On this episode of In The Box Podcast we talked acting now and apologizing later, noticing when your life is off-balance, whether it’s right to be hard on yourself or not, how important it is to have support from people around you, and we ended with a thorough reflection on the last 50 episodes.
Episode 50: Recognizing You’re Off Balance, Apologizing Later, Being Hard On Yourself And More
Apologizing later – What’s your take on “act now, apologize later” — is it right?
Balance – What is one way to recognize your life is off-balance (before it gets too bad)
Self love – One tip on how to not be hard on yourself?
Believe – How important is it to have others believe in you?
On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about the point of reflecting on memories, how to address a team member who is doing something that bothers you, leaders playing bad cop, what one makes art special and knowing the best timing for a decision.
Enjoy the episode and remember to download on iTunes here.
Episode 28: Team Trouble, Leadership, Memory And More
Memory – How much emphasis do you place on reflecting on memories from the past?
Team – One trick to addressing a team member / co worker who is doing something that bothers you?
Leadership – Do you think leaders ought to ever play bad cop?
Art – What is one thing that makes something art?
Bonus – One method to recognize when the timing is right for making an important decision?
This is me 60 years from now. Still not using an umbrella, enjoying the rain, relishing the moment. Even now, on the signs of rain ensuing, I don’t rush for cover, search for a newspaper to place over my head or “stay inside because it’s raining.” I’m not looking down delusionally lost. In fact, I’m purposefully lost; lost in the moment, lost in the rain, content with life. If this picture were a motion one, a moment from now you would see a smile cover my face from thinking how I was the only one really enjoying the rain. I’d get an extra hop in my step. However, my smile would turn into a frown as I looked to my right. I would think to myself if I asked this lady if she loved rain, she would say yes. I would think, if she loved rain, then why are you using an umbrella? To me, it doesn’t just rain water, it rains content, peacefulness, understanding. I’ve often thought about how the clouds wait until they are filled with enough water before they release. The clouds, the earth, the atmosphere aren’t rushing to make it rain. However, we, as people, don’t have the same patience. If we’re going to put effort into anything, we want instant results and give up what we’re doing if we don’t see them. We go for the short-term small investment tiny reward rather than the long-term big investment large reward. If rain was money, wouldn’t you want the saying when it rains, it pours to be true?
TaoSports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life is the one sport that if you were to become a professional in, you should pick. Although, I would add or change the word extraordinary because the lessons taught and experiences shared in this book are the ordinary techniques that are used by the extraordinary. The way I am going to regurgitate this book to you is by first sharing everything that I actually wrote down while I was reading it. These items are the most important parts of the book that sparked the brightest ideas and concepts in my brain. Then I am going to list the chapters in the book to let you know of all the different lessons that you can learn and improve on. The reason for this process is that the book can be picked up and started from anywhere you choose: the beginning, the end, or a random page. My advice for you is not to go and purchase the book, but to go and flip it open to a chapter that you think you want to improve in your life, read it and see if you want to read the other chapters. Lastly, I will share some of my favorite affirmations that were shared in the book that hopefully you can use.
Garth’s Dancing Mind
Why fight your way to the top, when you can rise to it? There is no such thing as a victory in an uphill battle; there is only a plateau and it’s never at the top.
Having a winning attitude is a defiance to the expectation of feeling the thrill of victory and agony of defeat. Both of which are detrimental to any possibility of being successful in the future. To have a winning attitude is to break down the process to moments. Thinking and feeling that you have won each moment. Success is relative to the quality of the process. There is more than one finish line in a 5k race, there are actually 6,200 finish lines. Every step is a victory and should be viewed as one.
What Not To Be –
Struggling for external recognition
Measuring self-worth on outcomes
Focusing on perfection
Establishing unrealistic expectations
Blaming others
Condemning yourself for mistakes and failure
“You don’t dance to get to the other side of the floor” – Alan Watts
There are three visualization processes that I have taken from the book (which probably has 30+ in it). The first is a visualization of your sanctuary that you can retreat to based off a trigger (mines putting my index finger and thumb together to create a circle). You get to create your own place of ritual and relaxation. My place was based off a picture of a monk sweeping in front of his hut that was cuddling the base of a mountain, the monk is my guide, as you will read more about when you open the book. The second visualization process was to imagine a steady beam of sunlight coming down on top of you, entering your head and circulating it’s power throughout your body, delivering energy, healing powers and enlightenment.
The third visualization example was actually the first in the book which goes like this:
“For example, close your eyes right now and imagine a juicy, sour lemon. In your mind, cut a big wedge from the lemon and place it in your mouth. Bite down, and let the sour juices permeate your entire mouth. Did you find yourself puckering or salivating?”
It simply goes to show how powerful visualization can be. With consistent practice, you can have the same trigger affect to visualizing winning a race, visualizing closing a deal or whatever will help you succeed.
While visualizations are confirmations for your mind, affirmations are confirmations to your heart. “Affirmations are not self deception, they’re self direction.” At the bottom of this post, I will list my absolute favorite affirmations from the book. It is loaded with them! You can also create a list of perfect affirmations for yourself by turning your favorite quotes into affirmations.
At every moment remember: Be positive, Be present, Be concise, Be rhythmic.
Adaptation is the hallmark of champions.
Remember to pace yourself. Progress is two steps forward, one step backward.
To trump fatigue, you can either focus on one aspect of the process or at the end result, ignore all else and let the fatigue bypass you.
Concentrate on what you have control over.
What you believe you become.
Handling a negative event in a positive way is an experience that can become a touchstone for future encounters.
Fear: is a natural part of life. It can either paralyze you or give you an opportunity to assess the risk your facing and prepare for it properly. Fear can also make you respect your comfort zone.
When in a slump, go with the flow because you will slingshot back.
5 Stages of Injury: – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. (When you read this section under the chapter titled Injuries, you will agree at first, but then you will disagree because when you finally realize the process you take, you are able to shorten and change it.)
Challenge: Find the book at the bookstore and read the beginning of the chapter on page 76. (Half a page) By far the most “Woa” moment in the entire book.
One of the most important excerpts I took from the book is that you, me, we – are never as great as our greatest victory or as bad as our worst defeat. We are above it all, we are apart from it because we have a winning attitude.
Reevaluate life while in downtime. Just because your body may be down, does not mean you can allow your mind to go down with it. You need to focus on what made you lose balance, what you are going to do to achieve balance again and what you will do to prevent from ever entering downtime again. Oh, and remember, laughter is by far the best medicine to get out of downtime, I suggest George Carlin.
Committed to truth no consistency – Buddha
“According to Mark, when you become totally engrossed in your sport, you over-analyze everything.” Contributing to the saying that analysis is paralysis. Ironically, I had just written a blog post about this called The One Quality You Need To Be A Successful Expert
I will top of my Dancing Mind with something I loved most about TBDM. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes within, a chapter of the Tao Te Ching is shared. The characters associated with it were so aesthetic that it made me want to study them. The reason being that the greatness of them is that they are meant to make you visualize and feel their meaning when you meditate on them. The Tao Te Ching inserts reminded me of a post I wrote a long time ago on a particular chapter:An Accord With Greatness
Tao Te Ching no.1
Thus, without expectation,
One will always perceive the subtlety.
And, with expectation,
One will always perceive the boundary.
TMDB Chapters – If you think a topic is appealing, pick up the book and just read the chapter
