Life coaching |

Archive for the ‘Life coaching’ Category

Old school is the best school (gyms included)

Posted: October 11, 2011 in Life coaching, physical training
Tags: fitness, gym, muscle, StarBuck, training, Voimapuoti

Those who know me know that StarBuck is a big proponent of the old school. From life philosophy to my way of living to the way that I train, I hold high the banner of old school spirit and philosophy. You’ve heard the old adage that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it? That is exactly what I believe in.

The one thing that strikes me as absurd is the fact that the physical training culture of our modern age has all but done away with real training GYMS. Instead, we are offered a plethora of “health clubs”, where it is more appropriate to dress for show and mingle, while idly doing a few sets in between on the various apparatus’, in order to be able to tell others that those guilty of said charade actually “work out”. With TV sets in every corner of the said health clubs, members can watch MTV or the soaps while hitting the bikes, or flip through the pages of Cosmopolitan while on the treadmill. The workout machinery of these so-called health clubs offer a maximally comfortable range of motion, so as to not have to strain things. Trust me, I have been to enough of these places to know how things operate and how the ball bounces.

To me, this anomaly is befuddling. The gym is NOT supposed to be a comfortable place. You are supposed to sweat, to feel as much discomfort as possible, as you punish your body into its new mold and aspired physical appearance. The old school says “no pain, no gain!” and this adage is as old as training culture itself. Every single world-class athlete knows this. Every single person who has gotten real, profound, life-changing results from physical training knows this.

Unfortunately, the commercial powers that be have seen that there is lots of green to me made in “accommodating” people by offering an illusion of physical fitness, while delivering pipe dreams. How many women go to aerobic classes year after year, unable to shake the extra pounds and kilos, while stubbornly following to the tune of whatever sales pitch? How many people really push themselves hard in their training, so that others around them even look on at the struggle next to them? How many health clubs discourage grunts, groans and yelling when the bar is loaded, should such trainers be on hand at their posh palaces?

I recall in Canada over 15 years ago, I used to go to a local health club, which was not really a gym anymore. On heavy squats, I would have to psyche myself out and yes, there was some audible noise when I struggled with the weight. The club personel came up to me and asked that I keep it down, so as to not annoy the other clients? What the fuck, were we in a library?!? Soon thereafter, I was specifically asked by the brass to move on to another training facility. I have heard of similar incidents with other serious trainers here in Finland, where I now live.

For me, the antidote and answer is simple. I choose to train at hardcore, old school gyms. I specifically search out such places when I travel, where the smell of testosterone, pain and sweat can be readily noticed in the air and feel of the place. It is becoming harder and harder to find such training facilities in our modern world, but here in Helsinki there are still a few of them around. One such haven is Voimapuoti Gym in Pitäjänmäki, Helsinki.

Voimapuoti Gym used to be owned by Finland’s strongest man, Ano Turtiainen, who sold his then-Metal Gym in 2006 to Harri Kokkonen and the establishment was renamed. I have been a long-time member of Voimapuoti Gym since 2003, when Stratovarius band frontman Timo Kotipelto introduced me to the place. Today, it still stands as one of, if not the predominant, powerlifting gyms in Finland. Gym owner Kokkonen’s powerlifting expertise reaches into the Baltic countries of Northern Europe, as Harri coaches several top lifters of varying nationalities. Kokkonen also brings Swedish top sports supplement line, SKIP, into Finland. I have to say that of all the various manufacturers out there – and I have tested a slew of them over my 23 years of training experience – SKIP is hands-down one of the best, WORKING supplement lines out there. I have no problem shamelessly plugging their TopFuel post-workout drink, which you can feel actually revitalize your beaten frame withing 15 minutes of ingestion, aided by the digestive enzymes it contains. I can say the same for SKIP’s Tränings Aktivator, two scoops of which will have you ready within 20-30 minutes to kick King Kong-sized ass in the weight room.

Voimapuoti Gym is a place that I recommend highly to anyone who wants a training environment that is REAL. Considering free weight-training is twice as effective as the use of machines (hey, even Arnold promoted using free weights as much as possible), Voimapuoti is stock-full of various specialty barbell bars, loads of free weights, supported lifting benches and power squat racks. And YES, you can yell, scream and make your muscles feel the strain of body sculpting pain without any morons coming over to tell you to keep it down. Plus, the music is choice at Voimapuoti is always HEAVY, from hard rock to heavy metal, so that your adrenaline will keep up with the demands you place on your mortal frame to become the best that you can be. With like-minded people training around you who actually want results and are willing to pay the price to achieve them, your struggle will not be a solitary one.

Whenever top professional wrestlers from around the world come to Finland, I always bring them to Voimapuoti as part of their Finland experience. They thank me every time. Consider that.

(ALL PHOTOS BY JARMO KATILA, www.jarmokatila.fi)

Can I sell you some common sense?

Posted: June 26, 2011 in Life coaching, Odds and Ends, Social commentary

I just came back from spending midsummer in Finland with my girlfriend out in the heart of the wild woods. On a weekend when most Finlanders are out getting drunk out of their skulls and drowning out on the lakes, we were stone cold sober and camping out while zeroing out. In the meantime, we had a great discussion about something as simple as diet.

Point blank, people don’t know what to eat anymore. As a personal trainer, I try to give my clients the best advice I can using plain old common sense, but the fact is there are a shitload of diverse and adverse pitches out there as to what to eat in order to live right.

Ah, the elusive search for the truth, even in something as rudimentary as diet. Let’s take a look anyway, even though we are all so paranoid we don’t know who to believe anymore.

HELLOWEEN had the right idea, read the lyrics to this song.

Take the Warrior Diet for example: eating only once a day. The problem with this dietary approach is that there are no more Roman Legionnaires around who live the traveling foot soldier, marching army lifestyle. That in itself my friends speaks volumes against anyone in our western world copying the said approach. If you aren’t marching 12 hours or more a day and fighting a few bloody battles in between then the only person you are fooling following a Warrior Diet is yourself. If your lifestyle does not complement the warrior way of life for real, complete with body armour and lifelong battle scars, then move on to something more realistic. (Sorry, playing Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t count for qualification.)

The Paleo Diet cancels out all dairy, beans, legumes, grains and moderates fruit intake based on sugar content. First of all, who the hell among us were around to ever record how early man prepared his food, and what texts of the like are there to be found of the said period’s food preparation? I can well understand eliminating processed foods which are stock full of unhealthy fats and manipulated sugars in addition to gluttonously starchy carbs, but I cannot fathom the thinking behind skimming out sugars that stem from fruits that nature produces as such.

Simple reasoning says nature produces all food nutrients and elements for a said purpose, and we are idiots to screw with the universal and natural code – – and it can be argued that we are paying the price with our health and allergies nowadays for doing so, at least in part. Everything that God has put into the food that nature produces is there for a reason and none of it is bad, period.

BOTTOM LINE: behind every single dietary school of thought there is an entire industry waiting to cash in. It’s a big scam and it’s making somebody very rich. It’s time to wake up.

The entire superfood industry has boomed astronomically in the last couple of years, as people are turning out in droves to buy anything from Maca to Chia seeds to plankton and beyond. Some of this stuff is founded, some of it is clearly filled to the brim with innuendo and heresay.

Who is guaranteeing that your Goji berries are organically grown without artificial fertilizers somewhere out in China? Who is guaranteeing that your Brazilian beef products haven’t been produced using a little steroid enhancement? Do you take everything the authorties tell you as absolute truth? Whose agenda is the “truth” serving? Just look at politics and I need say no more.

Seriously, who is the all-seeing eye who can guarantee that anything that is on the label holds to be 100% true and accurate? We all (should) know that the sports supplement industry alone is full of all kinds of bullshit products that promise you the look of Lee Priest but deliver mostly just empty pockets and nervous systems brought to the edge.

http://youtu.be/5qqwsbBZCkk

You wanna become a superman? Sorry, but sports supplements won’t get you there.

To be honest, I have been an active weight-trainer for 23 years of my life and I have tried all kinds of sports supplements promising the moon. Most of the stuff I have used, I have to say that I really cannot point out any real benefits from its use. After 23 years of testing out the market I am finally starting to smarten up, and I have to admit that I am very, very disillusioned. For every serving of valid and working creatine powder there are a truckload of products that can’t pass laboratory inspection.

Hey, if I had the cash I’d test every single product bought from either a sports supplement center or a food store. I would love to know what actually IS – – or ISN’T – – in the stuff that we ingest.

When I was a kid, I ate rocks from my back yard and chowed down whatever was put on my plate, and for years upon years I was healthy and without allergies of any kind. Only once I started trying out different diets and messing with various sports supplements did my body start telling me something was wrong. Over the past 10 years I have developed lactose-intolerance and negative bodily reactions to certain grains. I am not sure how much of this is due to the overall “doctoring” of our food industry on a whole, and how much is due to just fucking with nature a tad too much.

We have been lied to, time and time again. Many God-given basic food products have been demonized to the point that we question where eating bananas will make us fat. How fucking absurd is THAT? Show me one single case study of a person who has gotten fat off of eating bananas, I dare you to produce such evidence anywhere!

The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting foiled, over and over and over again. I guess it’s like P.T. Barnum so aptly said: “Never give a sucker and even break.”

Maybe we all need to get back to basics. Maybe we all need to break out our forgotten, dusty Bibles and find some old-school Truth.

The least we could do is start looking.

For the TRUTH, that is.

First, we could start off with me selling you the only thing I have: common sense (a good place to start).

Analyzing life as we know it

Posted: June 9, 2011 in Life coaching, Odds and Ends, Social commentary

I often stop and contemplate the course of life as I get older. At 38 now, I am starting to understand many of the things my own father taught me or otherwise held to be true, at which I balked back in the day. It’s only now that I realize that I was the moron and that my old man was right on the money.

http://youtu.be/4XvFKS067D8

Take fishing for example. As a youth, I held fishing to be the most boring activity on Earth, right next to golf. Well, I still hold golf to be boring as hell, but fishing has taken on a whole new dimension for me. My Dad used to go out fishing once a week regularly, to totally cast off all the baggage and stress of the work he was involved in. It was his moment to “zone out” and just “be”.

How many people today can just sit there and do nothing? Nothing at all? I’m not talking about sitting idly and skimming through messages on your cell phone to kill time, I’m talking about total immersion into nothingness. I bet you’d have more luck finding a needle in a proverbial haystack than finding serenity of the kind that I’m referring to.

Fishing with my Dad in Ontario, September 2009

This past weekend I spent some time out in a row boat, just casting a line and staring at the water. It’s therapeutic, I tell you. I was on a somewhat remote island with my girl, camping out and totally “dropping out” of all the bullshit of modern society for all intents and purposes. On that lake, I understood my Dad a whole lot better, and how fishing throughout the ages has been a getaway for men from all cultures. No computers, no TV, no magazines, no traffic, no electronic sounds, no hurry, no stress, no bullshit.

The one thing that I never grow tired of is nostalgia. I was born in ’73, brought up in the 80’s and I remain an 80’s kid to this day. My critical development took place in the 80’s. The 90’s may as well have never happened in my opinion, except for my initiation into the world of pro wrestling as an active talent. Just like every generation before me, I totally understand those who say that things were better back in their day. Those who grew up with Elvis will always hold his music to the best there is. Those who grew up on Metallica will always hold their classic album(s) to be the epitome of music. Those who now grow up on Katy Perry will come to reminisce of her pop as the best music in the world when they are older too. For me, I’ll always owe my musical roots to Motley Crue.

I grew up on movie icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and I still watch the first Terminator and Rambo: First Blood with a fond warmth in my heart. I still hold 80’s pro wrestling, especially from the Crockett era of the NWA and Bill Watts’ UWF to be the best wrestling in the world. I still warmly recall watching on in rabid fascination as Gino Brito’s International Wrestling from Montreal came to Thunder Bay, Ontario at the Fort William Gardens featuring stars like Dan Kroffat, Steve Strong and Abdullah the Butcher. I still at times transpose back to a simpler time of Marvel Comic books featuring childhood heroes of mine like The Incredible Hulk and Conan the Barbarian. As an adult, I have even bought back some of the comics that I used to own as a kid. Nostalgic? Hell, yes.

So yeah, as I get older and wiser I learn to appreciate the lessons and truth that my parents taught me. Not that they were right 100% of the time, but then again who is? They were right enough of the time, and that is good enough for me.

In closing, I hate to tunnelvision but I recall the words of an elderly man just before his time was up: “Just as you get to understand something about this life, it’s time to leave.”

No ands, ifs or buts = hard resolve

Posted: April 19, 2011 in Life coaching

There comes a time in every person’s life when hard resolve and absolute resolution becomes a must.

No matter what kind of relationship is in question – be it family, romantic, vocational, what have you – the truth will hurt, but it will also set you free. And after the hurt things get better, much like removing a malignant tumor.

We live in a society of convenience that disparages us from being direct and to the point, in a vain attempt to please everyone by being politically correct.

Man, I’ve grown to hate that word: Political correctness. You shouldn’t stand out, make an impact, have any rough edges nor should you dare to offend anyone by actually voicing your personal belief and opinion for the record. However, as we all should know by now, this PC approach only muddies the waters and makes them unfit to consume in any way, shape or form.

Remember the days of black and white? Ohh, that’s a nasty one, ain’t it…?

It’s ass-backward to think in such retro terms these days. Everything is much more convenient when it’s all a various shade of grey. Let sleeping dogs lie, as the saying goes.

But society becomes ill when there are no absolutes and no one stands behind any rock solid principles and no one has concrete standards. It’s like the foundation is missing from ones house, and as the winds of life blow the whole darn shack risks toppling over.

Hard Resolve is much like garlic. It stinks, it’s bitter and other people around you can’t help but notice that you have it all over you. But its health benefits are well documented and founded in scientific proof. As a matter of fact, garlic stands as arguably the world’s oldest known medicinal and culinary herb, packed with antioxidants that can help fend off cancer, heart disease and the effects of aging. Yeah, Hard Resolve and garlic have a lot in common and the ”common agent” in both is something called action.

Take action now and endure the immediate sting and momentary discomfort rather than letting the situation – whatever it may be – disintegrate into a pile of waste that could have been avoided. Hard Resolve is the answer to this, folks.

We all screw up in life, given fact. We all miss the mark, many times and often before succeeding. But the fact that we screw up isn’t at all important. Read that again: Failure is NOT important.

Recognizing the failure immediately and fixing your course, robbing the failure of any firepower to affect your life a moment longer is the key. Once again, in layman’s terms, the key is taking action. Hard Resolve.

Letting sleeping dogs lie doesn’t change a damn thing. Sweeping dirt under the carpet will only have you cussing and cursing on the day that you stumble. Leaving the moldy spot in your loaf of bread will only contaminate the whole package. Cancer unattended to will kill you.

Hard Resolve – it’s worth the trouble.

Red Meat and the Classic Carnivore

Posted: April 16, 2011 in Life coaching, Odds and Ends, Social commentary

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately in terms of modern food and the constitution thereof. It’s no secret that over the course of the past 10 years our world’s food production has undergone a tumultuous change in the face of increasing supply and demand.

Genetically manipulated food production is the norm of the day. Sadly enough, that means less substance and more volume to fill up your gullet. When raw food products like vegetables and fruits are made nutritionally deficient, our bodies get fooled and we eat more bulk to make up for the empty feeling. Going organic means spending a hefty dime more that most people simply cannot afford the luxury of, even though it can be argued that eating organic foods only would most likely equal eating less per serving because you’d get filled up faster with more substance per food article ingested.

I have personally made a life choice to buy organic foods whenever my budget allows a bit of leeway, which believe me is not often. That said, this past week I bought myself 3kg of pure stock bull meat, 5kg of cow’s intestines including tongue, liver and heart and ground lamb straight off of a rural farm. Truth be told, if I could buy all of my food produce straight from a farm I would do so. Sometimes circumstances and one’s budget don’t allow for such, but nonetheless making the choice to do so whenever possible is a step in right direction for one’s overall health.

No bullshit, know what you are putting on your plate!

I am certain that the decline in overall health in the western world is by and in large due to the nutritional deficiencies of our food. The astounding increase in various diseases over the western hemisphere should have everyone on notice, but for some strange reason most people are willfully ignorant. A staunch bitchslap upside the head of our society is direly needed to wake the slumbering masses up to the reality that by the time the 30-somethings out there get around to retirement, their spines and innards will be gelatin unless something changes – BIG TIME.

Don’t be duped, if there is one thing that each and every one of us should invest in, it’s our health. To quote Brad Pitt from the movie Fight Club, “You are not your fucking khakis”. All of the “stuff” won’t amass to a damn thing if your health goes. So the smart ones out there will put their health first before they lay any money down for material goods of any kind.

Mind, body, spirit: that is what we are. No way around it, no denying the facts.

If you want to be well, you must resolve to pay the price. There ain’t a fucking Camarro in the world that is going to compensate for diabetes or for the loss of a bodily organ. We can cross the finish line of this race of life as a broken, heaving mass, or as a winner who finishes the race and crosses the finish line at the end with their heads held high.

Me personally, I’d rather resolve to pay the price to be a winner because life is short and as Brad Pitt once again coined in Fight Club, “It’s ending one minute at a time”.

The power of the will

Posted: March 3, 2011 in Life coaching

Here’s a good one.

Spring is almost here, and thank God for that! Most people get all wound up over losing weight and getting into shape for the beach et al every year around spring time. At the latest, that is when the reality of physical aesthetics on a personal level becomes prevalent.

Using that one single example as noted above, it’s important to understand that nothing moves and nothing happens without personal volition.

Volition is sheer will, plain and simple. It is the driving force that makes things happen.

Without the will to do and perform being present, the skill to do and perform has no meaning or credence whatsoever. Just because you can do the job does not necessarily mean that you will do the job.

Nowhere is this as applicable as in relationships. Many of us – myself included in the past – have been in relationships where the other person might have had all the tools necessary to get the ”job” done, but they did nothing and you seethed with frustration. Perhaps you even cut loose of that relationship, because the other person was not taking action based upon crystal clear information given, knowing the need present, and all you were left with was a vacant hole inside of yourself.

On a certain flight from Miami to London (UK), I asked a very charming lass sitting next to me, who was a couples counsellor, what the main reasons for divorce and the mass amount of failed relationships are these days. After all, I figured this was a pristine opportunity to get the goods straight from a pro – for free!

She gave me three reasons for why seemingly everyone is somebody’s ex: 1) Sex outside of the relationship, be it extra-marital or otherwise, with someone other than one’s current and steady partner, with the argument that ”It was ONLY sex!”; 2) ”What did I see in that person to begin with?! We have nothing in common!”; 3) ”I hear what you are saying and I completely understand, but to be honest … I could give a damn!”

Number three. Third strike and you’re out! Oh yeah, that one there is one of the biggest busts in relationship history, folks. I hear what you are saying, but to be honest, I could care less about your needs and your happiness = the will to do is NOT PRESENT.

Now when the will to do and perform is not present, the bottom line is that the person who is guilty does not have enough empowering reasons to move their keister and play ball. There are no such things as excuses, only reasons why things don’t get done.

Case in point: Liver damage.

If you take a person who is a lush, heavy into the booze, and send them to a doctor who diagnoses them with a liver that is ready to rupture and say sayonara, you will either have a corpse on your hands or then you will have a personal revival – complete with redemption aka a 180 turn. In such a scenario, if the reason is weighty enough, the catalyst will quit the booze straight up out of sheer fright, in the fear of losing their life. Or then they will give up the ghost and head six feet under in short order.

Once the will to do kicks into gear, there’s nary anything that can stop the force of personal volition. You have GOT TO WANT IT, and want it ENOUGH, or nothing is going to happen. Period.

Once everyone of us realizes that point, we will start treating people like we ourselves would hope to be treated, and we will start living with integrity because we will realize the good that personal volition will bring into our lives. And once again, the spinning of wheel of Karma takes another spin.

Think about that line of reasoning for a moment.

And then fill in the blanks…

ENTERTAINMENT OR DEATH

Posted: February 3, 2011 in Life coaching, Social commentary

I have to admit something. I’m not very in-tune with what’s happening in the world. The first time I heard that a guy named Obama was running for US President, I asked ”Obama who?”, wondering if some Arab was running for office. Sounds funny, doesn’t it?

Fact is, I have totally shut myself out of the mainstream media and happenings in pop culture across the board – and there is a reason to that. I find that it adds nothing to my life, offers nothing of personal value, nor does it stimulate me at all in a positive manner.

Look at the Swine Flu H1N1 ”epidemic” – and consider that no one even talks about it anymore! Wasn’t that like current just yesterday? The medicinal drug industry sold you a sales pitch and you bought it, just like the old PT Barnum addage ”never give a sucker an even break”. Now families who took the antedote to the Swine Flu face a strong probability of narcolepsia showing up. I hear cash registers singing along to the next ”cure” all the while.

By the way, have y’all ever considered that the drug industry is one of the main financial monoliths in the world, one which world governments borrow money from, increasing their national debts? Anyone remember the SARS epidemic? Whatever happened, huh? Same coming of the same old cavalry, dressed up in a different cloak of charade.

All across the board on so many fronts, we’ve been duped. We’ve been suckered in, and we’ve played the role of the brainless fool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPjAxDBIoPs

But who is behind this mess? I mean right at the top, on the peak of the mountain? Who is desensitizing the masses in a clear ploy to run their own agenda through? Who is responsible for foiling all of us hapless sheep? Do we even want to know, or is the power of fear so great that we would rather play along and let sleeping dogs lie?

From food addatives labelled E-something to vaccinations that break down your own biological immune system to genetically manipulated food production to the ”meat of the matter” that the media focuses on – we are living in a state of coma. And those on top of the mountain cashing in are MAKING SURE we stay in a state of coma.

Chemical food addatives are simply not made for the body, proven by the immense amount of burgeoning allergies and sicknesses, especially across the free world. Consider the sheer amount of drugs being sold to ”help” the symptoms, and it translates into huge business. Speaking of addatives and manipulated food products, nowadays it takes three times as long for carcasses to rot in the cemetary, which really says something and makes you wonder what all that crap is doing to your body while you still live!

The human immune system was designed to create a counter for oncoming viruses and infections, and it cannot function as designed if constantly fed foreign code that mixes up the signals and shuts off certain internal functions.

Want a definitive example? Consider the steroid testosterone, which the body produces as the dominant male sex hormone, which is also found in women at 1/10 of the rate in men. Synthetic testosterone tells one’s body to shut down natural testosterone production because an outside source is feeding the machine.

On another front, take into consideration kids whose parents are overtly sanitary-conscious. Many of these kids are sicker than proverbial dogs because their immune system never gets built up. When I was a kid, heck, I’d eat rocks! Consider that only in the last century have we come up with chemical cleaning aides and how long has the flushable toilet been around anyway?

Biologically manipulated food is another matter altogether, where nutritional deficiency is the key word of the day. In past times, nomads would cultivate a certain spot of land until the soil would no longer produce as it should. They knew it was time to move on to a new patch of farming area and let the land heal itself. Our soil has been depleted of nutrients a long, long time ago, and we still keep churning out ”food” with the help of chemical addatives, pesticides and fertilizers. Everything in the eco-system serves a purpose folks, even those damn worms and bugs.

And then we have the manipulated message sent by the mass media at large, which is orienteered to make you NOT think. It’s quite literally a case of you zoning out and tuning in – almost akin to meditation and clearing the mind – soaking in the message of the boob tube as you immerse yourself in the created distraction. The people behind the curtain know this and they do not want you to think on your own, folks. They know that if they manage to keep you distracted with all forms of clatter and clutter, no matter the form in which you consume it – through the eyes, ears, nose or mouth – you will play along in the grand scheme just fine. Above all, it’s important to keep you ENTERTAINED, folks. No substance, no true grit. And as we speak of entertaiment I bring back to mind the words of PT Barnum aforementioned, and no one wants to be a sucker – do they?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb-ZUS2uHWU

Point blank, I have lived for 14.5 years in Europe, where the media and information stream carries a considerably different slant, angle and tone as compared to the North American media stream. All you need to see my point is watching or reading news broadcasts from various countries and you will get a different slant from each outlet. Especially in the area of world politics where personal vested interests – and the financial backing of those behind the curtain – play into how the stories are portrayed to the public, you will be fed a different version of the ”truth” and ”facts” depending on your demographic and cultural area. That, folks, is called manipulation.

All of this brings to mind the old Greek ideology of the Chain of Being. If you take one link out of the great chain, chaos ensues and it falls apart. This equally brings to mind the words of Christ, ”You will know the tree by the fruit that it bears”, and that said, our society is sick sick sick – and the downward spiral seems be accelerating.

Don’t ponder – CONSUME! Don’t think – ACT! Don’t question – OBEY

I quote the words of Brad Pitt in the pivotal movie Fight Club, which carried a prolific message overall, ”We spend our lives working jobs that we hate to but sh*t that we don’t need”.

Pitt played the enlightened half of the split personality of the fed up rat race slave Edward Norton in that film, and boy did they ever hit the nail on its proverbial head. Pitt lived in a beated down old, abandoned house in the middle of an industrial area, where the basement flooded and the roof dripped. Norton lived in a posh apartment with all the luxuries of life, before he blew it sky high in his internal emptiness. Check that flick out, folks – and it’s not just entertainment, it’s a definitive eye-opener with a surprising amount of substance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDaGr4y6AMs

It’s time to call for a personal revolution. Turn off the TV. Turn off the radio. Turn off the Internet. Don’t pick up the newspaper. It’s time to cleanse the mind, body and soul. Get out of the house, out of the office, and get active and make a difference out there. Moreso, start being proactive, start contributing to your fellow man and you will get more out of this life – guarandamnteed.

When you get out of saturating, pouring rain you will start to see things from a totally new perspective. Above all, you will start seeing things for what they truly are – without the window-dressing and deceitful hype.

You have got to recognize the enemy – the one that keeps you from a quality life that has meaning and substance. And with one life to live there is no time to waste.

Revolution NOW!

A life virtually spent on Facebook?

Posted: January 25, 2011 in Life coaching, Social commentary

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a friend about the impact of Facebook on people’s lives, and she really had a poignant criticism when she surmised, “If someone asks you what you spent the last five years of your life doing, as in the majority of the time, it would really be sad if you had to admit you spent it on Facebook.”

I have to absolutely agree.

Our generation and society at large is hooked on Facebook, and hell, you’ll even find a link to this article on the said media. A very good friend of mine recently stated that Facebook has become a whole independent Internet inside of the Internet. Scary thought, actually.

Think about this: you wake up in the morning, you open your computer and log on to Facebook. You get to work and open up Facebook, and you’re on it all damn day at your employers’ expense. You get home in the evening, and you log on to Facebook again.

A life spent on the Internet is not a life worth living, period. Are you living, or are you virtually alive? There is a world of difference there, folks.

It’s sadder than sad to see some people completely live their lives through the Internet. Relationships are built and destroyed on Facebook, from idiotic misunderstandings of context regarding the written word to jealousy over “friends” of the opposite gender.

It’s absolutely numbing to think how much the Internet at large controls peoples’ lives in general, actually. Instead of investing time in one’s own relationships or hobbies where you actually have to DO something and produce something worthwhile, the Internet offers an easy way out, where you can just drift in cyberspace and get lost in a virtual world full of nothing that will make your life better in the big picture.

Some people say, “I use to Internet as a resource for information,” – yeah, maybe 10% of your time in cyberspace tops. The rest of the time is spent reacting to emails, restlessly surfing and switching between websites full of entertainment of whatever sort, and numbingly wondering what site you should check out next, so as to kill your increasing boredom?

Is that YOU?

Get a LIFE!

Plain and simple, get off the Internet and start living. Start doing old school stuff like hiking, camping out, enjoying nature, sports, cooking, crafts, or whatever actually propels you into becoming a better, more complete and satisfied person.

I made the choice to restrict time spent on the Internet, because I found that my life was just wasting away one minute at a time out in cyberspace, and I wasn’t getting anything worthwhile in return. Hey, I thank God every day for being able to go out there and make my dreams reality. That is exactly what I’m doing, when I leave tomorrow to fly out to Japan to wrestle in the top matches of the SMASH promotion’s cards in Tokyo and Osaka. Life is all about the experiences, and you’ll have none of those on the Internet, unless you get caught in Internet fraud or something similar.

All you’ve got is one shot at glory, one life to live. After that, it’s too late for regrets.

Start living, turn off the computer.

Latest Posts

Categories

Archive for the ‘Life coaching’ Category

Old school is the best school (gyms included)

No ands, ifs or buts = hard resolve

The power of the will