The Power of Aligning Your Actions
10/13/10 Filed in: Brain Candy, Training
Even if you are training like crazy for four hours a day, the vast majority of your time, more than 80%, is spent outside the gym. If your attention, energy and focus outside the gym do not support your quest to win a championship, it dissipates the force you create during training and practice.
In this illustration there are 24 arrows representing each hour of the day. In truth, we live minute by minute, but I don’t have the patience to draw 1440 arrows so you’ll have to imagine the rest. As you can see, only the three green arrows are aligned and moving in the same direction. You’ve probably experienced the frustration and lack of power when your teammates are not aligned with each other. Well, the same thing can happen to you internally.
When your time and energy are aligned for a single purpose, you can see how much more can be accomplished than with random unaligned actions. Does this mean you have to become one of those boring people who can only talk about sports? Absolutely not! But it does mean that when you take a break, you take a break that supports your goal of winning a championship. You don’t just unthinkingly stop training for a month because you feel like it. If you organize your body, mind and soul around winning a championship, you make time to goof off and party, but it’s all done within the overall goal of winning.
So go ahead and start to take a look at your life. How much of it is actually aligned with your goals. Keep reading this blog. I will do my best to show you how to align your nutrition, your rest, your play, your schoolwork so that your time and energy is always propelling forward.
So go ahead and start to take a look at your life. How much of it is actually aligned with your goals. Keep reading this blog. I will do my best to show you how to align your nutrition, your rest, your play, your schoolwork so that your time and energy is always propelling forward.
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How blind spots hold us back
10/12/10 Filed in: Brain Candy
If you are any kind of an athlete you dream of becoming stronger...faster...better. You dream of winning and you dream of winning championships. But for most athletes, the dream never comes true. Why?
Why do some teams win year after year, and some teams struggle. What secrets do they know that others do not?
It’s not your lack of knowledge that holds you back, it’s your blind spots. There are three area of knowledge:
If you don’t know that you have blind spots, when you get stuck, you assume it’s something that you don’t know and you immediately go out to turn it into something you know. Yet none of that knowledge makes a difference. Your head just gets filled with more stuff, but still no championship.
Let me tell you a little story to illustrate how blind spots can hold you back. Imagine you are a goldfish and you live in a tank. You have a very happy life. You get fed twice a day, not too much and not too little. You have a little castle to swim around and you even have one of those treasure chest that the lid goes up and down and bubbles come out of. Then one day another tank is set down next to yours, and in that other fish tank there is a championship ring.
Day after day you stare at that ring, and you become obsessed with it. You want the ring more than anything else you’ve wanted your entire life, but you don’t know how to get to other tank. So you set out to learn how to get there. You become an expert on water and how to swim. You become the best swimmer in your fish tank. You learn everything there is to know about glass and how it made into a fish tank. But none of that knowledge makes a difference. The ring is still unreachable. One of your helpful fish friends gives you a book on positive thinking. You have to stay positive to get that ring! You read the book and many others, but nothing changes, you still don’t have that darn ring!
By now you are ready to quit. You never really wanted that stupid ring anyway. But deep in your heart you are hurting. Some part of you still wants that ring and you can’t get it out of your mind.
Your favorite (and slightly crazy) uncle goldfish notices you moping around and he swims over to find out what’s wrong. You open up and pour your heart out to him, how you really want this ring, but it’s impossible to get, the whole world is against you and it just wasn’t meant to be. Uncle goldfish just smiles and says one word and swims away. “One word!” you think, “He is crazy.” It’s irrelevant to the dream of getting your ring. You try to ignore his advice, but you can’t. It haunts you, even in your dreams.
Finally, you ask your uncle goldfish what it means, and he explains it to you. Now you understand. This one word is a game changer, you now know exactly what you need to do. You go back and practice swimming and review every thing you ever learned about fish tanks. You work harder than you ever have with renewed excitement and enthusiasm.
After a week of training you are finally ready for the big day. You announce you are going to get that ring. All the other fish laugh at you but you don’t care. You start swimming in circles as fast as you can building up speed and then you head to the top of the tank and something magical happens.
It only lasts a split second and you are back in water, but you are in a different world and the ring is right there waiting for you. You are so happy you do a little fish dance in celebration.
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the feeling of finally breaking through and achieving your dreams of winning, maybe even of winning a championship? There is nothing like celebrating after a really big win.
That’s why I created the Yin Yang University, to help you identify areas of your life that are blind spots and that hold you back from achieving your dreams. Do you know what’s holding you back? If you already know and are not taking care of it, you just don’t care about winning, I can’t help you. But if you really want to win, and feel stuck. The Yin Yang University is the place for you.
So here is the extra credit question: What did your favorite and slightly crazy uncle goldfish whisper in your ear? Tell me what you think it was and email me at . I’ll tell you whether you are right or not and what one word changed everything.
Why do some teams win year after year, and some teams struggle. What secrets do they know that others do not?
It’s not your lack of knowledge that holds you back, it’s your blind spots. There are three area of knowledge:
- what you know;
- what you don’t know, and;
- what you don’t know that you don’t know or what you are blind to.
If you don’t know that you have blind spots, when you get stuck, you assume it’s something that you don’t know and you immediately go out to turn it into something you know. Yet none of that knowledge makes a difference. Your head just gets filled with more stuff, but still no championship.
Day after day you stare at that ring, and you become obsessed with it. You want the ring more than anything else you’ve wanted your entire life, but you don’t know how to get to other tank. So you set out to learn how to get there. You become an expert on water and how to swim. You become the best swimmer in your fish tank. You learn everything there is to know about glass and how it made into a fish tank. But none of that knowledge makes a difference. The ring is still unreachable. One of your helpful fish friends gives you a book on positive thinking. You have to stay positive to get that ring! You read the book and many others, but nothing changes, you still don’t have that darn ring!
By now you are ready to quit. You never really wanted that stupid ring anyway. But deep in your heart you are hurting. Some part of you still wants that ring and you can’t get it out of your mind.
Your favorite (and slightly crazy) uncle goldfish notices you moping around and he swims over to find out what’s wrong. You open up and pour your heart out to him, how you really want this ring, but it’s impossible to get, the whole world is against you and it just wasn’t meant to be. Uncle goldfish just smiles and says one word and swims away. “One word!” you think, “He is crazy.” It’s irrelevant to the dream of getting your ring. You try to ignore his advice, but you can’t. It haunts you, even in your dreams.
Finally, you ask your uncle goldfish what it means, and he explains it to you. Now you understand. This one word is a game changer, you now know exactly what you need to do. You go back and practice swimming and review every thing you ever learned about fish tanks. You work harder than you ever have with renewed excitement and enthusiasm.
After a week of training you are finally ready for the big day. You announce you are going to get that ring. All the other fish laugh at you but you don’t care. You start swimming in circles as fast as you can building up speed and then you head to the top of the tank and something magical happens.
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the feeling of finally breaking through and achieving your dreams of winning, maybe even of winning a championship? There is nothing like celebrating after a really big win.
That’s why I created the Yin Yang University, to help you identify areas of your life that are blind spots and that hold you back from achieving your dreams. Do you know what’s holding you back? If you already know and are not taking care of it, you just don’t care about winning, I can’t help you. But if you really want to win, and feel stuck. The Yin Yang University is the place for you.
So here is the extra credit question: What did your favorite and slightly crazy uncle goldfish whisper in your ear? Tell me what you think it was and email me at . I’ll tell you whether you are right or not and what one word changed everything.