Yes it’s a mouthful but it is the best description that I can give to the following 28 lessons. Enjoy.
1. Better results does not make a better plan. A better plan makes better results.
2. Happiness is meant to be designed. You create it, you sculpt it, you make it.
3. Discipline: without it there is no bridge from your goal to your accomplishments.
4. Success is sending yourself an invitation to grow, develop, move up, build more, create more, invest more, innovate more and raise above mediocrity.
5. Life works like a magnet, the more you put forth to your goals, the closer you get to the results you want, the harder you work at your dreams, the more force in which they pull you toward them, it gets easier. It always gets easier.
6. Learning is the beginning. Everything else will fall into place itself.
7. Things only change when you do.
8. There really are no destinations, only points in which you change direction again.
9. Be influenced by the successful. Peer pressure is necessary as long as it pushes us further toward our real potential.
10. Be influential. Peer pressure is necessary as long as it pushes someone further toward their real potential.
11. Remove “easy”, “simple”, and “effortless from your vocabulary. Also never make something a piece of cake, have it all or take nothing.
12. Try. Only when you don’t try, do you fail.
13. Answer this question, very clearly. What is the purpose of life?
14. Lead a tribe of as much inspired if not more willing people than yourself. Create an unbeatable alliance with others.
15. Create a new faith, a new religion, a new belief and call it “The YourName Faith/Religion”. This is the only way to destroy any limitations.
16. A good person runs a mile. A great person runs an extra mile. Only a legend keeps running long after the first, second, third, ninth mile. Always do more, always.
17. Make every part of your character visible.
18. Be Human.
19. Self-initiative, Self-resilience, Self-motivation, Self-assurance, Self-inspiration, Self-control, Self-discipline, Self-growth, everything begins with yourself. Want to be successful? Work on you harder than you work on your job.
20. Pursue an interest that makes you feel alive. Nothing radiates more positively to others than a personal keen interest in something, something you pour your passion into, something that if upon waking up at 2 am and asked what your muse is, you answer with it.
22. Combine accurate and imaginative thinking to create your art.
23. You won’t last without good health.
24. Not to mention exercise is the absolute greatest habit you can create to stimulate the positive senses.
25. Living in the moment is derived from the collection of experience you have had controlling, focusing and centering your attention on the positive, on the material that will help you produce results you care about and on the search for what you can learn from every moment.
26. Everything remarkable was the result of overcoming adversity. If you come face-to-face with adversity or even sometimes get defeated, you are on the right path. Nothing worthy comes easy.
27. Visualization doesn’t need to be done all at once. Visualization is something that is meant to be anointed to all the various positive thoughts that float through your mind every day.
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
If you can, I’d love to read any evidence you may have that disclaims the statement that what you focus on expands. Of course, there are various ways to say it: Where your attention goes, energy flows. What you think, so shall it be. However you say it, this is the key to acquiring absolutely anything you want, but too many people only get half of the technique. They believe that by only focusing on something that they will attract it. Contrary to belief, to truly follow through with the technique to get everything you want you have to think about what you want in thousands of different ways. Simply focusing on it in one way will not get you what you desire. The preceding actions are the seven steps you can take to focus in on what you want in different ways. We will use a new Mac computer for the example.
“action is just another way to focus on what you want”
1. Research
Don’t only think about the item you want, get specific with it! What details do you want? How would you describe the item to someone who specializes in creating it? How do you want it? Research the type of Mac you want, gain knowledge of the computers spec’s, operation system, software, graphics card, screen dimensions, amount of RAM, what battery it uses, how much the charging device is, what extras can you buy for it… and on and on and on.
2. Visualize
Let go of that image you have of the Mac at the Apple store. Why visualize it being there? You don’t want it there! You want it on your lap right? Or on your desk? Do you have a desk for it? To use the step of visualization, you have to picture having the item in a 24 hour period. Before going to sleep, visualize in the morning where that Mac is going to be when you wake up, when will you get on it, when are you going to bring it in to the living room, how are you going to take it to work, who else will use it throughout the day, what do you need it for, what outlet will you use to charge it? Visualize, frame by frame, where and how the Mac is going to be used. Speak and act as if you already have what you want.
3. Materialize
Also known as the action step. There are two factors in the materializing step. The first is going to the Apple store and getting your hands on the Mac. Get to know it, treat it to a date, type on those keys like you are trying to serenade it. This will also help with step two since you can visualize the real thing, not just a picture of it. The second factor of materialization is to begin taking action on what you can do to get the Mac. Do you need to work over time? Do you have money saved? This is not only when you need to ask how you are going to get the Mac, but to actually take the action steps to materialize it.
4. Ask questions
This is likely the easiest step. Begin going into the Apple store and asking about the Mac. Ask what others think about it. Surround yourself with questions and answers about what you desire.
5. Communicate
Talk with your loved ones and announce your desire. Share with everyone you meet that you will soon be getting a Mac. You will be surprised, that no matter what item it is you want, there will always be someone who has something to talk to you about it. They say actions speak louder than words, but actions still mean little without words to back them up. A person who goes and buys the Mac may be viewed as an impulse consumer, one that doesn’t think things through. A person who talks about going to buy a Mac and how they have asked questions about it, took action steps, visualized it, and researched it can only be envied and respected.
6. Plan
This step is simply put in for you to get excited. After attaining the first 5 steps, the 7th follows instinctively. But it’s worth shaking things up and creating for yourself the most happiness possible. Get yourself worked up that you will go get your Mac next Saturday at 6:30pm with your best friend. Hold out on yourself for a couple days to get yourself truly worked up and ecstatic about acquiring the Mac.
7. Attain
Most often, you will not have to take this step. It takes itself for you because you have already taken every thought and action possible to get yourself a Mac.
Now that you got your Mac, what’s next? 1981 Corvette T-Top? That lake-view home you noticed last week? There is nothing too big or too small that this 7 step process of manifesting can’t give you. Possibilities are endless
Stay Positive and I Always Like To Follow Up With A 2-step. Who Says You Can’t Celebrate With A Little Private Dance?
