Don't just picture yourself doing the thing. Go through the motions as you picture it - and FEEL it.

Matt Furley

Nelson Mandela Rugby Helps Unite a Nation

2010-12-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

Nelson Mandela: Rugby Helps Unite a Nation

December 21, 2010 by duffgibson

At the moment I’m just finishing a book called Mandela’s Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage by Richard Stengel (as quoted below). It’s not a book about sport or history but it does refer to both in describing Mandela’s leadership skills. As was shown in the movie Invictus, Mandela used rugby as a unifying force in the racially divided nation of South Africa.

“Rugby came back into Mandela’s life when he became president. Job number one for him was to be the father of the nation, the patriarch who united white and black around a common vision.”

“When the threats of harmony were greatest, in 1994 and 1995, Mandela used a curious tactic: He turned to sports as a way of healing the nation. For years the ANC (African National Congress) had done everything it could to get the Springboks, the national rugby team, banned from international play. And they had succeeded. Now Mandela sought to have the ban on them lifted, and he became instrumental in bringing the rugby World Cup to South Africa. He thought rugby could be the great uniter, and not a divider. He began a charm campaign to win over the rugby establishment.”

Mandela showed great insight in to the potential that rugby had to unite black and white when it had in fact done the opposite for years. It’s no exaggeration to say that in a very pivotal moment in South African history, Mandela deterred a movement to have both the Springbok’s name and colours changed. To black South Africans, the Springboks had always been white South Africa’s team but Mandela knew that a team seen as representing the black citizens would be just as polarizing. In much the same way that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had done decades before, Mandela sought to win his opponents understanding.

“In his most famous gesture of reconciliation, Mandela wore the Springbok jersey and cap to the rugby finals at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park Staduium in 1995. When he strode out before the game to greet the team captain, the mostly white crowd began to chant, “Nel-son, Nel-son!” It was one of the most electrifying moments in the history of sport and politics.”

Michael Jordan and Fear of Failure

2010-12-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

Michael Jordan and the Fear of Failure

December 14, 2010 by duffgibson

In any contest there is a winner and a loser and almost anyone would tell you that winning is a lot more fun. But in many ways losing is more valuable in the long run as it helps to define us. When we lose in sport, we learn much more about ourselves, our weaknesses, and how we might improve for the next time. Setbacks, obstacles and outright failures force us to make decisions as to how seriously we want to pursue a goal, and how we’re going to make it happen.

In sport there are a great number of champion athletes who faced setbacks and later acknowledged these failures as very significant to their ultimate success. Michael Jordan for example was cut from his high school basketball team in grade 10. He refers to this event as being integral to his development as it taught him that he could bring about a significant change in his ability through hard work. A lot of that has to do with his reaction to being cut in the first place. In other words he chose to react positively, to work harder, to make himself better.

Experiencing failure can also be very valuable in the sense that one learns that life goes on and that failure is not something to be feared. In terms of being successful in a competitive environment, getting over the fear of failure is a very valuable skill. In fact, the higher the level of competition, the more important the skill becomes.

In the mid-90’s when the Chicago Bulls were in the midst of winning several NBA championships, Michael Jordan was in a commercial that reflected on the fact that failure is a part of what he did for a living. Have a look:

Keep in mind that this commercial was made before the end of Jordan’s career. In other words, the numbers he refers to where not career totals and when all was said and done the numbers were higher. To me, the most poignant stat referred to in the commercial was the missed game-winning shots. It’s an amazing thought that you could string together somewhere between a third and a half of a season worth of (NBA Champion) Chicago Bulls losses where they lost for no reason other than they gave the ball to the best player ever to step on a court and he just missed.

What’s the point? You can’t be afraid to try. And by all accounts when Jordan went for that game winning shot, the thought of missing was the furthest thing from his mind. And if you ask any sport psychologist, they’ll tell you that was one of Jordan’s greatest strengths.

How Twitter Impacts Tiger Woods' Brand

2010-11-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

It’s been a year of Tiger Woods stories. After he officially lost the title of ‘number one ranked golfer in the world’, he has decided to join Twitter in an attempt to save what’s left of his brand. If I were Tiger and my secret life of indiscretions had become a public spectacle, I would go into hiding for awhile in my embarrassment and shame. My primary life talent would take a back seat to the agony of media scrutiny and public opinion. After I stewed in a boiling pot of negative press and perpetual gossip, I would create a plan of action…a plan to restore my tarnished reputation and develop a sense of trust with the media and public. My strategy would include:

1. Use Social Media

I would enlist social media as an avenue to regain trust and credibility in the public eye. I would communicate honestly and genuinely with my “fans” in order to establish a renewed rapport. Tiger is in fact doing this, much to the delight of his loyal fans. Within an hour of his newly opened Twitter account, he had multiple thousands of followers. His Facebook page has well over a million fans. His posts are positive and there’s a good “feel” about them. The feel of a man who has been humbled and who is now re-designing himself into a morally solid individual.

2. Foundation Donations

I would increase awareness about what I’m doing to make the world a better place. Tiger Woods Foundation does just that. Their programs include the Tiger Woods Learning Center, a one-of-a-kind educational facility custom-built for the undeserved youth of Southern California; Tiger’s Action Plan, nationwide curricula based on goal-setting, career exploration and self-discovery through service learning; and the Earl Woods Scholarship program, which offers a four-year college scholarship to hard-working students with demonstrated financial need and proven commitment to community service. Tiger has donated millions of dollars to these endeavors and has stepped up his efforts since his moral demise.

3. Dedicate to Accountability, Counseling, Key Support

When you’re busted, you’re busted. It usually happens because there’s no accountability; you’re duped into thinking no one is watching. That alone is self-deception. I would establish a solid same-sex accountability partner, I would participate in regular counseling, and place key support people around me who are committed to keep me on track. Without these safeguards in place, it’s easy to fall back into negative behavior traps. In his ESPN interview with “Mike and Mike”, Tiger re-stated his unhappiness with himself the previous two years, knowing he was engaging in activity that wasn’t balanced and which lacked perspective for the future.

4. Win

I would just start winning the game again. The public has a funny way of forgetting when someone is back at the top. Even though the media might mention his demise at every turn, Tiger can shut everyone up by just winning. People love come-back stories and I believe Tiger Woods is one of those stories.

5. Show Gratefulness Toward Supportive Fans

I would establish a positive, thankful attitude toward supportive fans. Perhaps one of the reasons most fans have been so supportive of Tiger is that none of us are perfect. We can relate to his self-deception on some level, however small. We’ve all had moral lapses from time to time. Most of us may get away with negative behavior because we’re not Tiger Woods but we still live with a sense of moral right and wrong and make decisions based on that premise. Tiger has continually expressed his gratefulness to fans for their loving support.

If I were Tiger Woods, I would turn my greatest embarrassment into my greatest triumph. He now knows what he’s capable of if his soul is left to itself. He’s acknowledged his errors, he’s lost many valuable relationships along the way, and he’s paid the enormous price of a tarnished reputation and diminished role-model status. He’s poised for greatness and He can and will come back with a stronger character, wiser behavior, and better self.

Michelle Hill

Arnold Schwarzenegger "Always" thinks like a Champion -You can Too!

2010-11-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

“How To Think Like A Champion”

There are few interviews from exceptional people, that illustrate so flawlessly, the process needed to achieve great things than this one with, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Watch, Listen & Do!

The mental part of anyone’s game is always the part that needs the most work and has the greatest opportunity, if improved, to give epic improvements to performance immediately.

Todd Herman

"The Shift Hits the Fan"

2010-11-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

The Revolution Has Begun - "The Shift Hits the Fan"
By Kenny Ausubel
Co-CEO and Founder, Bioneers
Opening the Bioneers Conference, October 15th, 2010, San Rafael, California

The Bottleneck. The Great Disruption. Peak Everything. The Great Turning.

Whatever you call it, it's the big enchilada.

In the words of filmmaker Tom Shadyac, "The shift is hitting the fan." We're experiencing the dawn of a revolutionary transformation. This awkward 'tween state marks the end of pre-history - the sunset of an ecologically illiterate civilization. Like a baby being born, a new world is crowning.

The revolution has begun. But in fits and starts. The challenge is it's one minute to midnight - too late to avoid large-scale destruction. We have to fan the shift to ecoliterate societies at sufficient scale and speed to dodge irretrievable cataclysm.

From breakdown to breakthrough, it's a revolution from the heart of nature and the human heart. It leads with a basic shift in our relationship with nature from resource and object to mentor, model and partner. Game-changing breakthroughs in science, technology and design such as biomimicry are revolutionizing our very ways of knowing. The Rights of Nature movement is recognizing the inalienable rights of the non-human world of ecosystems and critters, widening our circle of compassion and kinship. Greater decentralization and localization are building resilience from the ground up - shaped by ancient indigenous wisdom of becoming native to our place.

The digital communications revolution is primed to spread solutions without borders at texting speed. Historic demographic shifts are fertilizing the landscape - from the ascendancy of women's leadership to the worldbeat of cultural and racial pluralism. Empires and dynasties are waning and waxing with sudden shifts in the balance of global power.

When a chrysalis turns into a butterfly, the caterpillar's immune system attacks the very first of the butterfly's cells as invaders. The pushback will be equally fierce, casting shadows of widespread destruction and violence, mass migrations, virulent ideologies, and ethnic strife. Yet in the end, the big, hairy caterpillar audaciously becomes a beautiful butterfly.

What does the revolution look like on the ground?

As climate shocks rock the planet, renewable energy is reaching a tipping point and going mainstream. For the past two years, the U.S. and Europe have both added more power capacity from renewables than from coal, gas and nuclear combined. Worldwide, renewables accounted for a third of new generating capacity, and now provide a quarter of global power capacity and 18 percent of electricity supply. Germany is aiming for a carbon-neutral grid while maintaining its highly industrialized status - without significant changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles.

Renewable energy investment topped $150 billion worldwide in 2009, attracting many of the world's largest companies. Government policies are largely responsible. Over 70 national and state governments have put incentives in place.

Europe has the leading position globally in great part because of government policy. EU business leadership sees green products as its future Silicon Valley. The EU is aiming for 25% of global green market share by 2020.

China has leapfrogged the world in pursuit of a low-carbon economy. It's now the largest manufacturer of wind turbines, solar panels, and the most efficient grids and coal plants. It has created a national energy "superministry," and the President has stated China must "seize preemptive opportunities in the new round of the global energy revolution."

The expansion of wind power is moving to industrial scale. Electric cars are heading for the mass market worldwide. Massachusetts and California lead the U.S. with efficiency standards expected to generate billions in savings to customers and tens of thousands of new jobs. An estimated 23 percent of U.S. emissions can be cut by 2020 just through energy efficiency.

Job creation and new businesses are key drivers of renewables. Germany now employs more almost as many people in clean energy as in its largest manufacturing sector of automobiles.

The spread of renewables is starting to reduce CO2 emissions. Germany has reduced its emissions by nearly 30 percent since 1990. Sweden has vowed to eliminate fossil fuels for electricity by 2020 and gasoline-powered cars by 2030. Sweden also commissioned research that shows the country could cut its emissions by 25-50 percent by changing the national diet. A new national food policy puts emissions labeling on foods and restaurant menus. The principal Scandinavian organic certification program will require low-carbon farming methods. Sweden's dietary recommendations are now circulating throughout the EU. An estimated 25% of emissions produced by people in industrialized nations are linked with the foods they eat.

Greatly heightened investment from banks is advancing these trends, especially in Europe, China and Latin America. Germany's Deutsche Bank is redirecting much of its $700 billion in assets to address global warming, including a $7 billion climate investment fund. National green infrastructure banks are on the horizon.

A sea change in thinking has propelled the banking industry and economists to team up with mathematical biologists to study natural ecosystems for lessons about resilience. The Bank of England says the banking industry will be fundamentally reshaped to treat global finance as a "complex adaptive system" like a living ecosystem.

A parallel epiphany is bubbling up in engineering, led by giant firms such as CH2M Hill that have embraced climate adaptation. Instead of steel-and-concrete, they're recommending "soft infrastructure" - flexible ecological systems like wetlands, oyster beds and barrier islands, as well as water retention, wastewater recycling and water efficiency. The bywords are reliability, local self-sufficiency and decentralization. FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers are close behind.

In the absence of a national clean energy policy in the U.S., the action is coming mainly from cities and states. Mayors and governors are developing ambitious climate strategies and policies, while creating jobs, businesses and living laboratories for low-carbon development. L.A.'s Mayor Villaraigosa vowed to "permanently break our addiction to coal" by 2020. The Pacific Coast states are working to jettison coal within a decade.

Sounds great, right? But of course, there's more to the story. The current gains are tenuous, vulnerable to the vagaries of politics and economic oscillations. And we're still losing ground anyway. Global emissions will rise by 40% by 2030, more than half of which will come from China and the balance from developing countries.

As Groucho Marx put it, "Why should we bother about the next generation? They have never done anything for us!"

In truth, the world is reaching "peak everything," in Richard Heinberg's words. A global economy built on unlimited growth and massive resource use is heading for inevitable contraction.

A major barrier in the U.S. is the annual military budget of over a trillion dollars. Although the Defense Department has embraced climate change as a top national security issue, national sustainability must move front and center. As David Orr observes, "The concept of sustainability should be the new organizing principle for both domestic and foreign policy. Sustainability is the core of a national development strategy designed to enhance our security, build prosperity from the ground up, and reduce ecological damage, risks of climate destabilization and the necessity of fighting endless wars over dwindling resources."

What's needed is the national and global equivalent of a wartime mobilization with sustainability as magnetic north. Many say only catastrophe will precipitate such a shift and are readying plans for that turning point. Paul Gilding's One Degree War Plan forecasts a "Coalition of the Cooling" anchored by the U.S., China and the EU, who produce 50 percent of emissions - and who could then engage Russia, India, Japan and Brazil to hit 67 percent.

But for now, the U.S. is being left behind. As a leader at Germany's Deutsche Bank stated, "They're asleep at the wheel on climate change, asleep at the wheel on job growth, asleep at the wheel on this industrial revolution taking place in the energy industry." Rather than catastrophe, business competitiveness may ultimately prove the more compelling driver.

Yet as Einstein said, we cannot solve the problem with the same mentality that created it. Brother, can you spare a paradigm? The supreme challenge of global interdependence is to foster meta-cooperation in a full world.

Our collective fate likely hangs from the cliff by three intertwining ropes: systems, power, and story.

Shifting the mindscape starts with systems thinking. Complex systems by nature are unpredictable, nonlinear and cannot be controlled. The key to building resilience is to foster the system's capacity to adapt to dramatic change. As Dana Meadows observed, "A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity."

A paradigm is the hardest thing to change in a system, but it can happen fast. As Meadows advised, "Keep pointing at anomalies and failures in the old paradigm. Keep speaking loudly and with assurance, from the new one. Insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. Don't waste time with reactionaries; work with active change agents, and the vast middle ground of open people."

At the core is the transformation to a restoration economy.

Europe's model of "social capitalism" may be the most important innovation in the world economy since the rise of the corporation. Among its structural innovations are two policies: Works Councils and co-determination.

Works councils give employees significant input and decision-making or veto power on substantive issues. They contribute to efficiency by improving the quality of decisions and worker buy-in.

Co-determination, where workers are elected to company supervisory boards, has fostered a culture of consultation and cooperation, benefited business, and distributed wealth more broadly. Most EU nations use the practice. The 27-nation European Union, the world's largest economy, has a higher per capita growth rate and slightly lower unemployment than the U.S. The vibrant small business sector produces two thirds of EU jobs. Ironically, the EU social capitalism model arose following World War II to punish postwar Germany with economic democracy and curtail corporate power.

What's afoot globally today are the re-envisioning of the economy and the redesign of the corporation into diverse structures of business ownership and governance - such as large-scale cooperatives, mission-controlled social businesses and foundation-owned social profit companies. Bill Gates calls it "creative capitalism." It works. Employee-owned firms modestly outperform their peers. Foundation-owned, values-driven companies perform at least as well or better. In Europe, coops comprise 12 percent of GDP and engage 60 percent of the population. Marjorie Kelly terms them "emergent new organizational species" designed like living systems to deliver human and ecological benefits as well as profits.

Another seismic meta-trend transforming the economy and society at large is the ascendancy of women's leadership. As writer Hanna Rosin points out in "The End of Men," "Those societies that take advantage of the talents of all of their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest." One study measuring the economic and political power of women in 162 countries found with few exceptions that the greater the power of women, the greater the nation's economic success. As David Gergen wrote, "Women are knocking on the door of leadership at the very moment when their talents are especially well matched with the requirements of the day."

Natural systems have their own operating instructions, as biomimicry master Janine Benyus describes. Nature runs on current sunlight. Nature banks on diversity. Nature rewards cooperation. Nature builds from the bottom up. Nature recycles everything. And Earth's mission statement: Life creates conditions conducive to life..

Given that the most important element in systems is purpose and goals, the big question is: What's the economy for? If the goal is building resilience, the priority flips from growth and expansion to sufficiency and a sustainable prosperity. Resilience also favors economic re-localization, which in turn produces greater energy and food security.

How then do we set about redesigning human systems? And who has decision-making power?

In practice, our current system design concentrates wealth and distributes poverty. The super-rich .01 percent of the population - about 13,000 people - earn as much as the bottom 120 million. U.S. unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression. Forty-four million Americans live in poverty. Joblessness underemployment and low wages are the new normal.

Washington D.C. has 11,195 corporate lobbyists who in 2009 spent six times all spending combined by environmental, consumer, labor and other non-corporate entities. The biggest lobbying and campaign spender is the financial services sector, with banks being the most powerful. As Senator Dick Durbin commented, "Frankly they own the place." It's no wonder. The estimated lobbying return on investment is a hundred to one. Remember that $13 trillion in public bailout funds to the banks? That's the public option.

No wonder there's a Tea Party. Call me traditional, but the Tea Party needs to get back to its roots. The Boston Tea Party was as a rebellion against a government-backed corporate monopoly.

As author Thom Hartmann recounts, Britain's East India corporation staked its claim on parts of North America under military protection from its biggest investor, the British Crown. Already hugely powerful in India and China, the corporation had gained control over almost all international commerce to and from North America. But it was bedeviled by colonial small businessmen and entrepreneurs who dared to run their own ships and buy tea wholesale from Dutch trading companies. The East India corporation obtained laws to eliminate the competition - backed by the death penalty.

As Hartmann points out, "'Taxation without representation' meant hitting the average person and small business with taxes, while letting the richest and most powerful corporation in the world off the hook for its taxes."

The Boston Tea Party precipitated the American Revolution and guided the first American century of highly resrtictive corporate governance and law. That revolutionary tradition is resurfacing today in the growing movement to challenge and revoke corporate constitutional rights.

The story of today's battle is above all the battle of the story. As human beings, we're hard-wired for story. When our story conflicts with the facts, we stick with the story. As scholar Richard Tarnas observes, "Worldviews create worlds."

The ruling story according to Western Civilization took hold about 500 years ago with the birth of the Scientific Revolution and exaltation of human reason. When the Copernican revolution showed the Earth revolves around the sun, science redefined humanity's place in the natural order and the cosmos.

Perhaps the defining characteristic of the modern mind is the belief in a radical separation between the human self and the external world. According to the modern mind, Tarnas observes, "Apart from the human being, the cosmos is seen as entirely impersonal and unconscious... mere matter in motion, mechanistic and purposeless, ruled by chance and necessity. It is altogether indifferent to human consciousness and values. The world outside the human being lacks conscious intelligence, it lacks interiority, and it lacks intrinsic meaning and purpose... For the modern mind, the only source of meaning in the universe is human consciousness."

The modern mind stands in radical contrast with the primal worldview, exemplified by indigenous cultures. As Tarnas continues, "Primal experience takes place within a world soul, an anima mundi, a living matrix of embodied meaning. Because the world is understood as speaking a symbolic language, direct communication of meaning and purpose from world to human can occur."

The linear, mechanistic, reductionist worldview has yielded as science has radically evolved into a vastly more complex view of interdependence and other ways of knowing. From complexity and chaos theory to the Gaia Hypothesis, a new cosmology is unfolding. In this scientific revolution, the Earth does not revolve around us.

Tarnas frames the battle of the cosmic story in this way.

"Imagine for a moment that you are the universe. But for the purposes of this thought experiment - that you are not the disenchanted, mechanistic universe of conventional modern cosmology - but rather a deep-souled, subtly mysterious cosmos of great spiritual beauty and creative intelligence. And imagine that you are approached by two different epistemologies - two suitors, as it were - who seek to know you. To whom would you open your deepest secrets? To which approach would you be most likely to reveal your authentic nature?

"Would you open most deeply to the suitor - the way of knowing - who approached you as though you were essentially lacking in intelligence or purpose - as though you had no interior dimension to speak of - no spiritual capacity or value; who thus saw you as fundamentally inferior to himself (let us give the two suitors, not entirely arbitrarily, the traditional masculine gender); who related to you as though your existence were valuable primarily to the extent that he could develop and exploit your resources, to satisfy his various needs; and whose motivation for knowing you was ultimately driven by a desire for increased intellectual mastery, predictive certainty, and efficient control over you for his own self-enhancement?

"Or would you, the cosmos, open yourself most deeply to that suitor who viewed you as being at least as intelligent and noble - as worthy a being - as permeated with mind and soul - as imbued with moral aspiration and purpose - as endowed with spiritual depths and mystery, as he? This suitor seeks to know you not that he might better exploit you but rather to unite with you and thereby bring forth something new - a creative synthesis emerging from both of your depths. He desires to liberate that which has been hidden by the separation between knower and known. His ultimate goal of knowledge is a more richly responsive and empowered participation in a co-creative unfolding of new realities. He seeks an intellectual fulfillment that is intimately linked with imaginative vision, moral transformation, empathic understanding, aesthetic delight. His act of knowledge is essentially an act of love and intelligence combined - of wonder as well as discernment - of opening to a process of mutual discovery. To whom would you be more likely to reveal your deepest truths?"

Which suitor shall we choose? Which suitor do you choose?

Dream On

2010-11-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

Dream On my darling grandson Baye. Never lose that dream. Let it grow in and through you and you will express it as you. You will race those cars. Your dreams will become reality. You -I- Love ... forever Nana

To live in the “is” world and not the “should be” world. Never before has there been a wider gap between those who are awake and those who are sleepwalking.

2010-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

2010 is a pivotal year, a season of transition and great change.

I say this as much from a feeling in my bones as any event I might specifically describe. In 2-3 years you will look back and see the pre-2010 world as strangely different from the one you find yourself living in.

5 years from now you’ll stand in wonder of once mighty empires that have fallen. By 2020, a company you’ve barely heard of today will be more powerful than Facebook or Google.

The sub-prime mortgage industry has ceased to exist in the US and will doubtfully ever return. Increasing government controls on old industries will force creativity to flee to new territories, because entrepreneurs can always innovate faster than bureaucrats can regulate.

In the 20th century, the top 1 billion people were the #1 driver in the world. The 21st century will be marked by the emergence of the “middle billions” – the tier of humanity which, now connected, can participate in the world marketplace. Many of the next wave of billionaires will come from countries we consider to be “underdeveloped.”

You are seeing that now on sites like Elance where an abundance of raw talent is available 24/7 from less developed, rapidly advancing countries. The middle billions will power the economic comeback.

You can use the information age to sharpen your mind and stay abreast of the greatest thinkers in history, or you can dull your senses with entertainment and pleasure seeking. Your choice.

You can use your iPod to tune in, or to tune out. You can contribute to the world you live in, or you can nurse at whatever breast keeps you sedated. Your decision.

Never before has there been a wider gap between those who are awake and those who are sleepwalking. You will only see this chasm widen.

The consequence of this is that politicians will try to get elected by promising to abolish the 80/20 rule. But regardless of their vain attempts, a tiny percentage of people will still drive the vast majority of progress.

You get to decide which side of the 80/20 tracks you live on.

In a world that is drowning in data and information, the most precious commodity is WISDOM – the ability to make sound judgments and harness knowledge. To interpret and use information.

Wisdom comes from the outside. It’s requested and received. It’s not merely a ‘given.’ And it should never be taken for granted. Common Sense is uncommon and it will always be precious. Those who lack wisdom are unable to perceive things that are staring them in the face. And nothing you say will make them see.

I can only urge you to open your mind and your spirit to the things that are new. By this I don’t mean bells and whistles and gadgets. I mean shifts in the culture, new expectations, new paradigms. New rules that replace old ones that don’t work anymore. To live in the “is” world and not the “should be” world.

A thousand warriors I have known. Among them, dozens who’ve had total financial wipeouts, bankruptcies, massive failures. One made $2 million personal income in 2006, then zero in 2009. I know another who’s upside down to the tune of $100 million.

Some are shady characters. Some are among the finest individuals I’ve ever met. One was cleaning up all the messes in his life one by one, rekindling his marriage, shedding his addictions and bad habits, and doing an admirable job at that. It would seem he deserved a break.

It didn’t happen because he was a bad guy. It happened because the world moved on.

In almost every case, they are furiously re-inventing themselves. Which seems like a paradox, because times of economic growth are revealed to be seasons of greatest stagnation, gluttony and sloth.

Lean times produce enormous innovation and industry. 278 of the current Fortune 500 companies were founded by solo entrepreneurs in an economic downturn.

Lean into the leanness.

Forest burns to the ground. Weeks later you return to find nothing but ashes. Yet unseen, below ground, a revolution is underway.

Today is the day the heavens are shifting. Advancing under a guise of stagnancy, this is new a season of healing – physical, emotional, financial, spiritual.

If you find yourself restless and bored of things that used to work and don’t anymore, this is the season to ask and expect old wisdom to take new forms.

The Secretariat movie is prophetic for this year. Secretariat literally had the heart of a champion—a heart almost 3 times as large as a normal horse heart. That heart was the powerful engine that made him a great champion.

This is not the year to declare our history. This is the time to prophesy our future.

Perry Marshall

Thanks to my friend and confidant Sue Towne for supplying much of the inspiration for today. Thanks to Perry for this article. This is why I assist other to become Champions in their lives.

John Wooden's Definition of Success

2010-10-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Eric for finding this great video of famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden talking about his coaching (and life) philosophies. I’ve referred to Wooden many times in this blog and on Twitter because he typifies the ‘make a better person, get a better athlete’ philosophy of coaching. There’s a great deal of wisdom in this 17 minute clip and it’s all so simply put and perhaps that’s why it resonates so well.

What I enjoyed most from the video was Wooden’s answer to the question, “who was the best player you ever coached?” because it had very little to do with natural talent and it had everything to do with competing to the best of your ability. Have a look:John Wooden

Happy Thanksgiving and more

2010-10-11T20:53:00.000-07:00

Happy thanksgiving to each and everyone of you.

The more is what has kept me away from blogging as often as I love to do.

In the last couple of weeks there have been many wonderful changes and challenges in my life. The outcomes have been nothing short of miraculous. Traveling and more traveling meetings and more meetings.

2 weeks ago I became a representative for sportsDrive in Canada. SPORTS DRIVE is a provider of scientifically based assessments that predict athletic performance in all types of athletes across all types of sports. sportsDrive provides valuable insights into athletic strengths and challenges. Additionally, sportsDrive provides detailed feedback on areas that need improvement.

It is proven that physical abilities simply aren’t enough to reach the top level of professional sports. By taking the time to complete the assessment, athletes take the first step to understanding the inner forces that drive athletic success.

sportsDrive is the only site on the Web geared towards athletic development that assesses 16 dimensions scientifically proven by scientists in sports psychology and sports related psychological assessments to predict athletic performance and help individual athletes, as well as teams, improve overall performance. 16 Key Athletic Dimensions Science and Sports.

I an honored to be part of this family of scientists, psychologists,

entrepreneurs. I will go into more detail about sportsDrive in my next blog.

For now I want to wish each and everyone of you a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Be well.

Dancing with life and Creating Champions
Colli

www.inner-expression.com
colli@sportsDrive.com

Relating To Your Competition or How to Avoid Being Your own Worst Enemy

2010-09-28T09:20:00.000-07:00

Relating To Your Competition or How To Avoid Being Your Own Worst Enemy

September 28, 2010 by duffgibson

In previous posts I have written about the great sportsmen I was so lucky to have competed against in my skeleton career. Because they were champions in their own right, they knew the value of facing a great competitor in drawing out great performances in themselves (2. Emulating Gregor Staehli). I was very grateful to have had competitors that wanted me to be at my best because they had the attitude described by the phrase, “may the best man win”. It created a very enjoyable competitive environment that not only brought out the best in me but allowed me to be happy and supportive of the performances of my competitors.

In creating this blog I have had the chance to interview a great number of very successful athletes including several Olympic Champions and I always make a point of asking them how they view their competition. In other words, do they see their opponents as friend or foe and invariably the answer is friend. I accept the possibility that there may be certain sports that are more combative in nature in which a healthy dislike of the competition may serve as a motivator in the heat of the competition but this is simply not the case when athletes compete independently. I would even go so far as to say that most of the top athletes in combative sports are able to get themselves into an optimal competitive state without having to trick themselves into believing they ‘hate’ their opponent.

Your success in sport is dependent almost entirely upon you and often has little to do with your opponent. It’s a valuable skill to be able to distinguish between what is and what is not under your control as it allows you to focus on what directly affects your chances of success. Even if you are of the mindset that athletes can be intimidated, such a tactic will work at times with certain opponents but if your goal to be the best, you’d better rely on something more consistent and tangible, like your own performance. Athletes are better served to develop friendships with their opponents. It creates a far more enjoyable environment that is every bit as competitive.

The following is an excerpt from the book Flow by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. It speaks very well to the value of those relationships and the importance of taking the time to make them positive and enjoyable.

“Unfair bosses and rude customers make us unhappy on the job. At home an uncaring spouse, an ungrateful child, and interfering in-laws are the prime sources of the blues. How is it possible to reconcile the fact that people cause both the best and the worst times?
“This apparent contradiction is actually not that difficult to resolve. Like anything else that really matters, relationships make us extremely happy when they go well, and very depressed when they don’t work out. People are the most flexible, the most changeable aspect of the environment we have to deal with. The same person can make the morning wonderful and the evening miserable. Because we depend so much on the affection and approval of others, we are extremely vulnerable to how we are treated by them.

“Therefore a person who learns to get along with others is going to make a tremendous change for the better in the quality of life as a whole. This fact is well known to those who write and those who read books with titles such as How to Win Friends and Influence People. Business executives yearn to communicate better so that they can be more effective managers, and debutantes read books on etiquette to be accepted and admired by the “in” crowd. Much of this concern reflects an extrinsically motivated desire to manipulate others. But people are not important only because they can help make our goals come true; when they are treated as valuable in their own right, people are the most fulfilling source of happiness.”

Self - Awareness

2010-09-20T19:57:00.000-07:00

As I tweeted the other day (@sportatitsbest), I’ve only just started Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open, and I’ve already found a reference to what I believe is an extremely key skill that all athletes need to develop if they want to reach the top. Of course I’m talking about today’s topic, self-awareness. Here’s the quote:

“Butterflies are funny. Some days they make you run to the toilet… Other days they make you laugh, and long for the fight… Figuring out your butterflies, deciphering what they say about the status of your mind and body, is the first step to making them work for you.”
Hope you enjoy the post.

These days, most national teams in Canada operate under the Integrated Support Team (or IST) model. Right from the Own The Podium website,

“IST’s are the Sport Sciences, Sports Medicine and other team management professionals that support coaches and athletes/teams. ISTs typically include a physiologist, sport psychologist, biomechanist/performance technologist, nutritionist, physical therapists/athletic therapist, and a physician. The goal of a IST is to ensure that Canadian athletes are healthy, fit and psychologically ready for optimal performance.”
IST’s are great for bringing everyone around an athlete on to the same page with respect to any aspect of their development. People from every discipline come together and a lot of great information is shared and it can be very insightful and helpful to have so many perspectives sitting around the same table.

However, when I competed prior to 2006, we didn’t have IST’s and in fact one year we didn’t even have a coach. We had a very good team leader, which I personally found very valuable, and we had good medical support, but in terms of an on-ice technical coach, we just couldn’t find someone to fit the bill after the previous coach left for other opportunities. The surprising thing was that it was actually a very successful year overall, and for me personally it happened to be my best ever.

The reason it worked was because my teammates and I each had very good self-awareness with respect to actually sliding down the track. We didn’t have a coach but we learned the tracks as well or better than we otherwise would have because we coached each other. At the time there were four of us on the men’s national team so in effect each of us had three coaches. If we arrived at a new track, after the first run we would meet and discuss our issues. If someone had a problem steering effectively through a corner that another team member had been successful with, there was a passing along of information. Occasionally there would be corners that we all had trouble with and in these circumstances we would get together, come up with a plan such that each of us would try a different strategy and then meet again after the run to determine what we had learned.

It was an effective strategy only because each of us were very self-aware with respect to where we were in a corner, when we were steering, how hard and for how long. In a sport where you can at times be more upside down than right side up going well over 120 km/h and under several G’s, that’s not easy to do. It worked because we could accurately convey information about a corner and because we were willing to invest in each other’s success. Your own information was going out to the team but you had three people’s information coming back to you which both speaks to the team environment we had, and the importance of being self-aware.

Now, myself and the other coaches preach two things above all others. One is the team environment and the other is to listen to your body and learn what it is telling you. It can take a long time to get there but that information is key.

Duff Gibson

Fantasy Sports Unites Fans All Over The World

2010-09-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

While sitting in a New York bar watching the New Orleans Saints successfully open the football season last week, it struck me that there is one thing that unites sports fans all over the world. Whether it is the NFL here in the US, rugby league in Australia or the English Premier League (EPL) soccer, today’s sports fans want to be engaged and actively interact with their favorite sports. They satisfy that desire by playing fantasy sports or by getting involved in forecasting weekly results. In Australia we call that tipping. Technology, fast-speed internet access and our increasing use of social media is making this engagement even easier and more fun for the fan.

The connection we have with our favorite sports now runs far deeper than merely supporting your local team or purchasing a few pieces of replica merchandising as was once the case. Trash talking your colleague over your fantasy quarterback selection is a big part of office culture on a Monday morning (or almost any day for that matter). Similarly, earning bragging rights over your mates with your superior tipping skills is a big deal Down Under.

This is all good news on a commercial front. The sport rights holder extends it product, sports marketers have something else to promote and broadcasters and, more importantly, sponsors have a wider reach.

The numbers involved are staggering. Fantasy sports are recognized as a multi-million dollar business. In 2010, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association “represents more than 110 member companies in a mature industry with a market size…at 27 million adult Americans”. It is estimated that about 85% of participants play on-line. That, of course, makes large consumer-oriented companies sit up and take notice. The industry is worth approximately $1 billion a year and that may well double in the future according to analysts.

Our interest and interaction is still growing despite the poor economy and this is taking place the world over. European fantasy football (soccer) is growing and the official EPL fantasy game has over 2 million players. Tipping is big business in Australia too as tipsters predict scores in most sports including Australian Football (AFL), rugby league, rugby union and soccer.

As I sat watching the Saints’ quarterback, Drew Brees, thread another successful pass I, like many others, had more than a passing interest in who scored the touchdown as opposed to the final score.

Chris Conway

Owning the Zone with Colli Christante - final interview by Brendhan Rohan

2010-08-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

Owning the Zone

Owning the Zone with Colli Christante

10:59 am in Interviews by Brendan Rohan

Here we are back with Colli Christante, kinesiologist and author of the forthcoming book “In Search of the Zone”.

Q. I see in your profile you have written a book called ”Owning the Zone”. Could you tell us what inspired it?

The documentary is called “Owning the Zone”. The book is “In Search of the Zone” and was inspired from what I experienced during a performance at the age of 11.

Rehearsals went amazing yet when it came to the actual performance something was missing. That night my quest began. To experience being in the Zone. Many athletes go through this. It is an elixir for an athlete. Through all my years as an athlete and Kinesiologist I have now refined the process and I can guarantee anyone that if you work with me you will experience the Zone and have the strategies to enter at will.

Q. How long has the project taken to complete – from thinking about writing to the eventual final copy?

I am still in the process of completing the book, however, the idea for the book came prior to meeting with ESPN at Hot Docs in Toronto in 1996. They were extremely interested in my documentary and the possibility of the book to go with it.

I have had a publisher express interest and so that has really motivated me to get it completed. The creative process is a unique and wonderful experience. It is almost complete. Once it is I guarantee you that you will be included as one of the first people to know.

Q. Were there things that you wished to have included in the book? Will these things be written into a follow up / sequel?

Interesting question Brendan. I strongly feel one of the reasons the book has not completed itself is because there were things that needed to be told, wanted to be added. Situations, experiences that needed to be revealed.

Q Have you written other material – you know, training manuals, etc?

Yes, I have written other things. Articles for various magazines, articles for Ezines ( Electronic Magazines ) , Self Growth.com, concepts for TV programs. Created and wrote “Owning the Zone” pilot, a Woman’s show called “Somewhere I Belong” and I am working on another book (cannot reveal name as of yet:)

Also created, developed various programs and manuals. “The Art ‘n Science of Responsible Communication” was one such program and manual. This program and manual were used in facilitating coaches at the Canadian Figure Skating Association in Ottawa Canada. The same is true of another course and manual I created “The Art n’ Tool of the Question” taught to private investigators but cannot reveal which firm it was for.

I have also developed various other courses and love facilitating them – love sharing information.

Q. When will the book be launched? Will there be a media release of some kind that will go with the launch?

The documentary, “In Search of the Zone” has not been released so no media coverage has been done. As I mentioned, the interest is there so I am sure once it is released the media will enjoy it with a touch of controversy which I love.

Q. What are your hopes for your readers? Want do you want them to get out of having read your work?

My hope and wish for my readers is that they not only feel and hear but also see themselves in similar experiences and know that they too can reclaim the missing pieces of their life and become whole and complete. What an experience! It is the best gift one can give to themselves because it affects 7 generations in either direction. What a gift Kinesiology is. We are blessed to have had the experience of Kinesiology and to be a Kinesiologist.

Q. Inspiration is the key to so much in life. Did you use personal stories to inspire your readers?

Brendan I totally agree with you. Inspiration is key in life. Yes, I do use my stories to inspire my readers and in some way my stories inspire my clients. My clients also seem to take personal interest in how I came to Kinesiology but I have to remind them Kinesiology called me.

At some level I wanted to heal and knew that in order to do so I needed to uncover my deepest wounds – kinesiology peeled through the layers and now I bring this gift to others.

There is nothing more precious than being free in one’s own skin. What a gift. Stories run deep. My childhood was a roller coaster and life experience has been deep. Far from being a shallow person, sometimes very intense but the best of all is I love who I am and what I do.

Q. Are there any plans for other materials in the Colli Christante library? You know Dvd’s ( nearly said video’s – but that’s so 1980’s ), music or audio’s?

Yes, there are other plans for more material to be added. The other book I am writing which is my life story (so many people have told me I must write this) and Owning the Zone documentary will get made.

There will be downloads from an Internet TV show I am in the midst of creating – all will be revealed soon and again you will be one of the first to be informed.

Boy you are busy! Do you even have time to see clients lol!

Q What are your plans for the future as a kinesiologist and therapist?

My future as a Kinesiologist and therapist is very clear. I will only be working with clients that are very committed to becoming Champions in all areas of their life. This means they have to undergo a screening process to qualify to work with me and then commit in a way they may never have had to for anything else. This is the full meal deal.

I agree with you Colli that you have to have committed clients. In my practice, I adopted the mindset that I only would see ‘professional clients’; people who were dedicated to themselves, their creative vision ( and not their previous story ) and the work we did… It’s an equal transaction… “professional therapist + professional client = professional results”.

Q Do you teach workshops and speak in public? Where can people see you in action?

Yes, I do speak in public and teach workshops – I have created various seminars, workshops, talks – love to share information.

Currently in negotiation with an organization to do seminars across Canada in 2011. The best way for people to see me in action is to check my profile page and website http://www.inner-expression.com for upcoming dates.

Q. Last but not least, any plans to travel and teach in Australia or overseas to Canada?

I would love to travel and teach. I have so much information to share. This is one of my dreams, goals. To share this with other Kinesiologists and therapists. All I have experienced. The science and art behind the difference that makes the difference.

Brendan, let me know when you want me to come to Australia and I am there for you. To be part of your dream, journey and to be your first featured Kinesiologist has been a real honor.

Colli, thank you for a wonderful series of interviews. You are very inspirational and you illustrate that there are many different ways that you can lead a rich and fulfilling life as a kinesiologist other than just being ‘the traditional clinical therapist’.

When starting out, many new kinesiology people try to ‘fit the mold’ of ‘being a kinesiologist’ and forget that Kinesiology is a tool. A tool in their hands that brings more than ‘balance’ or better health… butcommunicates the therapists own unique, creative spirit to the spirit of the people that they work with.

Congratulations on providing your clients with an inspiring example that is yourself! And congratulations on ‘being bigger’ than ‘the tool’ and fitting your kinesiology work into YOUR greater expression!

To find out more about Colli Christante, see her 1st and 2nd interviews and visit her profile page.

Interception

2010-08-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

According to Wikipedia, “an interception is a very specialized move that occurs when a quarterback’s pass is caught by a player on the opposing team.

This leads to an immediate change of possession during the play: the defender who caught the ball immediately assumes the role of the offense and attempts to move the ball as far towards the opposing goal as possible. Following the stoppage of play, if the interceptor retained possession of the ball, their team takes over possession at the spot where he was downed.”

That’s the long version. However, according to the player who got intercepted, it’s simply a pick. We’ve all seen how an interception can change the course and momentum of a game. When it happens, the main goal of the team who lost the ball to get it back as fast as they can before the opposing team capitalizes on the pick.

In life, love, and work, we all get intercepted on occasion. An opponent snatches the ball in mid air. Opponents can range from financial setbacks, loss of health, a car accident, an unexpected loss of a loved one, or even cruel, insensitive words from someone you thought was your friend. It can also be your own self – sometimes you are your own worst enemy – and you are “picked” by self-doubt or the sum of poor choices.

When an NFL QB is picked off, you’ll typically see a few reactions. Sometimes he just gets mad; mad at himself for allowing it to happen or mad at a receiver for not being at the right place at the right time. At other times, after a frustrating game, the QB is dejected; realizing his failure to perform the job properly. Most often, he gets back up and continues the game with strength and style. Brett Favre is a great example of this.

What have you been intercepted by?

What has caused you to lose your grip?

Getting mad provides a temporary adrenaline rush but does it accomplish anything useful? Does it make the opponent go away?

NO. The opponent still has the ball. Getting dejected drains you of precious energy and just as with getting mad, it does not accomplish any purpose.

Will you choose to remain mad and dejected or will you get back up and continue the game of life with strength and style? You can do what you can to protect yourself from some interceptions but not all. Life happens and each and every event is part of your own unique story.

If you don’t learn from your life events, then that’s all they are…events. If you learn to press forward with strength and style, a purpose has been accomplished in your life; you’ve learned, you’ve matured, you’re internally stronger.

So, take those life interceptions, learn what went wrong, get the ball back, move down your life’s field in strength and style and you WILL win.

Written by Michelle Hill

Not only for athletes -The need to be Acknowledged - the world has you trapped

2010-08-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

It has to be remembered that the need to have approval and be recognized is everybody’s question. Our whole life’s structure is such that we are taught that unless there is a recognition we are nobody, we are worthless. The work is not important, but the recognition. And this is putting things upside down. The work should be important...a joy in itself. You should work, not to be recognized but because you enjoy being creative; you love the work for its own sake.

There have been very few people who have been able to escape from the trap the society puts you in, like Vincent Van Gogh. He went on painting — hungry, without house, without clothes, without medicine, sick, but he went on painting. Not a single painting was being sold, there was no recognition from anywhere, but the strange thing was that in these conditions he was still happy...happy because what he wanted to paint he has been able to paint. Recognition or no recognition, his work is valuable intrinsically.

By the age of thirty-three he had committed suicide — not because of any misery, anguish, no, but simply because he had painted his last painting, on which he had been working for almost one year, a sunset. He tried dozens of times, but it was not up to his standard and he destroyed it. Finally he managed to paint the sunset the way he had longed to.

He committed suicide, writing a letter to his brother, “I am not committing suicide out of despair. I am committing suicide because now there is no point in living; my work is done. Moreover, it has been difficult to find ways of livelihood. But it was okay because I had some work to do, some potential in me needed to become actual. It has blossomed, so now it is pointless to live like a beggar.

“Up to now I had not even thought about it, I had not even looked at it. But now that is the only thing. I have blossomed to my utmost; I am fulfilled, and now to drag on, finding ways of livelihood, seems to be just stupid. For what? So it is not a suicide according to me, but just that I have come to a fulfillment, a full stop, and joyously I am leaving the world. Joyously I lived, joyously I am leaving the world.”

Now, almost a century afterwards, each of his paintings is worth millions of dollars. There are only two hundred paintings available. He must have painted thousands, but they have been destroyed; nobody took any note of them.

Now to have a Van Gogh painting means you have an aesthetic sense. His painting gives you a recognition. The world never gave any recognition to his work, but he never cared. And this should be the way to look at things.

You work if you love it. Don’t ask for recognition. If it comes, take it easily; if it does not come, do not think about it. Your fulfillment should be in the work itself. And if everybody learns this simple art of loving his work, whatever it is, enjoying it without asking for any recognition, we would have a more beautiful and celebrating world. As it is, the world has trapped you in a miserable pattern: What you are doing is not good because you love it, because you do it perfectly, but because the world recognizes it, rewards it, gives you gold medals, Nobel prizes.

They have taken away the whole intrinsic value of creativity and destroyed millions of people — because you cannot give millions of people Nobel prizes. And you have created the desire for recognition in everybody, so nobody can work peacefully, silently, enjoying whatever he is doing. And life consists of small things. For those small things there are not rewards, not titles given by the governments, not honorary degrees given by the universities.

One of the great poets of this century, Rabindranath Tagore, lived in Bengal, India. He had published his poetry, his novels, in Bengali — but no recognition came to him. Then he translated a small book, Gitanjali, “Offering of Songs,” into English. And he was aware that the original has a beauty which the translation does not have and cannot have — because these two languages, Bengali and English, have different structures, different ways of expression.

Bengali is very sweet. Even if you fight, it seems you are engaged in a nice conversation. It is very musical; each word is musical. That quality is not in English, and cannot be brought to it; it has different qualities. But somehow he managed to translate it, and the translation — which is a poor thing compared to the original — received the Nobel prize. Then suddenly the whole of India became aware.... The book had been available in Bengali, in other Indian languages, for years and nobody had taken any note of it.

Every university wanted to give him a D.Litt. Calcutta, where he lived, was the first university, obviously, to offer him an honorary degree. He refused. He said, “You are not giving a degree to me; you are not giving a recognition to my work, you are giving recognition to the Nobel prize, because the book has been here in a far more beautiful way, and nobody has bothered even to write an appraisal.”

He refused to take any D.Litts. He said, “It is insulting to me.” Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the great novelists, and a man of tremendous insight into human psychology, refused the Nobel prize. He said, “I have received enough reward while I was creating my work. A Nobel prize cannot add anything to it; on the contrary, it pulls me down. It is good for amateurs who are in search of recognition; I am old enough, and I have enjoyed enough. I have loved whatever I have done. It was its own reward, and I don’t want any other reward, because nothing can be better than that which I have already received.” And he was right. But the right people are so few in the world, and the world is full of wrong people living in traps.

Why should you bother about recognition? Bothering about recognition has meaning only if you don’t love your work; then it is meaningful, then it seems to substitute. You hate the work, you don’t like it, but you are doing it because there will be recognition; you will be appreciated, accepted. Rather than thinking about recognition, reconsider your work. Do you love it?...then that is the end. If you do not love it, then change it!

The parents, the teachers are always reinforcing that you should be recognized, you should be accepted. This is a very cunning strategy to keep people under control.

I was told again and again in my university, “You should stop doing these things...you go on asking questions which you know perfectly well cannot be answered, and which put the professor in an embarrassing situation. You have to stop it; otherwise these people will take revenge. They have power; they can fail you.”

I said, “I don’t bother about it. I am enjoying right now asking questions and making them feel ignorant. They are not courageous enough simply to say, ‘I do not know.’ Then there would be no embarrassment. But they want to pretend that they know everything. I am enjoying it; my intelligence is being sharpened. Who cares about examinations? They can fail me only when I appear in the examinations — who is going to appear? If they have that idea that they can fail me, I will not enter the examinations, and I will remain in the same class. They will have to pass me just out of fear that again for one year they will have to face me!”

And they all passed me, and helped me to pass, because they wanted to get rid of me. In their eyes I was also destroying other students, because other students started questioning things which have been accepted for centuries without any question.

While I was teaching in the university, the same thing came about from a different angle. Now I was asking the students questions to bring to their attention that all the knowledge that they have gathered is borrowed, and they know nothing. I told them that I don’t care about their degrees, I care about their authentic experience — and they don’t have any. They are simply repeating books which are out of date; long ago they have been proved wrong. Now the authorities of the university were threatening me, “If you continue in this way, harassing students, you will be thrown out of the university.”

I said, “This is strange — I was a student and I could not ask questions to the professors; now I am a professor and I cannot ask questions to the students! So what function is this university fulfilling? It should be a place where questions are asked, quests begin. Answers have to be found not in the books but in life and in existence.”

I said, “You can throw me out of the university, but remember, these same students, because of whom you are throwing me out of the university, will burn down the whole university.” I told the vice-chancellor, “You should come and see my class.”

He could not believe it: in my class there were at least two hundred students...and there were no spaces, so they were sitting anywhere they could find — on the windows, on the floor. He said, “What is happening, because you have only ten students?”

I said, “These people come to listen. They dropped their classes; they love to be here. This class is a dialogue. I am not superior to them, and I cannot refuse anybody who comes to my class. Whether he is my student or not, it does not matter; if he comes to listen to me, he is my student. In fact you should allow me to have the auditorium. These classrooms are too small for me.”

He said, “Auditorium? You mean the whole university to gather in the auditorium? Then what will the other professors be doing?”

I said, “That is for them to think out. They can go and hang themselves! They should have done it long before. Seeing that their students are not going to listen to them was enough indication.”

The professors were angry, the authorities were angry. Finally they had to give me the auditorium...but very reluctantly, because the students were forcing them. But they said, “This is strange, students who have nothing to do with philosophy, religion or psychology, why should they go there?”

Many students told the vice-chancellor, “We love it. We never knew that philosophy, religion, psychology can be so interesting, so intriguing; otherwise we would have joined them. We thought that these are dry subjects; only very bookish kind of people join these subjects. We have never seen any juicy people joining the subjects. But this man has made the subjects so significant that it seems that even if we fail in our own subjects, it does not matter. What we are doing is so right in itself, and we are so clear about it, that there is no question of changing it.”

Against recognition, against acceptance, against degrees...but finally I had to leave the university, not because of their threats but because I recognized that if thousands of students can be helped by me, it is a wastage. I can help millions of people outside in the world. Why should I go on remaining attached to a small university? The whole world can be my university.

And you can see: I have been condemned.

That is the only recognition I have received.

I have been in every way misrepresented. Everything that can be said against a man has been said against me; everything that can be done against a man has been done against me. Do you think this is recognition? But I love my work. I love it so much that I don’t call it work even; I simply call it my joy.

And everybody who was in some way elder to me, well-recognized, has told me, “What you are doing is not going to give you any respectability in the world.”

But I said, “I have never asked for it, and I don’t see what I will do with respectability. I cannot eat it, I cannot drink it.”

Learn one basic thing: Do whatever you want to do, love to do, and never ask for recognition. That is begging. Why should one ask for recognition? Why should one hanker for acceptance?

Deep down in yourself, look. Perhaps you don’t like what you are doing, perhaps you are afraid that you are on the wrong track. Acceptance will help you feel that you are right. Recognition will make you feel that you are going towards the right goal.

The question is of your own inner feelings; it has nothing to do with the outside world. And why depend on others? All these things depend on others — you yourself are becoming dependent.

I will not accept any Nobel prize. All this condemnation from all the nations around the world, from all the religions, is more valuable to me. Accepting the Nobel prize means I am becoming dependent; now I will not be proud of myself but proud of the Nobel prize. Right now I can only be proud of myself; there is nothing else I can be proud of.

This way you become an individual. And to be an individual living in total freedom, on your own feet, drinking from your own sources, is what makes a man really centered, rooted. That is the beginning of his ultimate flowering.

These so-called recognized people, honored people, are full of rubbish and nothing else. But they are full of the rubbish which the society wants them to be filled with...and the society compensates them by giving them rewards.

Any man who has any sense of his own individuality lives by his own love, by his own work, without caring at all what others think of it. The more valuable your work is, the less is the possibility of getting any respectability for it. And if your work is the work of a genius then you are not going to see any respect in your life. You will be condemned in your life...then, after two or three centuries, statues of you will be made, your books will be respected — because it takes almost two or three centuries for humanity to pick up that much intelligence that a genius has today. The gap is vast.

Being respected by idiots you have to behave according to their manners, their expectations. To be respected by this sick humanity you have to be more sick than they are. Then they will respect you. But what will you gain? You will lose your soul and you will gain nothing.

Osho, Beyond Psychology, Talk #32

The Energy Body - Yoga Part 11

2010-08-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

But fasting is important. It should be done very carefully; one should understand the functioning of the annamay kosh – only then. And it should be done under proper guidance, of one who has moved through all the phases of his annamay kosh. Not only that, one who has gone beyond it and who can look at the annamay kosh as a witness. Otherwise fasting can be dangerous…then, just the right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced; fasting is not needed.

But this is important because this is your first body and, more or less, people cling to their first body; they never move to the second. Millions of people are not even aware that they have a second body, a deeper body, hidden behind the first sheath. The first covering is very gross.

The second body Patanjali calls pranamay kosh – energy body, electric body. The second consists of electric fields. That’s what acupuncture is all about. This second body is more subtle than the first, and people who start moving from the first body to the second become fields of energy, tremendously attractive, magnetic, hypnotic. If you go near them, you will feel vitalized, charged.

If you go near a man who lives only in his food body, you will be depleted – he will suck you. Many times you come across people and you feel that they suck you. After they have left, you feel depleted, dissipated, as if somebody has exploited your energy. The first body is a sucker, and the first body is very gross. So if you live too much with first body-oriented people, you will feel always burdened, tense, bored, sleepy, with no energy, always at the point of the lowest rung of your energy; and you will not have any amount of energy which can be used for higher growth.

This type, the first type, the annamay-kosh oriented person lives for food. He eats and eats and eats, and that’s his whole life. He remains in a way childish. The first thing that the child does in the world is to suck air, and then to suck milk. The first thing the child has to do in the world is to help the food body, and if a person remains food addicted, he remains childish; his growth suffers.

The second body, pranamay kosh, gives you a new freedom, gives you more space. The second body is bigger than the first; it is not confined to your physical body. It is inside the physical body and it is outside the physical body; it surrounds you like a subtle climate, an aura of energy. Now in Russia they have discovered that photographs can be taken of this energy body. They call it “bioplasma,” but it exactly means prana – the energy, elan vital, or what Taoists call chi. It can be photographed now; now it has become almost scientific.

And one very great discovery has been done in Russia, and that is that before your physical body suffers some illness the energy body suffers it – six months before – then it happens to the physical body. If you are going to have tuberculosis, or cancer, or any illness, your energy body starts showing indications of it six months before. No examination, no testing of the physical body shows anything, but the electric body starts showing it. First it appears in the pranamay kosh, then it enters into the annamay kosh.

Osho Yoga; The Path to Liberation Talk # 1o, Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Talk #1

The Energy Body - Yoga: The Path to Liberation

2010-08-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Energy Body

“The second body, pranamaya kosha, gives you a new freedom, gives you more space. The second body is bigger than the first; it is not confined to your physical body. It is inside the physical body and it is outside the physical body. It surrounds you like a subtle climate, an aura of energy. Now in Soviet Russia they have discovered that photographs can be taken of the energy body. They call it bioplasma, but it exactly means prana. The energy, elan vital, or what Taoists call chi, it can be photographed now. Now it has become almost scientific.

“One very great discovery has been made in Soviet Russia, and that is: before your physical body suffers some illness, the energy body suffers it — six months before. Then it happens to the physical body. If you are going to have tuberculosis or cancer or any other illness, your energy body starts showing indications of it six months before. No examination, no testing of the physical body shows anything, but the electric body starts showing it. First it appears in the pranamaya kosha, then it enters into the annamaya kosha.

“So now they say that it has become possible to treat a person before he has fallen ill. Once it becomes so, then there is no need for humanity to fall ill. Before you become aware that you are ill, your photographs by Kirlian methods will show that some illness is going to happen to your physical body. It can be prevented in the pranamaya kosha.

“That’s why yoga insists very much on the purity of breathing, because the pranamaya kosha is made of a subtle energy that travels inside you with the breathing. If you breathe rightly, your pranamaya kosha remains healthy and whole and alive.

“Such a person never feels tired. Such a person is always available to do anything. Such a person is always responsive, always ready to respond to the moment, ready to take the challenge. He is always ready; you will never find him unprepared for any moment. Not that he plans for the future, no, but he has so much energy that whatsoever happens he is ready to respond. He has overflowing energy.

“Natural breathing has to be understood. Watch small children, they breathe naturally. That’s why small children are so full of energy. The parents are tired, but they are not tired.

“From where does the energy come? It comes from pranamaya kosha. A child breathes naturally, and of course breathes more prana in, more chi in, and accumulates it in his belly. The belly is the accumulating place, the reservoir. Watch a child; that is the right way to breathe. When a child breathes, his chest is completely unaffected. His belly goes up and down. He breathes as if from the belly. All children have a little belly; that belly is there because of their breathing and the reservoir of energy.

“That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used — in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. It is an emergency device. Then you can use shallow, fast breathing, and run. But ordinarily the chest should not be used. And one thing to be remembered: the chest is meant only for emergency situations because it is difficult in an emergency situation to breathe naturally, because if you breathe naturally you remain so calm and quiet you cannot run, you cannot fight. You are so calm and collected you are buddhalike. And in an emergency — the house is on fire — if you breathe naturally you will not be able to save anything. Or a tiger jumps upon you in a forest and if you go on breathing naturally you will not be bothered; you will say, “Okay, let him do whatsoever he wants.” You will not be able to protect yourself.

“So nature has given an emergency device; the chest is an emergency device. When a tiger attacks you, you have to drop natural breathing and you have to breathe from the chest. Then you will have more capacity to run, to fight, to burn energy fast. And in an emergency situation there are only two alternatives: flight or fight. Both need a very shallow but intense energy...shallow, but a very disturbed, tense state.

“If you continuously breathe from the chest, you will have tensions in your mind. If you continuously breathe from the chest, you will always be afraid because the chest breathing is meant to be only in fearful situations. And if you have made it a habit then you will be continuously afraid, tense, always in flight. The enemy is not there, but you will imagine the enemy is there. That’s how paranoia is created.

“Watch a child and that is the natural breathing, and breathe that way. Let your belly come up when you inhale, let your belly go down when you exhale. And let it be in such a rhythm it becomes almost a song in your energy, a dance — with rhythm, with harmony — and you will feel so relaxed, so alive, so vital that you cannot imagine that such vitality is possible.”

Osho, Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Talk #1

Sportsperson's Performance Linked to state of their brain

2010-08-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

Success or failure of a sportsman could be determined through the alphas and gammas inside his brain. This discovery has come to light through an ongoing brain mapping study conducted by a group of post graduate students of Nanavati Hospital in Vile Parle. The study states that these zones in the brain can largely have an effect on the performance of a sportsman irrespective of the type of sport.

For the purpose of the study, about 45 sportsmen — cricketers, footballers, hockey players and karate players — from national and international level have been examined. These players are patients who visit the hospital for physiotherapy sessions.
“Whenever a sportsman performed well, his brain was found in the alpha zone, which ensures optimum performance. When the players performed bad or were injured, we found out that the brain was in the gamma zone,” said Dr Ali Irani, head, department of physiotherapy and sports medicine, Nanavati Hospital. Irani, a former physiotherapist with the Indian cricket team, is heading the study.

“There have been times when a player has been blamed for bad performance and sudden injuries. But, our findings show that it largely has to do with the state of his brain,” added Irani.

The brains alpha zone is a state when an individual has the ideal functioning capability and can give his best performance in anything he is doing. Alpha zone ranges from 8-12 hertz. Gamma zone, which ranges from 30 hertz and above, has been associated with extreme stress levels when optimum performance cannot be achieved.
The procedure of studying a player involves attaching three electrodes to the sportsman’s forehead. The electrodes are connected to preloaded software in an Apple Macbook, which records the zone of the patient’s brain.

One of the examples from the study was that of a footballer, who plays for an airline team. The study showed that the footballer was in the state of alpha when he was asked to recollect his best played games. While under stress, or when asked to think about his bad performances, the player’s brain was in the gamma zone.

However, according to Irani, only knowing the zones of the brain is not enough. “We are trying to actually use brain mapping as a modality for treatment or as a diagnostic tool,” said Irani, adding that after recording the zones, the players were given alpha therapy and relaxation exercises.
Alpha therapy involves listening to a 14 minute music track with bi-neural frequency, which lowers the brain frequency and gets it to the alpha zone. The relaxation techniques involve focused breathing, practising optimism, etc. “The players were got in the alpha zone during the game and they performed extremely well,” said Irani.

Other than sportsmen, the students are also conducting studies on cardiac and neurology patients. While Irani has already introduced the ongoing study at two international conferences, it will take another year for the study to be completed.

By Jyoti Shelar

The Ball Represents Your Dream

2010-08-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

In the old days of football, receivers used a substance called Stick-Em, a sappy concoction that would make the ball stick to their hands, allowing them to make one-handed catches easily. These days, possession receivers will sometimes wear gloves that have sticky palms so when a leather ball on a dry day hits them, the ball sticks on the glove, making it easier to catch.

Coaches are always admonishing players to protect the ball by any means necessary. We’ve all seen the horrifying plays when a great pass is intercepted by the opposing team. Or maybe when a running back is not protecting the ball well and it’s stripped away from him in an instant.

It’s the same thing with your dreams. The ball represents your dreams and when you watch a football game, it should remind you to protect your dreams by any means necessary because you see what can happen when you lose the ball.

Let’s face it. It’s exciting to birth a new vision or dream and by nurturing it and feeding it, we watch it grow and develop, just as we would a child. It’s ours and it’s special.
I have found that not everyone is worthy of sharing my dream with.

People with small minds, content to live a life of mediocrity, will scoff at your dream. Others will remind you of mistakes you’ve made in the past and admonish you to forget your dream and play it safe. Still others will attempt to rip that dream out of your hands with relentless pursuit. Maybe it’s because it reminds them of their own lost dreams or because of insecure jealousy or a cynical outlook at life.

It’s important to have teammates in your life who will aid and defend you as you move your dream forward. Share your dreams with people who truly value you and who will help protect your dream with unflinching devotion.

When I think of moving a dream toward the goal line, I think of Barry Sanders who played with the Detroit Lions. Swivel hips himself, Barry went every direction on the compass but he always ended up going toward the goal line. With his ballet-type moves, Barry was a delight to watch in replays over and over in slow motion.

You may have to move in different directions in pursuit of your dreams but as long as you’re moving toward your goal line, you’re doing well and you will win your game.

So, protect your dream by any means necessary. It’s YOUR dream and you deserve to see it fulfilled.

Michelle Hill

HPIM3044.MPG

2010-07-30T00:25:00.000-07:00

Mental Imagery in Sport and Life - Kinesiology part 111

2010-07-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

The ability to form mental images of things or events

By repeatedly calling up images in your mind and rewiring the circuits of your mind toward a realization of those images. The remarkable feature of imagery work is that it can be accompanied by physiological changes.

Experience that resembles perceptual experience, but which occurs in the absence of the appropriate stimuli for the relevant perception.

Involves focusing your mind to visualize yourself in a certain situation and doing well in that situation.
A cognitive psychological skill in which the athlete uses all the senses to create a mental experience of an athletic performance

There’s nothing mystical about mental imagery. Simply put, it’s a visualization exercise that helps not only athletes but anyone who desires increased success and performance. There’s multiple ways to practice it and it can be done in short spurts or for a long duration.

How Mental Imagery Works

When an athlete imagines himself performing to perfection, he is physiologically creating neutral brain patterns that are similar to small tracks engraved in the brain cells. This enables the athlete to perform athletic tasks by mentally practicing those tasks first in his mind. Mental imagery is intended to train the athletes’ mind, thus teaching the muscles to perform exactly how he wants them to perform.

Practical Application of Mental Imagery

It’s true that we move closer to what we focus on. If an athlete imagines missing a shot, or how good the other team is, or even fears injury, it harms his game concentration and affects the outcome. It’s absolutely essential that athletes visualize success and victory. Steven Balzac, a psychology professor and former nationally ranked fencer says, “If we imagine success, we prepare ourselves for success because that’s what’s in our heads.”

It’s important to remember that athletes use imagery in different ways. Their imagery may not involve just visual images, but sounds, smells or touch. It really depends on the person. Another important aspect of mental imagery is for the athlete to watch and study his sports heroes and imagine that he is making those same shots with precision. Does this mean the athlete will always perform at top level? No…we’re human and we all have bad days on occasion. But visualization and mental imagery increases the chance of increased and sustained success.

Results of Mental Imagery

Of course physical practice is always the best way for an athlete to improve his skill level and race to the top of his game. However, mental imagery is better than no practice at all and, incorporated with physical practice, is the best way to see optimal results.

Continuous studies are always being conducted to determine just how much mental imagery plays into the increased success of athletes. And, for the rest of us, imagining ourselves more successful is never a waste of time if we are also spending equal or more time physically developing our skill set. The time spent in mental imagery is beneficial not only to the athlete but to the business person, the student, the entrepreneur, and anyone else who desires to develop and increase their level of play.

The more mental imagery is studied; more effective techniques can be developed and adapted by athletes…and the rest of us.

original article by Michelle Hill

Colli_Christante_The Quest for the Zone Begins

2010-07-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

Becoming a Kinesiologist (Part 11)

2010-07-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

In this weeks interview with our featured member Colli Christante, we are “reflecting on the past”. I asked Colli about why she became a kinesiologist…

Becoming a kinesiologist was a natural part of my journey. In 1979 I moved from Vancouver to Toronto to work in the TV industry, study communications & journalism at Ryerson University.

In 1990 I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and was extremely unwell. An oxygen tank ruled my life and my attending doctors told me to “move & live by the ocean breeze” (at that time there was very little pollution there:)

Before moving to live by the “ocean breeze” I had tried every therapy known to heal the illness but nothing worked. That was until one day my beautiful daughter ( who was 9 at the time ) came home from school with a book that changed my life. The little book was “How to Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay. This book made me realize I had to take responsibility for my own health, my life.

Upon returning to Toronto from Manasota Key, Florida in 1992 ( where I went to live in order to recover ), NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming ) came in to my life. I was blessed to have studied with some of the finest trainers of NLP. Dr. Chris Hall (President of the NLP Society), Robert Klauss and Eric Robbie.

When I returned to Toronto, my doctors were not only amazed… but mystified by my recovery because they did not think I would live.

In 1993, I moved to Vancouver and continued researching into “mind body communication”. I continued furthering my studies with Dr. Chris Hall, Todd Epstein and Robert Dilts (NLP University in Santa Cruz California). It was then I also discovered the New Method Kinesiology Clinic that was owned by Steve Ariss. Steve is master kinesiologist and teacher (unfortunately the clinic no longer exists and Steve no longer teaches) but through his teachings, I feel in love with Kinesiology. It was amazing to learn from such an incredible man, healer and true master. It was wonderful to have those teachings passed on to me. I still am in love with Kinesiology Now I aspire to pass them on to others.

In 15 years of having kinesiology as one of my main tools, I have never done a session with a client that does not make me feel that “WOW”! I am so grateful for these amazing healing tools. My clients all say the same “WOW” and are extremely grateful for the transformation in their lives. Kinesiology was a very important tool -allowing me to take even greater responsibilty for my health and life. Through Kinesiology I now assist, encourage and inspire others to take responsibilty for their health and life.

In reflecting on your past Colli, what have you learned from it… and how have you brought that understanding into your kinesiology work?

The most powerful learning from my past is that one cannot go back, one has to go forward; there is nothing to go back to. This is the formula for accepting one’s good and releasing the past. This is why kinesiology is so powerful because it assists you in releasing the past.

Through out the years I have studied many different, wonderful, powerful and amazing modalities of healing. Being a kinesiologist is an art and science. Kinesiology is investigation of the mind and body. It is working with energy – the client’s and the kinesiologists.

One of the most important lessons I have experienced as a practitioner of kinesiology is that if I do not get out of my own way (meaning I allow my ego to take over) this will get in the way and I cannot harness the power of this amazing gift.

With each individual client the healing and transformation comes from within. It is an inside job that reflects outward. Look around. Do you like how you are feeling what you are hearing and seeing? If not, then you logical levels are not aligned.

For me … this is about aligning the logical levels so that we are congruent with our authentic source. My core purpose is to bring balance between the ego (ambition) and soul (mission).This is the only way one can become a champion in their sport, performance and life.

My-Kinesiology.com interviews Colli Christante

2010-07-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

My-Kinesiologist.com

“On the Table” with Colli Christante…by Brendan Rohan

In the movie of your life, who would play you? Kyra Sedgewick. ( An actress married to Kevin Bacon )

If I could live anywhere, I’d choose…Bali, Italy, Canada.

My favourite food would have to be…Clean,organic healthy.

What I love most in life is…Being who I am – experiencing life through giving and receiving unconditional love, laughter, looking into the eyes of a child.

Are you a dog person or a cat person? I enjoy both

My favourite book of all time would have to be…Nancy Drew Series

What I wanted to be when I grew up…Champion figure skater and investigative journalist.

The year I began my kinesiology training…1993

I notice in your bio it says that you’re a journalist, who do you write for?

Wrote for Canadian Living Magazine, CTV National News, recently wrote & created the documentary called “Owning the Zone”, the e-book and fully written book to go with the documentary will be completed soon. Also wrote a TV series called “Somewhere I Belong” and working on another book but cannot reveal the name as of yet.

What kind of articles do you write?

Health, fitness, anti – aging/leadership,confidence building.

After watching your youtube videos, you strike me as a confident person. Have you always been confident with who you are?

Yes, No and now totally – it is a process.

Public speaking is a big fear for many kinesiology people and it is something that stops many people from expressing their talents and reaching their full potential. What would you suggest to help overcome their fears? I love to share knowledge. I created and teach a course called the Art n’ Tool of the Pitch which totally assist the person in breaking through these fears and come to really enjoy the process. Taught this at the Vancouver Film School and Electronic Arts University to writers and producers. It is a wonderful process which allows for one to package their material, becoming confident and anchors are installed so they always have access to the strategy. Too, there is nothing like having a ( kinesiology ) balance to work with the limiting belief and assist with the imprint of an empowering one

.Reading through your bio, you seem to have many skills ’in your toolkit’. What is the most important tool that you work with and why?There is no most important. They all work together. Every session starts out the same but really it is what the client needs that predicts how the session goes but the tools all get used.If I were to walk into your clinic for my first session, what would I expect to come away with?

Using a combination of body centered techniques, sensitivity training, and mastery, when working with me, you will take a journey into your body to uncover and witness with the full light and compassion of your Presence the core beliefs that have been holding you back from your essence of being. This allows your being’s organic capacity for self healing to activate and reverse the unconscious programs that have kept you from seeing yourself in the full magnificence of who you really are. For 99% of the people who visit me, for the first time to actually start to get a glimpse into who they really are not who they have been programmed to be.

From your biography and the testimonials there, your work seems to be about leadership and bringing out those qualities in people… what are the ingredients of leadership?

No one can answer this like my mentor Denis Waitely. I totally subscribe to his and Phil Jackson’s philosophy. Phil is to be featured in my documentary “Owning the Zone.”A good way to think of leadership is the process of freeing your team members to do the best work they possibly can. I have followed NBA basketball coach Phil Jackson’s career for some time.In his career, Jackson has gone from coaching the record-setting champion Chicago Bulls to the present NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers.

He says his principal task is creating an environment in which his players can flourish.In communicating with his championship teams, Jackson convinced them that they had the talent to win championships and that the main goal of the coach was freeing them to use that talent.Today’s business team members say they want, more than anything else, the autonomy to do their jobs without the boss’s interference. Nearly a decade into the new century, it’s already clear that the CEOs of our best-run companies believe that the more power leaders have, the less they should use.

The job of the team leader is to set a mission, decide upon a strategic direction, achieve the necessary cooperation, delegate authority and then let people innovate.To do that we all could take a hint from the late football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. Before his retirement as one of the leading coaches in college football history at Alabama, Bryant observed:I’m just a plowhand from Arkansas, but I’ve learned how to put and hold a team together. I’ve learned how to lift some individuals up and how to calm others down, until finally they’ve got one heartbeat, together, as a team.

To do that, there are just three things I’d ever have to say: If anything went wrong, I did it. If it went semi-good, then we did it. If anything went real good, then you did it! That’s really all it takes to get other people to win for you.

The key to authentic leadership is to listen to your followers, and then open the door for them to lead themselves. The secret is empowerment. The main incentive is genuine caring and recognition.

The five most important words a leader can speak are: “I am proud of you.”
The four most important are: “What is your opinion?”
The three most important are: “If you please.”
The two most important are: “Thank you.”
And the most important single word of all is: “You!”- Denis Waitley

As your work is about leadership, confidence, performance and motivation,how does kinesiology help to bring out these qualities in your clients?

Kinesiology assists in the stripping of institutional lies and myths that encrust people. Through Kinesiology they how to use their mind to direct their emotions.They learn how to use their brain to direct their behaviour.They will break free of old negative survival patterns using their own positive patterns that keep their body balanced. This includes different methods of developing chi, relaxation, letting go, concentration, breathing actively so you are congruently integrated resulting in accessing extraordinary endurance, balance, ease, and psychological confidence.They become aligned on logical levels of environment, behaviour which includes language, senses, movement, experience base, capabilities, values, beliefs, over man giving them the feeling of being in control. A unifying experience involving their entire sense of self. The environment, higher sense of self, their potential, their destiny. They learn to how to become Captains of their souls.

In my own work with people, I have come to believe that the biggest issue that people have is that feel they can’t creatively express themselves to the level they want to… would you agree?

Yes, that is why I called my company Inner Expression. What we do not express, we repress and then depression can creep in. It is a vicious cycle. We are here to express all that flows through us as us. It is our divine right.

I notice that you’re a creative producer – what projects have you worked on? Owning the Zone, Somewhere I Belong, Mystical Journeys too many others to list.

With all this going on in your life, what does your working week look like?

Monday-Friday in the evenings I work with clients on-line. Weekends are for clients private sessions in the clinic. On any given day I may be conducting a seminar, webinar. I update my blogs every third day, my website every week, do radio interviews when they are requested. Writing is done at night. Currently putting all my content (information) into a formula that will be products and ready to launch in Sept.

Live Your Way

2010-07-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

Live Your Way

On June 23 rd I had the honor of doing two radio interviews about Creating Champions. Dr. Dave and I had an interesting conversation. If you want to know how to live your your way and be a Champion in Sport, Performance and Your LIFE please take the time to listen to this.

Happy Canada Day Canada.

Great Resources for Pro Athletes

2010-07-01T11:44:00.000-07:00

Pro athletes always seem to have an abundance of resources at their disposal; whether they need to make a cross country move, assess their personality and skill level, get their financial picture in order, or simply find a post-sports career job or business. A multitude of businesses clamor for the athletes’ attention but which ones can they trust? I found two businesses that really put their heart and soul into helping pro athletes manage their career and life.

One such business is Sportsdrive. The highly educated, synergistic team performs various levels of athlete assessments using a scientific approach specifically developed to evaluate sports performance and sports behavior.

Annika Olofsson, a sports psychologist with Sportsdrive, works with athletes on the German Olympic squad. I caught up with her via email last week and asked how Sportsdrive can help not just the pro athlete but their supporting cast. Annika stated, “Sportsdrive helps coaches select the right athletes; those who are not only physically strong but mentally fit and committed to achieving greatness on their specific sport. Assessment results will reveal the following to coaches; potential for development, talent, and the internal fire of the athlete as well as the best way to support the athlete in reaching his goals.”

The benefits of scientific, psychological evaluation translate into on-field and off-field success for the athlete. On-field, athletes have a sharper focus and more self-confidence because of understanding themselves and their inner drives more completely. Athletes can utilize their strengths to a higher degree with a more acute self-awareness of their inner motivators. Off-field, a better self-understanding means better communication with coaches and staff and a higher level of emotional stability all around.

Another way companies are helping the pro athlete is through successful and stress-free relocation. A pro athlete may change teams many times throughout his career and he needs to make the transitions as seamless as possible.

Janice Bokor, a Coldwell Banker Realtor in Pennsylvania, specializing in re-location services for the pro athlete, has personal experience with the process.

“I am married to a retired pro football player and come from a family of athletes so I understand first hand the need for a trustworthy, confidential and informed realtor who knows how to connect with the client. Since the above was so hard to find I became a realtor myself to fill the void in this specialized pro athlete market and the rest is history.”

I also asked Janice how she makes the transition easier for the player and his family so moving is not as traumatic as it could be.

“Since moving a lot is, unfortunately, part of the pro athlete’s profession, I want them to leave their problems related to the process to me. My sole purpose is to handle every aspect of the real estate and relocation process so the athlete and his family can concentrate on what is important to them: their family and profession.”

“I also ensure that every detail of their move is in place, including shipment of all belongings, packing/unpacking services, school information, private jet service, bodyguards, personal trainers, chefs, nutritionists, utility service connections, doctors, interior designers, lawyers, financial advisers, etc. I never say no to a personal request and I make it my personal mission to ensure every client transitions smoothly and quickly from every single destination they need to be in.”

These are just two companies making a difference in athletes’ lives in professional and personal ways. Even though pro athletes are often idolized and put on pedestals, they are mere human beings with personal, family, and career needs. Thank goodness for companies willing to step up to the plate and offer genuine assistance for those who entertain us year after year

Michelle Hill

Assisting others in Becoming Champions in their sport, performance and Life

2010-06-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

In the fall and winter of 09 I had the honor of facilitating my Inner Fitness program with a group of young lady soccer players. Today some of those young ladies were featured in the Nelson Daily News for their outstanding achievements. I am so proud of Andrea Stinson (best all round athlete), Brittany Wheeler (top female scholar), and Sarah Fuhr (for basketball and soccer) all featured in this article.

It is so wonderful to be part of the world of sport and I love assisting in others becoming Champions in their sport, performance and life.

World Cup 2010 - Deep Hunger to Connect

2010-06-11T19:50:00.001-07:00

Have been counting down to this day for what seems like a very long time! For those of you who may not be aware, (if that’s possible) today is start of the 2010 Football World Cup in South Africa. This is the first tournament held in the continent of Africa and promises to be special both on and off the pitch.

The first World Cup was in 1930 and since then it has grown to become one of world’s largest sporting events, bringing people from all different corners of the world together and giving them to opportunity to interact and connect. The digital age has opened up many new ways to connect with fans across the globe and also show your passion and love for the game of football, and your team. In this blog I hope will add something to why there is such a Deep Hunger to Connect through this World Cup experience.

In my upcoming documentary, book and game I begin by taking my audience on a journey to the ancient world where athletic contests were offerings to the gods and in some cases, notably the Mayas, it was the athletes themselves who were the offerings! Sport was more than entertainment, an afternoon at the ball game, it was an individual and group religious experience. Sport had divine purpose whether as a rite to win celestial favor, to placate an angry deity, or to honor departed heroes.

Michael Novak, author of The Joy of Sports, insists this purpose still exists today: ...sports flow outward from a deep natural impulse that is radically religious: an impulse of freedom, respect for ritual limits, a zest for symbolic meaning, and a longing for perfection.

Furthermore, Novak and others argue this function of sport is eternal whether we acknowledge this or not. Writes Andrew Cooper, Sports satisfy our deep hunger to connect with a realm of mythic meaning ... to see the transpersonal forces that work within and upon human nature enacted in dramatic form, and to experience the social cohesion that these forms make possible. Whether or not we so name them, these are religious functions.

Sport’s spiritual function works on both the level of the athlete and the audience; in fact, each is often dependent on the other. A winning performance by an athlete can stir a crowd into exhilaration, and they, in turn, can compel an athlete to new heights. Todays opening of the World Cup is a powerful example of how Cheering works, thus alludes to the popular notion of home team advantage whereby athletes are inspired by positive audience reaction and collective enthusiasm. Perhaps it’s not an accident, then, that the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek, meaning to be inspired or possessed by a god.

This religious aspect of sport, however, has once again been sublimated by a secular culture: Our society so thoroughly secularizes sport that we can barely recognize, let alone express, what it makes us feel, laments Cooper. Recognition of the sacred has been reduced to popular idioms such as team worship, sports icon and, yes, The Zone.

Owning the Zone traces the secularization of sport and asks the question, Did we go wrong and, if so, where? The implications of this question are far-reaching for they threaten to touch upon the malaise that is modern sport. Contract disputes and players’ strikes, diva behaviour among star athletes, crass commercialization, soaring ticket prices that make professional sports inaccessible to much of the masses, these and other problems might be attributed to some extent to the loss of sport’s sacred place.

Let me ask you this. What does the secularization of sport mean for athletes and what implications, if any, does it have on their ability to enter and Own The Zone?

There is a wonderful paradox in Buddhism about losing yourself in order to find yourself. Enlightenment can only be reached when one surrenders the ego to a higher power, surrenders individual goals to the greater good. One can play on the word goals here, for the new trend in coaching is to encourage athletes to do exactly the same as a monk. Phil Jackson works from the premise that When a player surrenders his self-interest for the greater good, his fullest gifts as an athlete are manifested...When players are totally focused on the team goal, their efforts can create chain reactions ... Selflessness is the soul of teamwork. It’s what makes the difference, Jackson argues, between an unsuccessful team with many talented players who cling to individual glory, and a successful team with average players who don’t.

This need to lose oneself in the game in order to win it also works in solo competitions like golf. As Dr. Gio Valiante, a Rollins College psychology professor who works with pro golfers, states. Someone who plays to impress others or prove something will have too many external thoughts to truly focus. The player who plays to learn, improve and excel is fully involved in the process and its details. That’s a player who can get into the zone and be more fulfilled.

However, now that The Zone has become a mainstream issue some would say a fad there is added pressure upon athletes to claim access to it.The Zone has become the Holy Grail of sport and most athletes, professional or amateur, feel the pressure to boast they’ve drunk from this cup. The irony is that, like the Holy Grail, the more you seek the glory of The Zone the more elusive it becomes.

The result is the paradox of the humble sports hero. One only has to think of the grace, and graciousness, of a Wayne Gretzky and contrast it with the out-of-control behaviour of a Mike Tyson or a Dany Heatley to see how this paradox works. Star athletes and teams are among a nation’s heroes, and our need for heroes who behave like heroes, who take their responsibility as role models seriously, runs deep within our cultural consciousness. When a hero falls from grace the collective disappointment is profound, shattering the faith and calling into question the very value and meaning of sport.

Owning the Zone concludes that professional sport must once again find the sacred within itself if it is to meet the needs of both athlete and audience. It is a question of survival. As we have argued throughout this documentary, sport is very much like a religion and it is worth noting that previous belief systems which failed to meet the needs of its adherents eventually drifted into oblivion or were consumed by another, stronger faith. If we as a culture are to hold onto this pathway to the divine, participants of sport, whether contestant or spectator, must continue to find The Zone, to marvel at its splendor, and find meaning in the experience.

This unique book and documentary will examine Peak Performers in Sports Entertainment and the strategies (internal performance strategy) unconsciously utilized by these peak performers that keep them Owning the Zone and that have made the difference that makes the difference in their lives and work

Through this exploration, you as the audience will discover a revelatory understanding of how peak performers achieve and maintain peak performance. By becoming fully being aware of how internal performance strategies program one for performance, you will learn how to utilize their own strategy in a more productive way.

You may actually like to try on a peak performer’s strategy to see how it can make a difference in their life and they can through my private coaching, soon to be released book and video game.

Reputation is What You are Perceived to be Character is what YOU are

2010-06-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

This blog is dedicated to my grandson Baye ... there are no words that could better describe what being a teacher, coach and success really means.

Baye, may you one day on your journey through this thing called life watch this video by John Wooden and may you one day be blessed with a teacher/coach such as John.

Reputation is what YOU are perceived to be. Your character is what YOU are. Coaching for people not for points.

The role of Beliefs

2010-06-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the a belief is not about reality?

You have a belief in place of knowledge about reality.

Beliefs are about the things that nobody can know in reality.

So now ask yourself what is my reality?

Jose Mourinho -SELF BELIEFS - Who's Your Boss?

2010-05-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

CNN) -- The success achieved by Portuguese soccer coach Jose Mourinho suggests that his players would not just run through a brick wall for him; they'd happily march through an obstacle course full of them to earn his respect.

The self-proclaimed "Special One" is the flamboyant manager of Italian champions Inter Milan who are currently on course to take the Serie A title for the fifth consecutive year.

But if his current Inter squad love him, then his former Chelsea players adore him, after his successful stint at the club between 2004 and 2007 delivered their first English Premier League triumphs in over 50 years.

England international and Chelsea stalwart Frank Lampard says of Mourinho: "I love him as a man and as a manager."

The two sets of players collide in Europe's most prestigious club competition -- the Champions League -- on Wednesday, when all eyes will be on the game's ultimate touchline showman in his first competitive match against his old club.

But how does Mourinho arouse such complete loyalty from his employees? And is he everything a good boss should be? He does and he is, according to sports psychologist Andy Barton.

Respect
.It's no fluke that after a defeat, Inter gets straight back on its feet. That's all thanks to Mourinho.
--Diego Milito, Inter Milan

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"Mourinho's role with his players is the same as it should be in any office," Barton told CNN. "He is very, very supportive of them and treats them as equals. He knows he needs to focus people on what they do well, and then on what they need to do to improve.

"Sometimes in the workplace managers think it is all about being ruthless when that is the least effective way of doing things. Appraisals can turn into a long list of what employees do wrong. That doesn't help at all; it puts them in a negative mind set.

"But Mourinho will always look to turn a positive into a negative. If a team is 3-0 down at half time and the manager starts screaming about all the mistakes they've made it isn't going to help. Instead he'll focus on some of the things they are doing right, and then tell them how they can turn the game around.

"You have to be specific about what is required; that way, the player or employee starts to build up a mental image of what is needed. A good manager is committed to trying to get the best out of an individual, and knowing how each member of staff ticks. Mourinho is a master at that."

Protection
Barton says Mourinho is desperate to alleviate as much pressure as possible from his players, and is quite prepared to do something outrageous to shield them from criticism.

Mourinho was hit with a three-game ban following a gesture he made during Saturday's controversial 0-0 draw against Sampdoria. After two of his players were sent off Mourinho crossed his arms in the manner of being handcuffed -- a suggestion that Inter were being victimized by match officials.

Previously this season, after another poor Inter performance, Mourinho leapt off the team coach to physically confront a journalist who he said had invaded his players' space. The media uproar after the confrontation deflected attention from the bad result, and made sure he was the story instead.

One of his players, Diego Milito, confirmed the success of this tactic in an interview with newspaper Gazzetta Dello Sport: "There is no coach like him when it comes to sticking his neck out and defending everyone, that way reducing the tension within the team when things aren't going well. It's no fluke that after a defeat, Inter gets straight back on its feet. That's all thanks to Mourinho."

Self belief
Underpinning Mourinho's approach is an unwavering self belief that he transmits to his players, as Barton explained: "Mourinho's self belief is palpable and you can read it in everything -- his body language and how he speaks -- you know he has complete trust in his abilities and that gives his players confidence.

"He's like a general on the touchline, commanding his troops and he explodes sometimes. He may do it heighten the opposition players arousal levels, to inspire in them an intense desire to beat him, and that can throw them off their game and affect their decision making. He very much makes it us against the world."

There is another intriguing subplot to the Inter versus Chelsea clash. The English side are now managed by Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti, who left Inter's bitter rivals AC Milan this summer.

A running battle between the pair erupted during their stint in opposite dugouts and it continued even after Ancelotti left for London. Mourinho has been quoted as saying: "Ancelotti is no friend of mine." The Italian replied by referring to his rival as "His Mourinhity" in his autobiography.

Mourinho often says inflammatory things about opposition players and managers before a big game but Barton says Mourinho may take a different approach in the build up to Wednesday's crucial match. He told CNN: "I don't think he will be confrontational about his return clash against Chelsea because he has always professed his love for the club and the players he used to coach but he will make a few jibes about Ancelotti, and could try to undermine his position by talking about his own success at the club.

"The thing about Mourinho is that you don't know what he's going to do next but whatever it is it will be because he thinks it is beneficial to the team. Mourinho will definitely be looking forward to going back. He will thrive on the attention and will be happy to keep the pressure from his team."

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Why to BELIEVE in others

2010-05-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Viktor E. Frankl was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. He spent three years during World War II in concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Dachau, where he formulated many of his key ideas. Logotherapy, his psychotherapeutic school, is founded on the belief that striving to find meaning in life is the most powerful motivation for human beings.

Frankl wrote 39 books, which were published in 38 languages. His best-known, Man's Search for Meaning, gives a firsthand account of his experiences during the Holocaust, and describes the psychotherapeutic method he pioneered. The Library of Congress called it one of "the ten most influential books in America." Frankl lectured on five continents.

"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human. "
Viktor Frankl

Vancouver Canucks Live in stuck Belief Systems not unlike the frozen water they skate on

2010-05-07T18:33:00.000-07:00

I am so grateful to the Masters I have had the priviledge of studying and apprenticing with. Robert Dilts of NLP University and Christina Hall President of NLP Society. My life was turned around completely and forever because of NLP. My work is totally based in NLP. I will always be grateful for and to NLP and these Master Trainers who create and teach with integrity. This has been passed on to me and I honor this and embrace using these techniques when I work with all my clients.Below is an exerpt from an interview with Robert Dilts for the documentary Beyond Beliefs.

by Robert Dilts, Co-Developer of NLP

Excerpt from interview for the film"> Beyond Belief
The other thing about NLP it says there are different levels, lets call it programming. That is, to have a behavior, there is an inner mental map, a cognitive program that sort of guides that behavior. Behind that cognitive map are beliefs and values which are different than, let’s say, our idea about what we want. They are more the motivation, the permission, and then behind that is our sense of identity.
So if I say I want something, there is an “I” who wants it, and behind that “I” that’s where you get to that sense of a purpose, of belonging to something that is beyond yourself, that is bigger than yourself. This is where you get a sense of some kind of deeper vision of purpose.
People who are able to achieve things they want in their life most effectively are people who are aligned in that way: their identity is aligned with their higher purpose, then their beliefs fit with that identity and that is connected with their capabilities which lead to their behavior.
When you are aligned, when your identity and your beliefs and your capability are aligned, we called that being in the zone. A lot of NLP is about coaching what you might call the inner game. Every athlete, every performer knows that you have an outer game, which is what you are doing, what the physical activity is.

And there’s the mental game, which has to do with your mental attitude and your emotional attitude. So when those things are aligned, the athlete would say you are in the zone and a performer you would say you havepresence. So when you have that sense of confidence, the zone is what we call being in a state of effortless excellence, of flow.

The idea of neuro-linguistics is you’ve got language and the nervous system. A positive affirmation is the linguistic part of the belief, but it is not the “neuro” part. To actually bring in an empowering belief, you are going to be doing more than just saying it in the mind. That’s the verbal part, the idea of the belief.

In NLP we say you’ve got to get beyond the idea. to get it in the muscle. The way you are going to do that is by adding in information from the other senses and also using the body, your physical attitude, you are aligning again the words with your inner images, your memories and your physiology.

In NLP coaching we do a number of things. The first is to help people get IN the zone and the second is to find out what gets in the way of being in the zone and how to transform that. One of the ways that we’re going to coach people to get into the zone, it starts by coming present in the body, to come into the body. In fact, we say the body is always in the present, to bring the mind and the body into the same place.

How Should We Set Our Goals?

2010-05-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

How should we set our goals?”

The first thing to understand is that you are in this situation because of your present state of self. Your beliefs, your personality, your behavior, have made you in this present state of reality. If at all you want to change your situation, you must set a goal to change yourself first; you must change the state of yourself. In changing your belief systems your accepted reality changes, and when this is changed the outer changes automatically. So the fact is that the outer goal is secondary, the inner is the most important thing. If ever you want to change the outer reality or achieve some outer goal, first start with the self. Only then you will know what effortless achievement is.

For a long time effort has been introduced to us by many speakers and psychologists, simply because they believed that in order for the self to change, the outer must change first; some even consider that the self has nothing to do with the outer. This is why they have always emphasized effort and propagated struggle. You must understand, this struggle and hardship is not with the outside, it is because the self (the reality creator) can't be changed.

What I am discussing with you seems to be difficult but actually it is not. Remember, stop wishing and start seeing that which you are, and see that which you are is the same as your reality. Also remember that the self is not fixed, it is changeable. If you dare to go beyond the self and see that it’s not actually you, that you are something transcendental, then almost everything you want is possible, all goals are achieved; not by maddening effort but by spontaneous creation.

How Can Mastery Help?

2010-05-04T18:03:00.000-07:00

“How can Mastery help?”

The first part of Mastery is coming in total contact with that which one is. In seeing yourself for what you are you will begin to realize that even that which you have accepted as yourself is just a creation; your self is just beliefs that you have accepted and the conditioning society has given you. You are something far beyond this self, but this is only for the one who has come to know. Mastery will help you simply because you achieve that which is within your grasp, that which is within the spectrum of the self or the real self. In Mastery, as you shift or change the boundary of yourself you also change the boundary of your reality and your achievement. If you actually believe that you can make a million dollars and it is within your spectrum of realness, then it is done. The fact that I have seen is that when it is within your spectrum of realness the universe supports it. Let me emphasize it again, within your spectrum of your realness, that which makes you, you; it is not pretending to believe, but actually believing it and accepting it as a fact.

In Mastery you learn just how to do this.

Master Dhyan Vimal

How Can this Illusion Be Broken?

2010-05-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

“How can this illusion be broken?”

First you must come to see that you are wishing; you are functioning from a state of hoping for things to happen. This basic fundamental realization will free you to see that which you are actually capable of. Remember, most of us don't want to see this. I am reminded of a student who wanted to be a top producer and was constantly talking about it until I pointed out to her that this is not what she is actually about; that she is living in hope and creating a false image. When the truth about her and the facts of her life started to come out she became very upset; she even became hostile. Now if you want to keep this false image and go on feeding it and protecting it, remember that you will be in an illusion. Your goals will just be a wish that won't come true.

The secret to come out of this illusion is to see that which you actually are, that which you actually believe you can do, to see yourself totally naked, to accept all the facts about you, and to see the actual beliefs that you carry about yourself. Remember, for many of us this can be an uncomfortable and even painful process because over the years we have created many false images and opinions about ourselves; we have pretended to be something other than what we actually are. We also carry a deep mechanism that prevents us from seeing that which we are.

Part 11Dyhan Vimal

Beyond ILLUSION to making things happen

2010-04-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

Beyond Illusion to Making Things Happen
Master Dyhan Vimal

“Why is it that most of the goals we set don't seem to materialize? Somewhere along the way it goes wrong and we don’t achieve them. How can Mastery help us achieve what we want or achieve that which we set out to do?”

The first thing that has to be understood and explored is the way we set goals. Many people assume that what they want, or what they wish to have, is their goal. Their goals are that which they actually believe they can't have, or that which they have accepted as being beyond their grasp. They will desire something, or make it a goal only when they see that it is beyond their capacity to grasp it. And many of them have confused themselves with the things that they want and the things that they can do; this is the reason why they want it.

When something is within our grasp we don't really wish for it, because we believe we can have it or we simply go out and get it. So, most of the time, we set our goals for things which we fundamentally believe we can't have and this is where the illusion starts; inevitably leading to frustration and failure. The illusion or lie starts when we confuse ourselves with that which we wish and hope for and that which is our goal. The fact is that we are hoping for it to happen, it's not a goal we work towards; it is like buying a lottery ticket and hoping to strike millions - this is not a goal.

Let’s say someone sets a goal or wishes to be a millionaire; anything less than being a millionaire is unacceptable to him and he sets a time period for achieving it. Let's examine why he set this goal, or what has triggered him to set this goal. It could be that because when he achieves his goal some of his life problems will be solved, or he believes that this is the ideal way to live. Often these types of goals will be born as a wish which we hope will solve our problems; based on this wish we move around, hoping our goals will happen.

If you observe, you will see that most people set a goal and completely do nothing about it and wait for it to happen. Then that same person will ask “Why are my goals not happening?” Living a life based on hopes and wishes will eventually lead to a state where you believe that no matter what you do, that which is going to happen will happen. You create the idea that life is fated and when this belief sets in nothing in your life changes. Then, in order to explain your life's situation you adopt philosophies like: “life is difficult” or “one cannot easily get what one wants,” or “man proposes, God disposes” and so on ... This is how the circle of illusion starts, and this has to be broken.

next blog “How can this illusion be broken?”

Conception of Aging is like anything else in which YOU believe - YOU embody it

2010-04-20T21:26:00.000-07:00

Health is a reflection of beingness. So how can you expect your mental, emotional, and physical states to be ready for the joys and demands of self-discovery if you have fulfilled belief systems your entire life, have allowed yourself to become prematurely old, have believed that your glands should atrophy and cease to function, and that your heart, liver, intestines, and general metabolism should slow down? Your body runs down because it is forced to operate in ways antagonistic to the purposes for which you were born and to the creations to which you should have given birth.

Your conception of aging is like anything else in which you believe -- you embody it. ...

Perceptions, which are based upon sensory experience and knowing, should precede conceptions. You express yourself and through that you change your attitudes. In other words, you do not change your attitudes in order to get a better perception, you get a better perception in order to change your attitudes. To do that you have to transcend the concepts under which you have lived. It is not a matter of denying or erasing them. There needs to be a continual process whereby perceptions form conceptions, rather than belief systems forming conceptions. Concepts should be based upon what you are perceiving now and relating those perceptions to what you have already experienced. The experiences you have and the potentials you activate are mainly determined by your belief and knowing systems and attitudes. So changing your perceptions will also change the types of experiences you have. Transcendence is what keeps the universe healthy, and it will keep you healthy too.

from Jack on Aging

Relationships Have Tremendous Impact Upon Expression (Part 111 "It's Not What YOU Eat but What's Eating YOU")

2010-04-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

Relationships have a tremendous impact upon expression. For many, their relationships oppress them because, in spite of their belief systems, there is an undeniable knowingness within them which says, "I have not become what I needed." It eats at them.This is why many suffer hypertension, heart disease, and stomach and intestinal problems. Ask them why they do not change their situation and they say, "Well, I have a family to support and bills to pay, so I have to work. I have to behave." And it is true that once relationships are established, they can be hard to leave.

How can you work with a stifling relationship? One way is to allow your partner to develop his or her potentials too. It is not always necessary to break up relationships in order for people to develop. Learn to give each other the freedom to be and to become. Support each other on your paths of discovery. At one point you might be the one who needs to become. At another point it might be your mate who needs to become. Or you may need to become simultaneously, and you can support each other in your individual quests. This can be a stimulating model for your children. They can observe and experience how you, their parents, are both exploring and expanding your potentials and consciousness, yet still maintaining a sharing, caring relationship with each other. The children may come to realize they can explore their potentials too, for you have not made them dependent upon set beliefs. You are not holding onto beliefs any longer. You and your children will have a much greater freedom and will be healthier because of it.

So for those who feel oppressed by family relationships, I would say that getting away from one another will not necessarily make you happy if you do not learn to activate your potentials. Before you look outside the family life or look for someone who seems to share your beliefs and ideas, you might first look for ways to express yourself as an individual within the family. You may discover that involvement with your partners, your mate and children, will lead to your evolvement. The key is to create a family which is mutually supportive. Continuously create a dynamic family environment which reflects and enhances your state of consciousness and health. Do not fear change. Do not use your family and your job as excuses or distractions to avoid personal expression. Do not explode -- expand! Otherwise, you will limit the expression of your partner and children as well.

How sad that many people actually plan to wait forty years and agree to spend their energy fulfilling someone else's desires before they set out on that path of self-discovery. For forty years they work to fulfill someone else's expectations of what is best for them. They wait until they retire and the children are gone before they really begin to live for themselves.

Forty years of waiting will not leave the mind and body in a very good state of health, one capable of allowing a person to develop her potentials. Often that person's "golden years" become merely a fulfillment of a new set of beliefs, an escape rather than an exploration.

It's Not What YOU eat but what eats YOU - Part 11

2010-04-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

From approximately eighteen to thirty years of age, people can start to practice and implement the directions of their beliefs and consciousness. Those who act upon their potentials and continuously become what they desire to be, even if their family, peers, and society disagree, will be much healthier than those who do not accept the joy of their potentials. They will perform at much higher levels in whatever they do, because they have their heart and soul in what they do. These people do not count their rewards by numbers. They count their rewards by their happiness, their joy, and their state of excitement. Their excitement is not so much in seeing if they can win over someone else, but in challenging themselves. They risk!

Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, people still have many chances to make changes. What can young adults do to enhance their health and personal expression? They can go on a path of self-discovery and thus not become one-sided. They can explore their desires, and their sources of joy, and become well-rounded people, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rather than holding onto accomplishments, they can develop great freedom and can use it to pursue potentials felt but as yet unexpressed. This is possible because in most cases the responsibility to parents has been reduced, and commitments to a mate and children have not yet been made.

So there is much freedom of choice. This freedom of adulthood can be powerful when combined with knowing systems, health and radiance, and the privileges of being an adult. During childhood parents can help prepare their children to assume the joys and responsibilities of such freedom.

It can be difficult for young adults, who usually have not yet established families and often do have personal freedom, courage, and initiative, to go on paths of personal discovery. The difficulties for middle-aged adults, who often have been stuck in beliefs for a long time, are even greater. These people think they do not have the capacity to ever get their potentials going, that is, if they think about it at all!

Next Part 111

It's Not What You Eat But What Eats You Part 1

2010-04-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Jack on Aging:

The selection below is drawn from Jack Schwarz's book

It's Not What You Eat But What Eats You, published by Celestial Arts.

When we are born we want to be. Over time we become aware that being also means having to have something. Let us put those two words together: be-have, or behave. By the age of thirteen our be-havior is dominated by what we have and that with which we identify.

So adolescents enter a new state. They go from a state of becoming to a state of behaving. Becoming is a process of movement which has to be activated by the individual. To become, energy must be put into motion; it is emotional to become. To be and to come you need constant activity, that is, expression and experience. But rather than becoming, what do we do? We get. A man has to get that job, in order to get that mansion and that Ferrari, in order to get that wife, who has gotten that money from her parents. A woman has to get a husband who has gotten through behaving. Because of the changing roles of women in our society, women are now attracting diseases which formerly affected only men, for women are now involved with getting in the workplace. They are surprised they haven't become what they wanted. Can you feel the wear and tear behaving puts on the body? The universe is for-giving, not for-getting.

There is nothing wrong with getting, unless you hold onto what you have gotten. But if you put your beingness into getting, it becomes be-getting. Begetting means "to give birth." It means as soon as you get something, you let go of it or hold it only so long as you need it in that form, and then transform it to create something else. You give birth to a new idea. You birth to an expression. Holding onto it causes the energy to stagnate and causes health problems. You can transform your holding the same way you transform your getting: you put your beingness into it. Then holding becomes beholding. And you say, Lo! Behold! A new birth!

The result of getting is that consciousness is modeled by social standards and beliefs. How does society say you can best succeed? Not by action and not by giving birth, but by getting and holding. But to maintain health it is vital to discover your potentials and to become them. Put yourself in situations in which you must expand your potentials and give birth through them.

If you become something that you are not potentially directed to be, whether because of belief systems, family pressures, economic security, or some other reason, you force your body to malfunction. You force your consciousness to function in a way that is not its intended purpose. This forces your consciousness to stagnate, as well as your reason and rationale. To become a corporate executive when you would prefer to be a river guide, or to become a river guide when you would prefer to be a corporate executive, forces your energy and evolution to stagnate.

To become, you need to know your potentials and pursue their fulfillment. Without that knowing and action, you suffer a loss of courage and happiness. You do not become the expression of your consciousness. You eat food that maintains you in a forced function, which forces your body and consciousness into directions antagonistic to the core of your being. You force-feed yourself. It is like the Christmas goose, which would like to be flying south for the winter but cannot, for people keep stuffing grain down its throat -- to get it fat for their dinner.

Tiger's Unconscious Set Up

2010-04-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

The unconscious is always trying to become conscious and will set up situations that will force us to become more in touch with ourself.

A drama for us to see Tiger Woods and Elin is that even ‘having it all,’ the wealth, the fame, the beautiful wife and family is not enough if you are not at peace within yourself and in connection with your soul

Do you know your soul's essence identity of yourself?

Robert Dilt's - NLP and the task of capital "c" continued

2010-04-05T19:59:00.000-07:00

Coaching

Traditional coaching (i.e., small “c” coaching) is focused at a behavioral level, involving the process of helping another person to achieve or improve a particular behavioral performance. Coaching methods at this level derive primarily from a sports training model, promoting conscious awareness of resources and abilities, and the development of conscious competence. They involve drawing out and strengthening people’s abilities through careful observation and feedback, and facilitating them to act in coordination with other team members. An effective coach of this type observes people’s behavior and gives them tips and guidance about how to improve in specific contexts and situations

NLP and the task of capital "C" ... beginning with guiding and caretaking

2010-04-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Levels of Support for Learning and Change—A Roadmap for Large “C” Coaching

The task of the capital “C” Coach is to provide the necessary support and “guardianship” which help clients to successfully develop, grow and evolve at all these levels of learning and change.

Guiding and Caretaking
Guiding and caretaking have to do with providing support with respect to the environment in which change takes place. Guiding is the process of directing a person or group along the path leading from some present state to a desired state. It presupposes that the “guide” has been there before, and knows the best way (or at least a way) to reach the desired state. Being a caretaker, or “custodian,” involves providing a safe and supportive environment. It has to do with attending to the external context and making sure that what is needed is available, and that there are no unnecessary distractions or interferences from the outside.

Origins of Coaching

2010-03-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

The term “coach” comes from the Middle English word coche, which meant “a wagon or carriage.” In fact, the word still carries this meaning today—such as when a person travels “coach” on a railway or airline. A “coach” is literally a vehicle which carries a person or group of people from some starting location to a desired location.

The notion of coaching in the educational sense derived from the concept that the tutor “conveys” or “transports” the student through his or her examinations. An educational coach is defined as “a private tutor,” “one who instructs or trains a performer or a team of performers,” or “one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a competitive sport and directs team strategy.” The process of being a coach is defined as “to train intensively (as by instruction and demonstration).”

Thus, historically, coaching is typically focused toward achieving improvement with respect to a specific behavioral performance. An effective coach of this type (such as a “voice coach,” an “acting coach,” a “pitching coach”) observes a person’s behavior and gives him or her tips and guidance about how to improve in specific contexts and situations. This involves promoting the development of that person’s behavioral competence through careful observation and feedback.

In recent years, starting in the 1980s, the notion of coaching has taken on a more generalized and expanded meaning. Coaching in organizations involves a variety of ways of helping people perform more effectively, including project, situational and transitional coaching. Project coaching involves the strategic management of a team in order to reach the most effective result. Situational coaching focuses on the specific enhancement or improvement of performance within a context. Transitional coaching involves helping people move from one job or role to another.

Many companies and organizations are opting for coaching of these types, in place of or in addition to training. Because coaching is more focused, contextualized and individually targeted, it is frequently more cost effective than traditional training methods in producing real change.

Another rapidly developing area of coaching is that of life coaching. Life coaching involves helping people to reach personal goals, which may be largely independent from professional or organizational objectives. Similar to transitional coaching, life coaching involves helping people deal effectively with a variety of performance issues which may face them as they move from one life phase to another.

Originally written by Robert Dilts

Large "C" and Small "c" coaching

2010-03-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Large “C” and Small “c” Coaching

Clearly, personal coaching, executive coaching and life coaching provide support on a number of different levels: behaviors, capabilities, beliefs, values and even identity..

There is another level, that can best be referred to as a spiritual level. This level has to do with people’s perceptions of the larger systems to which they belong and within which they participate. These perceptions relate to a person’s sense of for whom or for what their actions are directed, providing a sense of meaning and purpose for their actions, capabilities, beliefs and role identity.

These new and more general forms of coaching—executive coaching and life coaching—can be referred to as capital “C” Coaching.

Small “c” coaching is more focused at a behavioral level, referring to the process of helping another person to achieve or improve a particular behavioral performance. Small “c” coaching methods derive primarily from a sports training model, promoting conscious awareness of resources and abilities, and the development of conscious competence.

Large “C” Coaching involves helping people effectively achieve outcomes on a range of levels. It emphasizes generative change, concentrating on strengthening identity and values, and bringing dreams and goals into reality. This encompasses the skills of small “c” coaching, but also includes much more.

NeuroLogical Levels in Sport same in Corporate and Individuals

2010-03-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

One of the most useful NLP models for capital “C” coaches is that of NeuroLogical Levels. Both coaching and modeling frequently need to address multiple levels of learning and change in order to be successful. According to the NeuroLogical Levels model (Dilts, 1989, 1990, 1993, 2000), the life of people in any system, and indeed, the life of the system itself, can be described and understood on a number of different levels: environment, behavior, capabilities, values and beliefs, identity and spiritual.

At the most basic level, coaching and modeling must address the environment in which a system and its members act and interact—i.e., when and where the operations and relationships within a system or organization take place. Environmental factors determine the context and constraints under which people operate. An organization’s environment, for instance, is made up of such things as the geographical locations of its operations, the buildings and facilities which define the “work place,” office and factory design, etc. In addition to the influence these environmental factors may have on people within the organization, one can also examine the influence and impact that people within an organization have upon their environment, and what products or creations they bring to the environment.

At another level, we can examine the specific behaviors and actions of a group or individual—i.e., what the person or organization does within the environment. What are the particular patterns of work, interaction or communication? On an organizational level, behaviors may be defined in terms of general procedures. On the individual level, behaviors take the form of specific work routines, working habits or job related activities.
Another level of process involves the strategies, skills and capabilities by which the organization or individual selects and directs actions within their environment—i.e., how they generate and guide their behaviors within a particular context. For an individual, capabilities include cognitive strategies and skills such as learning, memory, decision making and creativity, which facilitate the performance of a particular behavior or task. On an organizational level, capabilities relate to the infrastructures available to support communication, innovation, planning and decision making between members of the organization.

These other levels of process are shaped by values and beliefs, which provide the motivation and guidelines behind the strategies and capabilities used to accomplish behavioral outcomes in the environment—i.e., why people do things the way they do them in a particular time and place. Our values and beliefs provide the reinforcement (motivation and permission) that supports or inhibits particular capabilities and behaviors. Values and beliefs determine how events are given meaning, and are at the core of judgment and culture.

Values and beliefs support the individual’s or organization’s sense of identity—i.e., the who behind the why, how, what, where and when. Identity level processes involve people’s sense of role and mission with respect to their vision and the larger systems of which they are members.

Typically, a mission is defined in terms of the service performed by people in a particular role with respect to others within a larger system. A particular identity or role is expressed in terms of several key values and beliefs, which determine the priorities to be followed by individuals within the role. These, in turn, are supported by a larger range of skills and capabilities, which are required to manifest particular values and beliefs. Effective capabilities produce an even wider set of specific behaviors and actions, which express and adapt values with respect to many particular environmental contexts and conditions

As an individual we are a whole system within a system. As an individual on a sport team or in a corporate office we are whole system within that system. The magic happens when there is congruency which means the neurological levels are aligned. As an Optimal Performance Coach my work involves ensuring there is congruency in this alignment in individual players, teams in sport, coaches, management and in the corporate world.

Shadows Play in Sport

2010-03-12T14:03:00.000-08:00

Shadow Play in Sports

Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini, whose players have found a keenness for shadow play without a football one of the most unexpected changes to their training regime, insist that they must adapt to his new philosophies if they are to prosper. Mancini finds his approach to match preparation under scrutiny but responds to doubters by saying “I understand that maybe they are not happy working on tactics but this is my method. I work because if you want to win the Champions League and Premier League you must be prepared very well for every situation: tactics, power, running,” he said. If these things are not good, it is impossible to win. I don’t know if they don’t like that. They are all working very well.”

Shadow Play – in which two full sides go on to the training pitch with-out a ball, with one of the sides running into areas of the field where threats are anticipated in the next match and the other side is responding to them-is relatively uncommon in English training regimes. The continual focus is on the shape of the team as they move around the pitch.

Even the contingent of England Players at City are understood to be unfamiliar with shadow play, which does not tend to form part of Fabio Capello’s training sessions, though those who have trained under Capello do talk of similarities between the two Italian coaches in the work demanded in chasing back the to defend the numbers.

The City player best acquainted with the new approach – which is far different to predecessor Mark Hughes’ preference for quick, high tempo games training is goalkeeper Shay Given, who has experienced it under Giovvani Trapattoni in the Republic of Ireland set up. “Sometimes it can be a bit boring, walking through things and doing shape and shadow play in practice matches, ‘Given said of Trapattoni’s methods recently. “But you do BENEFIT from it as a team, knowing what the manager wants is crucial.

In my work as an Optimal Performance coach I work to ensure the logical levels in an individual are aligned. The result is congruency in the individual. This means that the individuals on a team can actually come together as a team and match the coach and managers values which means there is no conflict which leads to winning.

Next: Logical Level alignment

Shadows

2010-03-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

Name the Pain,” theologian Matthew Fox says.

By naming our demons we diminish their power over us. We reform them from demons back to diamons. Daimons were the origin of demons. They were divine spirits, demi-gods, intermediaries who passed notes back and forth between gods and humans. The Latin translation of daimons is soul. As such, they can be either creative or destructive, depending entirely on whether we receive them or reject them. By negating them, we turn them into angry spooks, consigning them to what poet John Milton called Panadaemonium, the capital of hell, and an apt decription of what happens in the human psyche when our guides are driven underground, when a force as powerful as the shadow is scorned.

Since shadow is largely what is unloved in us, and in some cases with good reason, reintegrating these parts will mean attempting to love them as if they are strangers who might be gods-but it’s still critical to keep our wits about us. Loving our own cruelty, rage, or vengefulness or narcissism is different from identifying with it or giving it license. Treating the devil with respect is not the same as worshipping the devil. Dealing with the shadow demands the ability to deal with paradox. Shadow must be love and transformed. It is intolerable and it is in us.

Novelist Isabel Allende says “A scary cellar accts as a stimulus to the imagination,” which is why she hides, in her own basement, “sinister surprises” for her grandchildren: a plastic skeleton, treasure maps, trunks filled with pirate disguises. Myth is also full of dualistic nature of the diamonic:

Pluto the Roman name for Hades, god of the Underworld, is also the god of Wealth.

We need to acquaint ourselves with our shadows and past in which it leaves it’s tracks, however, in order to become aware of as much of our experience as we can, to have as much information as possible to draw on for our own journey. We need to go bodily down through activities such a journaling, active imagination, bodywork and have spend some time just mucking around and getting to know the place. We really are meant to stick our noses in our deep strata. Annie Dillard once wrote. “When you move in, you try to learn the neighborhood.”

Danger lies not in the shadow itself but in the panic; in the acute anxiety that grips some people when confronted by some of the material there; in the fear of losing their footing in the conscious world because of what they find in the unconscious; in the fright of what they truly feel.

Above all, says Thomas Merton, take it easy. “The shadow is a frightening reality, and anyone who talks blithely about integrating it as if you could chum up to the shadow the way you learn a foreign language, doesn’t know the darkness that always qualifies a shadow.”

Not all suffering, to be sure is redeemed with gifts and talents-some times people grow up in sick families are just crippled by it – but the cold truth about turning a wound into a gift, if that is its nature, is that first you must FEEL it. You’ve got to be willing to go back and re-encounter the grief of it, starting with the brute fact that you got a bum deal, that justice is beside the point, and no one is going to make it up to you. The past cannot be changes only our attitude to it can be.

The past shapes us, but by following the deep calling to heal ourselves and throw off old curses, we may be able to reshape our response to the past and perhaps even the way in which we remember it. Sometime we are called to move backward so we can move forward with a greater sense of ourselves, and with a greater confidence.

Next Shadowing in SPORTS

Intuition

2010-03-08T15:12:00.000-08:00

“Let the bird sing without deciphering the song”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

There is such a thing about too much thinking. We can analyze everything to death. Then we create paralysis through analysis. You can think too much which is something Dante and his guide Virgil. Discovered on their outing to the Inferno. Faith begins, if it begins at all where knowledge leaves off.

Even scientists will admit that they do all the homework they can but eventually rely on an intuitve leap. They call it informed intuition, and though it grows naturally out of periods of dogged rational work-which provides the raw material it needs to go on, the bits of clothing laced with scent-reason, again, only goes so far. Intuition is the last baton carrier. It doesn’t win the race alone, but it’s the one that crosses the finish line.The more practiced it is the less likely it is to get winded at crucial moments.

Intuition has receptors that seem able to hook all manner of passing emotions, like a bus that rolls through downtown picking up passengers. The passengers are not the bus, however, they are merely hitching a ride. Sports psychologist (and former athlete) Susan Jackson, who co-wrote The Flow of Sports with Csikszentmihalyi, puts a more secular spin on the same conclusion. Though Jackson believes flow can be controllable, she would agree with Cooper that it cannot be achieved on demand. “However, we can set the stage for flow by firstly being aware of what the flow state is...and then focusing on the factors that facilitate flow for a particular athlete.”

Jackson’s emphasis on the individual athlete’s flow touches upon the interplay between spirit and an athlete’s emotional life which, in turn, it deeply dependent upon an athlete’s environment, personal beliefs, and shared cultural values. All contribute their part in creating a space in which the athlete is free to excel.

A whole industry of performance gurus claiming to know the one true path to The Zone has sprouted up in the last decade as athletes strive to reach peak performance. But in my book and documentary we discover there is no one secret formula. The Zone requires a complex intersection of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements that, when attained, create in the athlete a security and confidence to personally identify with excellence. Pia Nilsson, former European team Solheim Cup captain, sums up our findings when he speaks of Tiger’s female equivalent, Annika Sorenstam: “Annika has given herself permission to be great. It shocks people, being so bold. But it’s crucial that you see yourself doing something exceptional, so that when the time comes, you don’t bail out. Because you feel you belong there, you stay in the zone.”

Spirit of your calling is not only in sport

2010-03-06T15:54:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the struggle to explain the seemingly inexplicable, “The Zone” became the catch-all phrase to encompass the range of athletic ecstatic experience. But “The Zone” does not explain the actual experience; it is simply jargon. Whether one seeks the explanation in philosophy, science, religion, or some combination thereof, there needs to be an open forum on the issue if we are ever to understand The Zone. My book and documentary tackles this dilemma, brings the marginal back into the mainstream, and provides that elusive context athletes have been seeking.

In the martial arts, warriors strive to reach the point where they react to their opponents instinctively, without thought to strategy or technique. This is the essence of The Zone.

Four years ago, according to Golf Digest, “a poll revealed that although elite players believed mental skills were half to 80% of the game, the majority said they spent less than 10 percent of their practice on them.” This is why The Zone has for most athletes remained elusive.

Many credit Mihlay Csikszentmihalyi and his best-seller, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance, with bringing The Zone into popular culture. Csikszentmihalyi’s book coincided with – perhaps was a product of – a growing interest in Eastern philosophies and a weakening resistance to discuss the emotional and spiritual side of sport. It wasn’t that athletes hadn’t experienced The Zone, only that there had been strong cultural barriers to admitting to its existence.

Though these barriers have not been entirely dismantled, many of today’s great athletes are openly sharing the joy that is The Zone and their techniques for finding and staying within it.

Though the search for the perfect technique will rightfully always remain an essential element of athletic achievement, we now recognize this must be balanced with mental techniques that allow players to access their skills regardless of the environment or the state of play.

To this end, meditative disciplines such as yoga, which emphasize extreme yet relaxed concentration as an antidote to distraction, were the first to be mined for techniques which could be applied to sport. The list has since grown exponentially and now includes hypnosis and psychology (to unlock unconscious barriers), neuro-linguistic programming and kinesiology (to create more effective mind/body communication), creative visualization, and nutritional balancing, to name but a few. These and other areas of interest are explored in Owning the Zone.

The third key element, the spirit, is finally finding its way back into the language of sport. The term “The Zone” itself, with its connotations of the supernatural (the “Twilight Zone”), is indicative of this trend. Progressively minded coaches are now putting as much emphasis on players’ spiritual health as their physical fitness. For example, legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson combines elements of Zen Buddhism with the ancient wisdom of the Lakota Sioux to create the most successful teams in NBA history.

It is spirit, in fact, that many would argue is the most important element in finding The Zone. Developing a relationship with a higher power, however one wishes to define or envision this, is essential if athletes are to step beyond the limitations of their physical selves and into The Zone. As Andrew Cooper writes, “Mastery of one’s craft...and the techniques of sports psychology can enhance one’s physical and mental abilities, but they cannot produce self-transcendence. For if there is one defining characteristic of those moments of pure intuition...it’s that it is effortless and unpredictable, a kind of state of grace...The golden moment cannot be produced through an act of will. You can only prepare the ground for it to happen. As one Zen master has said, ‘Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident-prone.’” To enter The Zone one must be open to the experience; to understand and appreciate the experience one must acknowledge, and not fear, the unseen.

Always been there

2010-03-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

We all have patterns fixed within us in the same way designs we can't scribble over or erase. By going back in time we can find what is timeless in us, what is enduring and not just ephemeral. We discover that we aren't just a particle but also a wave that starts out at sea. Right this moment I am looking out over the sea and really understand how the whole universe is in us that we are not a part of the universe but it is completely in us and then we express it.

Calls (inner expressions) fit into these patterns, and they grow out of them. In a sense patterns are calls. They are what we have always felt the compulsion to do, for better or for worse, whether it is to say a certain thing, create or re-create a certain experience, serve a certain cause, or solve a certain problem.

They are where we have worn footpaths to and from issues in our lives. The dream that won't go away is a call. What is your calling?