Learn Life Skills for Extreme Situations

The sun was blazing, the terrain barren and unforgiving, and the instructors were working us hard.  The extra twenty pounds or so of gear we were wearing just added to the fatigue – a Kevlar vest, knee and elbow pads, sometimes a helmet, a pistol strapped to the right thigh and an American M4 or Russian Kalashnikov assault rifle in hand…

                            At the firing range, carrying an M4 assault rifle

That was last week for me.  I was privileged to attend an elite training course down in the deserts of the south-western US, a course taught by special forces veterans and frequently attended by everyone from members of such elite organizations as the British SAS or Canada’s JTF2, to ordinary people facing deployment to the world’s most dangerous trouble spots. 

(The trip also allowed me to explore some issues of leadership, teamwork and corporate culture with these people.  Did you know that what we consider the most advanced leadership and corporate culture solutions in the corporate world today were actually developed by special forces units decades ago?)

The “Yang” Side of Resilience Training

You may have noticed I like to divide resilience training into its “Yin” and “Yang” aspects.  And I tend to talk more about the Yin or “soft” aspects, such as meditation, mindfulness, Qi Gong, Yoga, nutrition, relationship skills and the like. 

However, we should never forget the other side of the coin – those Yang skills that will keep us and our loved ones alive when the unthinkable happens.

In North America we live the pleasant delusion that we personally will never face an extreme situation.  That situation could be street crime, a home invasion, a natural disaster or something as commonplace as a car accident out in the country, where you’re on the scene and the nearest first responder is still twenty minutes away.  Meanwhile, the accident victim on the ground in front of you may only have two minutes to live, not twenty, unless you personally take some very specific and simple actions.  Do you have the skill sets required?  Do you have the right medical kit with you?  What if that victim were your spouse or child? 

  

                            Rescuing a man down, moving him and applying 

                                          a tourniquet to save his life

Our delusion is the ingrained belief that we don’t need those skills because the paramedics will save the day.  Likewise we assume we don’t need to know how to carry an unconscious person out of a burning building or know how to defend ourselves because the firemen and police will do it for us. 

Yet the stark reality is that when the s**t hits the fan, you will more than likely be on your own for the first five to fifteen minutes of any serious event.  And by then, it’s very often too late.

The Value of Acquiring Extreme Skills

One of the most challenging features of last week’s course was that you never knew what challenge the instructors would throw at you next!  This is when you find yourself worrying about whether you’ll screw it up and look like an idiot, whether you’ll have the energy, and whether the back muscle you pulled yesterday will hold out…

                            Participant learns how to escape when tied up

                                          with rope, hand-cuffs, etc. 

And then you realize that you just need to surrender.  You can either continue wasting energy worrying about what comes next, or you can surrender, live in the present and mentally let it all go.  So one of the greatest benefits of the kind of training that tests your physical and mental limits is that you learn a lot about yourself. 

Some of the other specific benefits of learning some of life’s extreme skills are:

• Improving your personal resilience
• Passing on these skills to those around you
• Boosting your self-esteem
• Becoming a greater asset to your family, workplace and community
• Acquiring the confidence to face extreme situations
• Learning how to function effectively under extreme stress

                                          Clearing rooms and rescuing hostages (hint: 
                                          the way you see it done on TV shows will get
                                          you killed)

So although the Yin side of resilience training (improving your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health) is absolutely vital, it’s important not to forget the Yang side of resilience training, where we acquire the personal power and the critical skills to handle life’s most extreme situations. 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Why Our Education System is Failing Us

How did you do in school?  Top of the class?

Ooops... a sore point perhaps?  Couldn't spell to save your life?  Just too bored by it all to listen?  Well here's a highly intelligent video to tell you why you shouldn't be ashamed of how you measured up in the education system. 

In point of fact, our education system is one of the primary contributing factors to the phenomenal lack of resilience so obvious among the last several generations of North Americans and Westerners in general, and it's contributed in no small measure to the epidemics of shame, guilt and poor self-image in our culture. 

So if you know someone whose kids would rather be doing just about anything than sitting still in the classroom being force fed facts that don't interest them, then pass this wonderful clip on to them... 




As you can pretty much guess by that fact that I have a doctoral degree, I did pretty well in school.. generally.  Well, okay, I made a mess of grade 11 math, but I still like to blame that one on the teacher ;-)  The fact is, though, I was every bit as bored and frustrated as the kids who weren't doing so well.  

For example, I loved science!!  I was totally fascinated with astronomy, nuclear physics, and (being your average boy) anything that would go boom or vaporize material objects!  But alas, the moment the science teachers got hold of us, it was learn this equation, solve this math problem, study this topic that really doesn't interest you that much...  They made the crucial educational mistake of failing to capture our imaginations, to get us hooked.  And it's no small testament to the idiocy of the system that even though we had arrived "pre-hooked" so to speak, they still managed to beat the fascination right out of us.  

The assumption was that if you didn't do so well in a particular subject, you just weren't all that bright.  Of course it's only in the last couple of decades that the mainstream has begun to realize how wrong that assumption is - that there are many types of intelligence and the one the system foisted on us was a very narrow one.  


Christopher would be a case in point.  He was a guy I knew in elementary school, a guy who could just never seem to get better than a "C" on any assignment.  He read below grade level, his math skills were poor and whenever our teachers indulged in the barbaric custom of "rearrange your desks in the classroom according to how well you did in the last test," poor Christopher could always be found at the wrong end.  And he took lots of abuse for it... and it didn't help that he was taller than most other people and awkward too.  But, truth be told, he was a really nice guy and had a great imagination.  He was just born about three decades too soon for his own good.  And hopefully, wherever he is now, he's extracted wisdom from all those needlessly bitter experiences to help his own kids fare better.  

I hope you enjoy the video - perhaps it will help you and yours navigate the mine-infested waters of the dysfunctional system with more success than most of us had.  And please feel free to leave your comments and share your experiences of the education system and how we can contribute to changing it for the better.  

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilient Car Shopping... Who Knew?

"I'm sorry, we just can't help you out more with the winter tires," said the stony faced business manager at the Toyota dealership, as my wife and I exchanged glances of disbelief.  

"We don't have to put up with this," my wife told this guy, and then we got up and walked out, telling him he had just killed a new car deal that had been days in the making.  And, by the look of disbelief on the face of the junior sales lady who had worked so hard to close the deal, we weren't the only ones in shock.  

Resilience and Car Shopping 101:

Yes, as you'll see, resilience really does apply to everything in daily life, in one way or another.  Before we get to that, though, let me bring you up to speed on what had just happened...

You see, my wife and I were out looking for a new car for her on Saturday and we'd just gone back to the Toyota dealership where we'd bought our previous vehicle, a Toyota Sienna van, many years ago.  Just this past weekend Toyota was offering a special where, presumably in an effort to get rid of the 2010 cars, they'd sweeten the pot with a new free set of winter tires - something we can't live without up here in Canada.  Sounds great, of course, until they tell you... well... you do get the tires... it's just that you have to pay nearly $400 for the rims!!!

 Toyota Corolla

Well, a tire without a rim isn't good for anything at all, unless you plan to turn it into a swing for the kids or a planter for your garden.  So we felt a little deceived and then we thought for sure they'd toss in the rims for free in order to get a new car sale worth about sixty times that much, especially to a returning customer.  But they wouldn't budge.

Yes, car shopping is usually one of life's more unpleasant duties, since it seems you're bound to run into some of the less savory aspects of human behavior - duplicity, dishonesty and manipulations of all kinds.  Fortunately, we were prepared for that because we had...

Multiple Back-Up Plans

 As we walked out of the Toyota dealership in disgust, we weren't at all upset.  You know the saying in romance that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince?  Well car shopping can be a lot like that.  Once you've settled on the model you want, it's just a matter of finding someone who will treat you well and give you straight and honest answers. 


To minimize our time and pain this time around, here's what we had done:


1. We outsourced the project of finding the best deals on 6 different models (two each with Toyota, Honda and Nissan) and our research person did a brilliant job!


2. We spent an afternoon the previous weekend test driving the 2 models we'd narrowed it down to - the Toyota Corolla and the Honda Civic.  Both are great to drive and the road tests just confirmed we'd made the right choice.  Needless to say, we'd also meticulously researched the reliability of these 2 models already, using low cost and widely available sources.


3. Once we'd decided what exact model of Corolla or Civic we wanted and with what options, we emailed a broad selection of Toyota and Honda dealerships within 2 hours of home and asked them for a quote.  Most of them replied within 48 hours and that gave us a really good idea of the lay of the land concerning prices and what they could offer.


4. Then we took the top few from each company and started relatively close to home.  We went back to our old Toyota dealership not only because they should have had a huge interest in getting repeat business, but because they'd submitted a highly competitive quote.  However, when they treated us badly, we had a ton of offers to fall back on.  And that's when my wife said something that left me speechless.  "Let's go to Honda," she said.


You see, she really liked the Corolla and would have taken it over the Civic, while my preferences were exactly the reverse.  


So off we went to the most competitive Honda dealership... and the experience there compared to Toyota was like day and night.  They were absolutely up-front with us from the moment we walked in - nothing hidden, no deceptive wording, a good price.  All in all, a great experience.  And, as I said, once you've decided on what car you want and how much you're willing to pay for it, all you have to do is find the dealership that will make it as painless for you as possible.

 Honda Civic

I should add that I'm sure there are lots of honest Toyota dealerships out there and quite possibly some Honda ones you'd want to avoid - it seems to be more the people than the company who sets the tone.  

Resilient Car Shopping in Brief:

Just to recap what we did to make buying a new car as easy and quick as possible, while protecting ourselves from being "taken for a ride" in the bad sense:

1. We did the research up front to narrow down the selection of models, decide on option packages and learn about general price ranges.  Acceptable models had to have exceptional reliability - that's my big hang-up about cars.
   
   
2. Then we test drove the 2 top vehicles just to make sure we liked what we saw and didn't see any glaring design flaws we couldn't live with.
   
   
3. Next, we sent out requests for quotations - this saved us a ton of time driving all over the map to various dealerships.
   
   
4. Finally, we zeroed in on the people who a) had made a competitive bid and b) were honest and forthright with us.

The best part about this methodical approach is that you know you'll never have to sink to the level of mind games and manipulative negotiating tactics yourself.  And the moment they do, you just walk out and say the magic word "Next!"

The alternative could have been exponentially worse.  As a friend of mine who's a veteran negotiator put it, "If there's one class of people you want to avoid, it's car salesmen."  I'm happy to report there are some notable exceptions to his statement.


So whatever project you have coming up, remember that planning your approach with a view to minimizing your commitment of time, energy and money, not to mention your exposure to needless pain, is the way to go.  And that will leave you a more resilient and happier camper!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Overwhelmed By Everything (OBE)? Here's Your Exit Strategy...

Turn up your speakers or read the text version below:

In the world of personal resilience, one of the toughest nuts to crack is beating the OBE syndrome.  Yes, when you're chronically overwhelmed by everything, you simply won't see the EXIT signs that are right in front of you.

It's surprising how many people can take positive action to take back their health, their fitness and other areas of their lives, while still remaining run off their feet from day to day.  In fact, lots of high performers in all walks of life are very unhappy workaholics. 


So listen: if you need to get a grip on your time and energy, there is hope.  Just follow these infallible steps to building your exit strategy:

1. Drill this Into Your Skull:

You cannot beat overwhelm by doing more stuff.  You can only beat overwhelm by a) doing less, and b) doing what you do more efficiently.  

2. Identify Your Key Results:

What results are you actually responsible for?  In every area of your life, what are the top 1-3 results that you are primarily on the hook for?  What does your employer really need you to do?  If you're not quite sure - and that's distressingly common in the business world - go and ask!  What do your spouse and kids need most from you?  What 1-3 results do you need to see with respect to your health?  Write all this down.  Then distill it down further until you have a list of not more than 5 things that, if you were to accomplish them in the next 12 months, would give you an outstanding life.

3. Identify the Activities that Will Produce Those Results:

For each of those key results, identify the 1-3 activities that will contribute most to bringing them into reality.  Now you know what to focus on.  Of course, you should always get a sanity check from several people whose judgment you trust.  But once you're sure what they are, you're light years ahead of 99% of the population.

4. Identify the Activities that Contribute Least to Your Key Results:

What are the time wasters in your life?  Does your job have you stuck in endless meetings that go nowhere and contribute little to the results your employer really needs?  Then you need to stop attending (yes, there are creative strategies for handling this, but there's no time to go over them here ;-).  Are you buried under a mountain of admin you hate and, for that matter, aren't very good at?  Do constant interruptions plague you?  Once you know what's in the way, you can take measures to eliminate these time-sucking energy vampires.  This alone could save you up to 3 hours per day!

5. Block Off Time to Work on Your Top Priorities:

Open an Excel spreadsheet.  Don't worry if you're new to Excel; you'll figure it out.  Personally, I suck at Excel, but I won't live without my weekly spreadsheet.  So label the sheet Monday to Friday across the top and put the hours of your day down the side.  Now block off the time you need.


Let me give you a hint.  Do NOT start by scheduling everything else in your week first.  If you do that, you may find there ARE NO blocks of time left.  You take the blocks you want FIRST.  And make them early in the morning, when you're fresh and motivated.  Yes, you can schedule other blocks later in the day if you wish, but stake out the early morning.  And if anyone or anything gets in your way, threaten them with grievous bodily harm until them back off.  Okay, just kidding.  But unless you FORCE everything else out of your way, you won't get the time you need.


Why early morning?  Easy.  You're most likely at your most productive.  And you're setting yourself up to finish your major priority for the day by 10am.  Try this and you'll see.  If you can get the really important stuff done before lunch, you'll feel absolutely wonderful!  For the first time in ages you'll feel you've taken back control of your life.  

6. Review Your Priorities Every Night:

If I were to wake you out of a dead sleep at 2am and ask you exactly what you'll be working on in the morning and what time you're going to start, you should be able to blurt it out even before your eyes open!  Clarity is the key.  You must be totally clear on what you're about to do.  This eliminates the wasted time that comes from indecision and guess-work, and it also allows your subconscious to work on the issues while you're asleep.  

7. Eliminate Interruptions and Force Your Schedule on Others:

Yes, it sounds brutal and egotistical, but I can tell you now that unless you build the schedule that works for you and stick to it, other people will "invent" your schedule for you and you'll be miserable and frustrated because, despite the flurry of useless activity they force on you, you won't get a thing done!  


Refuse phone calls during your key result working time.  Refuse meetings.  Block off the time in your Outlook or Google calendar at work and at home.  As for that time-sucking monster called email, don't you dare check it more than 3 times per day, and never before your first block of working time.  

8. Get Rid of Low Value Tasks:

When you find yourself spending hours doing work you hate or work you're not good at on a repeated basis, that task is a prime candidate for elimination.  You've got to get it off your plate.  Your choices are a) delegate it to someone else, b) outsource it to someone else, or c) just ignore it until it goes away (yeah, it's shocking how much of the work in most enterprises is so useless that, if it's not done, there are no consequences!).  


So take this blueprint as your exit strategy and start using it right away - it'll make a huge, positive difference in your life.  And if you want to know more, if you want more help, come to this Wednesday night's teleclass to learn even more.   Reserve your spot right here:

http://www.innercircleportal.com/Home_Page.html

I hope to talk to you then!


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Get Your Life Organized!

One of the single greatest keys to becoming a more resilient person is knowing how to get your life organized.  And, face it, it's the ideal time of year to do just that - vacation time is wrapping up, kids are going back to school and the pace of life is picking up again.  Not surprisingly, September 1 used to be "New Years" in the Roman Empire, and it's just as important in our own culture as January 1 as a time to make a fresh start.

Five Critical Activities to Organizing Your Life:

So just how do you get your life organized?  There are lots of possible approaches you could use and almost all of them work as long as you put them into practice.  However, if I could suggest just five things that will make a huge positive impact on your life between now and the end of this calendar year, this is what they would be:

1. Organize Key Areas of Your Living / Working Space:

Get your living space and your working space organized.  That means putting order into the public areas of your home, getting rid of the clutter, tossing out whatever you don't really need or want, finding a place for the rest and making sure everything stays in its place.  It's simply not possible to find inner peace or to work productively when you're surrounded by mess.  This make take you a day or two, but it's worth the effort.

2. Book at Least one Mini-Vacation between Now and Christmas:

If you have a spouse or significant other, book time for the two of you - without the kids! - and have a romantic getaway.  If you're single, you're free to invite a friend or to go alone.  In either case, just make sure you get out of your usual surroundings for a couple of days and put yourself into an environment where you don't have to think too much or make decisions.  Plan activities that you'll really enjoy.  

3. Book Daily and Weekly Playtime:

Make sure you have time to relax every day.  That could be just to read a good book, take a walk or do something else.  And make sure you carve out a few hours each week to have fun as well.  This could be a weekly dinner out with your spouse, a movie, to play tennis, volleyball, golf or your favorite sport.  It can be any activity that leaves you feeling refreshed and relaxed.

4. Know Your Results:

In every area of your life - your career, your relationships, your finances, your spiritual life and your health, ask yourself this question: "What one goal, if I could achieve it over the next four months, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?"  Once you have the simple set of answers to those simple questions, your life for the remainder of the year should be crystal clear.

5. Build Your Key Relationships:

What relationships matter to you the most?  If you could vastly improve your relationships with just 1-4 people over the next four months, who would they be?  Once you've decided that, the rest is comparatively simple - give your time and attention to those people in ways that are most beneficial for them and you will definitely see improvement.  


To help you think through your life and organize yourself even better, here's a video by Brian Tracy, one of the world's top business coaches and experts on the subject.  Brian's advice is typically spot on, so you'd do well to watch this one through and give it your full attention:



As Brian suggests, the key to getting organized isn't simply putting stuff around the house in its place; it's having a central organizing principle.  And that principle comes from understanding who you really are and what you really want to achieve.  Once you know that, everything else falls into place.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Join the 5-Day MEDIA FAST!

That's not "fast" as in "quick", but "fast" as in "stay away from it"!


A "media fast" means going without all forms of paper and electronic news media for a week. To be specific:


• Absolutely no newspapers, news magazines, TV news, internet news, etc. Pretend you've moved to Alpha Centauri and no longer care what happens on our big blue ball in space


• Absolutely no unnecessary web surfing - i.e., unless going to a particular site is essential to completing a work-related task, don't go there



Now the good news; here's what you are allowed:

• Pleasure reading, preferably fiction


• One hour of TV per day, so long as it's not the news!




"Why Should I Put Myself Through This?"


Few people have any idea to what extent media reporting deliberately manipulates their opinions, carefully plays on their fears and anxieties, and presents them with a story that's so vacuous as to be completely useless.


Just last week I had to good fortune to talk to an expert in disaster management who has inside knowledge of the events surrounding the recent massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He explained to several of us in great technical detail how the media reporting of the incident is extremely misleading.


And, of course, much media reporting is simply there to serve a political agenda of one kind or another. In Soviet Russia they had only two national newspapers, Pravda ("Truth") and Izvestia ("News"). This led to the common saying, "Pravda nye izvestia i Izvestia nye pravda" - "The Truth is not the news and the News is not the Truth".


Unfortunately, for all of our self-righteous rhetoric about having a "free press", we're not always much better off, it seems.


All the more reason to "turn off the tap" in your own life. And it's tough to do because we get addicted to the input, the gossip and simply the background noise the media provides. Afraid of missing something critical? Right... that's about equal to your chances of winning the lottery.


Yet if you want to be a more effective and more resilient person, you need to take back control of the information streaming into your life. After all, why should you swallow all the anxiety the media's trying to foist on you??


If you even half of their dire predictions of the last decade had come true, you wouldn't be reading this - you'd have long since been killed off by West Nile Virus, Avian Flu, killer bees, al Qaeda, H1N1 or a stray asteroid impact. Yet here you are, living and breathing. Who would have guessed?


So I invite you to join me this week for the 5 Day Media Fast. As you go through this process, please feel free to leave your comments on the blog. My guess is that you're going to feel SO much better. Maybe even better enough to make some changes to your lifestyle ;-)






On your mark, get set... STOP!




~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Drop Your Interpretations of Reality

We're evaluating constantly.  "This course is going to be SO boring."  "This meeting with my boss will be SO stressful."  "I hate doing the grocery shopping."  "How could she say something like that?"

And on and on it goes.  We see the world not as it really is but as we've been conditioned to see it.  Well, that's only partly true... We see the world as we have conditioned ourselves to see it.  Yes, we're the biggest conditioning influence on ourselves, no doubt about it.


One of the principle goals of all Authentic Ancient Traditions is to show you how to cleanse your mental continuum from all that temporal conditioning and finally break free - free from all those conventional perceptions you've been taught and free from all that fear, doubt, anxiety, self-limiting beliefs and other junk you've been busy repressing.

Strange thing, though... you don't break free by repressing all of this, but by allowing it to be there.  Many of your problems are the result of mentally running away from the discomfort of your emotions.  You only break free when you allow them to be, when you spend some time with them.  Of course, you first have to stop taking them so damn seriously.  


Once you do that, you make a miraculous discovery... those emotions and beliefs that so troubled you are important.  They contain vital information for you.  They're the manure that allows the beautiful flower to grow.  They're part of the richness, the earthiness of life.  This is the mystery of how you "surrender" to reality while no longer allowing your habitual interpretations to run your life.  

Of course, you may need some radical help to accomplish that.  Good thing help is on the way...

http://www.blogger.com/ 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

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Resilience Tip: Recognize and Eliminate "B" Thinking

There are two types of thinking, two approaches to life in the world.  Let's call them "A" and "B" thinking.  It's vital to recognize which predominates in yourself and when if you want to become resilient.

Resilience is characterized by A-thinking, whereas the masses of humanity are deeply invested in B-thinking.  Let's look at the characteristics of each:


A Thinking                                                                      B Thinking
- Seeks challenge                                                            - Seeks comfort
- Uses pain constructively                                               - Flees from pain at all cost
- Indulges in pleasure sparingly                                      - Lives for fleeting pleasures
- Committed to excellence                                              - Content with mediocrity
- The leader (conquers new "territory")                          - The manager (of existing territory)
- The rebel                                                                         - The conformist
- Goes beyond inherited culture                                      - Blindly accepts own culture
- Hates and exposes lies                                                 - Accepts society's lies
- The mystic                                                                       - The religious institutionalizer
- Reality at all cost                                                             - Content with pretending
- TRUTH                                                                             - Political correctness


Where do you see yourself in these lists?  More to the point, where do you see yourself in each area of your life?  Be honest.

If you start looking for these types of thinking in everyday life in the people and institutions around you, you'll make a startling discovery...

Our society is totally permeated, top to bottom, with B-thinking.  It controls our political processes, our religious and educational institutions and the vast majority subscribe to it uncritically.  You'll also notice that most of history's great leaders and role models were A-thinkers.  

If you're an A-thinker working in a B-thinking institution of any kind, that situation IS going to drive you nuts.  You'll need special tools to survive, the tools of a Warrior.  Because every true A-thinker is a Warrior at heart.  Check out the tools... survive and thrive in a mediocre world.  99% of people are B-thinkers and need not apply: 

http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/warriorbeta/ 

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger 

Resilience Tip: The Immutable Truth...

Do you want to become resilient?  Do you want to live up to your true potential as a human being?  Are you ready to take life by the throat and suck out all its marrow, as Thoreau put it?

Then give up the idea it's going to be easy or comfortable.  Give up looking for ease and pleasure and start looking for challenge.  Teach yourself to revel in challenges and difficulties, spend your time devising tests for yourself and thinking of ways to make yourself tougher.  

Confucius said, "The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor can the human being be perfected without trials."  This principle is immutable.  

"No one ever became holy being coddled in his mother's arms," said the Eastern Christian sages. 

You have to know fatigue, exhaustion and even failure if you want to become a "real person".  Failure, by the way, is not defeat.  Defeat only occurs when you give up!  The person who falls and yet never gives up is a true warrior.

We can't boast about our civilization until we're worthy of it.  In ancient Greece it was said that being born in Sparta doesn't make you a real Spartan.  In ancient Rome they said that being born Italian did not make you a Roman.  These names were to be won by sweat and blood.  


Need inspiration?  Try these:


http://bit.ly/5tNZ2O


http://bit.ly/arKsfK


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Know your own "standards"

Here's an easy way to organize your own thinking in life.  It's a way of thinking to give you more clarity and make you more resilient faster.

Standards: 

In every area of your life - health, fitness, relationships, spiritual life, career, finances - what do you want to do, have or be?  Or, to put it another way, what do you expect of yourself?  Define those now in each area, using no more than a few points for each.

Protocols:

What do you plan to do in order to achieve those standards?  What actions will you commit to?  How will you train yourself, develop the resilience, the mental, physical and emotional toughness to carry you through?  What specific actions will you take?

Best Practices:

Now that you've figured that out, what tools already exist to help you get there faster?  What are the best methods to use and the best mentors to learn from?  Who has already paid part of the price for you and figured this out?  Seek out those people and tools and write them down!  

If you want an example of a program that helps you set standards, give you protocols to follow and some of the best practices in the world, examine this:

http://bit.ly/6zEWFU

So remember, if you want to develop great clarity now and start making progress soon, always think about your standards, protocols and best practices.  Follow the blueprint...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Two Kinds of Goals

In any area of your life, you have a choice between two different kinds of goals, of targets to aim for.  

To illustrate this, let's look at fitness:

One kind of goal is the "results" goal - that's when you're aiming at losing X number of pounds / kilograms, fitting into last year's clothes or adding X inches / centimeters to those muscles. 

The second kind is a "performance" goal, when you commit yourself to taking specific actions at specific times over a certain, usually short, period of time.  You might commit to running 5 km twice a week or doing 100 push-ups a day or doing your yoga routine every morning without fail, for instance.  

And remember, in every area of your life you have a choice between these two kinds of goals.  Wisdom is knowing which to select when.  Fortunately, experience will teach you that.

In general, performance goals are the place to start, because if you don't learn to keep your commitments no matter what the obstacles, it's not much use to chase after results goals!  You just won't have what it takes to get there.  That's why every ancient tradition for training people physically and spiritually favored performance goals, knowing that performance automatically brings results.


This is also important because you don't always control the outcome - in relationships, for example, you don't control the other person's perceptions and reactions.  All you can do is act with integrity and let the chips fall where they may.  So in situations like that, a results goal is dangerous, because it makes you responsible for things you don't control - so beware.


So concentrate on your performance goals and the results will almost always follow.  They'll usually follow in the short term and will always follow in the long term.


Do you know YOUR performance goals for the week?  If not, pull out a pen and paper...


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Dare to Believe in Yourself

Isn’t "believing in yourself" it just plain arrogance?  Doesn’t it make you sick when you see someone who is so arrogant and self-assured that he or she won't listen to anyone?

Sure it does, but there's a huge difference between healthy self-confidence and the arrogance of the ego.  The arrogant believe in their egos.  Those with a healthy belief in themselves believe in a power greater than themselves.  The arrogant flaunt their opinions, talents and accomplishments.  The wise do something far different...

The wise first empty themselves out to make room for this Greater Power.  They allow themselves to become painfully aware of all their failings and mistakes.  They put aside all their own opinions.  Then they become what the great Sioux medicine man, Frank Fools Crow, called "little hollow bones" - they wait for the Greater Power to enter them, fill them, guide them and make the right path obvious. 

This is why the wise appear to have extraordinary self-confidence without a trace of arrogance.  To watch them, you would say they're actually humble in their self-confidence.

The arrogant can't do this, because this Greater Power cannot teach the know-it-all, guide the egotist or perfect the one who thinks himself already perfect. 

When this greater power finds an empty vessel, though, it speedily rushes in.  And then miracles ensue…

Do as the wise do, and you will never lack confidence again.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Guard This Above All Else...

If you want to become truly resilient, to discover your true potential and rise victoriously no matter what life throws at you, then you must guard one thing above all others...


You must guard your inspiration. 

It doesn't matter what good purpose that inspiration is for, since your ability to follow through, your persistence and determination ultimately come from the power of inspiration.


Without constant inspiration, your daily activities will seem more and more mundane  in your eyes.  In reality nothing is mundane, but without inspiration you will be dragged down to the point where it all seems like meaningless toil.

Without inspiration, you’ll never find within yourself the power to persevere.  Determination will be nowhere found and will lack the power to change your life. 

So if maintaining an inspired state is so critical, how do you do it, especially when the outside world seems to conspire against you?  You change your "diet"...

Build yourself a steady diet of inspiration - read inspiring books, watch inspiring films and videos, listen to speakers who give you courage, determination and confidence.  Consider great spiritual principles and dedicate yourself now to living by them.  Think about great leaders and decide now that you’ll start to think like them.

You weren’t born with the emotional bedrock of inspiration; you have to build that for yourself.  That's part of having free will and enjoying this human adventure. 


~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

A Feast for the Soul

Welcome to the feast.  I'm not the chef for this feast; in fact I'm really nothing more than the doorman.

It's all about an extraordinary speech given by an incredible man shortly before his premature but not unexpected death from bone cancer.  You can find the key parts of his speech in this video, starting at 4:14 (the rest of the video is outside our scope here).

http://bit.ly/7oBssb

Or you can find the whole speech here:

http://bit.ly/5fhw7M

I'll leave you to find out more about the speaker on your own - it's well worth your time and very inspiring - but for now I just wanted to highlight one of the things he says:

"To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."

I'm a bit reluctant to add anything to this, of course, and I feel unworthy even to open my mouth about it.   Nevertheless, I'll give it a try.

Laughing is tremendously important.  I've met holy people living in remote places and every time I'm struck by their sense of humor.  Laughter - the ability to see the ridiculous in ourselves and around us - is vital to your well-being on every level.

When something moves you to tears, you get in touch with the deeper layers of your being and feel a renewed sense of purpose.

And so few people take the time to think.  Not "think" as in the obsessive, neurotic thinking that hits when we're stressed out, but real thinking - using our cognitive abilities to learn something new or to reevaluate our old opinions.  Clear and accurate thinking is highly under-rated in our culture.

I hope you enjoy this speech as much as I did.  May we all learn from it.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Resilience Tip: Simplify

Over two and a half millennia ago, Confucius noted one feature of our flawed approach to life -  we love to complicate things.

All genuine spiritual traditions, interestingly enough, are based on simplification.  That is, when they start training you methodically, simplification is at the heart of the exercise.  So not surprisingly, we humans aren't at ease unless our life is simplicity itself.  We seem to forget this in our pursuit of happiness, since we tend to think our happiness exists in the opposite direction.

Consequently, if you want RESILIENCE, you need to start simplifying your life.  How?  Start with this exercise right here:


Take out a piece of paper or open a new document - you have to write this down...

1. Think about the life of someone you know really well and write down everything that makes their life complex and burdensome
2. Next, pretend they've hired you as a consultant to simplify their life. Find 3 ways to radically simplify that person’s life – simplify the processes, reduce the steps, save them time and energy, etc.
3. Great! Now that you've finished, take a few minutes to imagine yourself presenting your findings to your friend (whatever you do, don't call them and start lecturing them - people don't react too well to unsolicited advice!  Your outline is for you, not them.)
4. Tomorrow, come back and pretend you're the consultant for someone whose obstacles just happen to be identical to your own!
5. This time, you put your recommendations into practice ;-)
   

The gateway to all great success in life is not the accumulation of wealth, power or status, but rather the ability to keep everything so simple that you could draw it on one side of a piece of paper if you had to.  It’s about freeing your time and energy from low value activities so you can invest  them in activities that are much more important. 

In the words of Leonardo daVinci, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

If you've got a story of how you simplified YOUR life, feel free to share!

Until You Feel This Emotion, You'll Get NOWHERE...

Did you know... that I can predict how 2010 will turn out for you by asking you one single question?  That question is this:

"When you think about your life, about what you want to change and about your resolutions to make those changes, what emotion dominates your thoughts?"

Answer me that and I'll predict YOUR success this year with as much certainty as the rising sun.

So go ahead and ask yourself that question.  Take a moment and REALLY DO IT [Stop reading here until you've done that]

Now what was that emotion?  Was it a "wouldn't it be nice if I could do X" kind of emotion?  Was it a sense of hopelessness, of "here we go again" and "I know this won't work"?  Or was it something else?  Was it, just perhaps, that ONE emotion you absolutely MUST have if you want to change?

THE ONE EMOTION YOU REALLY NEED:

So what emotion do you really need if you want to make real changes in your life?

You're probably waiting for me to say, "love"  or "gratitude" or "forgiveness".  Well, you're in for a shock then...

You need to get angry.  That's right, really ANGRY.  Angry about the way your health challenges are running your life, angry about your financial dilemmas, angry about that job you can't wait to quit, angry about the way your key relationships are going or angry about whatever you need to change in your life!

Because until you're REALLY angry, you won't get fed up with the status quo, and until you get angry enough to HATE the status quo, you won't find within yourself the unstoppable DETERMINATION to CHANGE your life.

Unless you have the emotional core of relentless determination to change things, to build the health, finances, relationships or spiritual life you really want, it just won't happen.  Sure, you'll try out a couple of new things, read a book here and there and maybe go to the gym from January to early March to "get in shape".  If you don't have that "violent" determination within you, though, you'll be back to square one within 3 months - guaranteed. 

The one defining trait of people who step up to the plate and change their lives and teach others to do the same is their willingness to stop at nothing to see their vision through.

So if you're really FED UP with the way things are going for you, if you're beginning to feel a BURNING RESOLVE welling up within you, leave a comment below and tell me what you're going to do about it.  That's right.  Put it out there for everyone.  Commit to taking action today.

Remember this... although you can be destroyed, you can NEVER be defeated if you have this resolve.  All who attain this level of internal resolve in their lives eventually WIN.  Without exception. 

Have you got that determined resolve yet?  If you do, please share it below, and not just for your sake; for everyone's.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Fitness and the Fallacy of Overtraining

Hi all,

I've spent a good deal of effort emphasizing the fact that you need to maintain a baseline level of physical fitness if you want to enjoy:

- Superior health (since health depends partly on fitness)
- Peak performance (since energy level and focus depend on it to)
- Self-confidence (since fitness goes a long way towards providing that)

As you know from experience, everybody's stiff and sore after starting a new exercise program or even a single new exercise. I know, for example, that if I go a week without doing any squats, I'll pay for it when I start up again.

Then there are the inevitable minor aches and pains of training. Yes, they're inevitable and no, they're not going to go away. On the other hand, they're a testimony to the fact you're actually doing something!

Unfortunately, though, the first thing that seems to pass through our minds when we feel a twinge here or an ache there is, "Oh, I must be over-training. I should take a few days off!"

Indeed, the myth of overtraining has been so drilled into us that it's become part of our mentality. Why's it a myth? Only because most of the people who think they're overtraining are NOWHERE NEAR overtraining and probably haven't overtrained a single day in the last twenty years.

Now don't get me wrong; real overtraining DOES exist. You'll find it among professional body builders, for example, who have actually damaged their muscles and created large amounts of scar tissue in the process. You'll find distance runners who have damaged knees and shins through repetitively pounding the pavement. But all this is much different from the minor aches and pains of ordinary training.

You see, the vast majority of people UNDER-TRAIN. They may only do 2 or 3 days a week, they don't push themselves or they're none too regular about what they do.

If you want your fitness program to give you the results I mentioned above - superior health, peak performance and enhanced self-confidence - then you absolutely need to train seriously at least 3 times a week and do a lighter workout at least twice a week. Anything less won't get you anywhere. In a future article I'll talk more about WHY this is. For now, though, I'll simply ask you to trust me on this one.

Remember that, if you're serious about becoming a more RESILIENT person, you need to train the BIG 3 - strength, flexibility and endurance - in a balanced way. This means thinking of overall health and fitness as you train, and not just focusing on your immediate goal of toning your derriere, building your biceps or running the 10K in X number of minutes.

Of course, if you have any kind of pre-existing injury or medical condition, you need to take that into account. But if not, your fears of "overtraining" are probably unfounded. And when you stop undertraining, you'll discover a whole new level of fitness (and therefore health, performance and confidence) that can be yours.

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Peak Performance Training: Step Three to Personal Power

Welcome to the third in our 5-part series on building your Personal Power and taking back control of your life.

By now you’ve understood that Personal Power is just a new word for an age-old concept, a concept that the ancient world’s best schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts were well aware of. Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change your life and yourself at will. My guess is that you don’t know a lot of people who fit that description, but you’d sure like to become one of them!

This time, we’re continuing with your mindset. If you want Personal Power, you’ll definitely need to get serious about what’s going on within, about the thoughts you entertain and the attitudes you’ve allowed to rule your life.

Authentic Ancient Traditions – i.e., the ancient world’s top schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts – realized we are all very deeply conditioned by the culture we grow up in and by the events that have taken place in our lives, especially when we were young.

They realized too that if you don’t deal with all this stuff and “take the garbage out” you’ll always be:

- A slave to the emotional traumas of your past
- Wasting energy by subconsciously trying to prop up your vision of the world and your pet opinions and attitudes
- Shackled by your fears, doubts and self-limiting beliefs
- Recreating the same negative situations in your life because you live in a puddle of negative emotions you don’t even see.

Step One: Arm Yourself with the Best Weapons

I highly recommend to all my clients that they learn and start using either the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Be Set Free Fast (BSFF). These are two different and equally effective energy psychology methods that can almost instantly eliminate any fear, doubt or self-limiting belief. These tools are easy to learn, quick to use on yourself and you must have one. You can use it to blunt any attack by even your most serious mindset demons.

Step Two: Find Out What’s Really Going On Inside

For this step, you’ll need to track your negative emotions for one week. Every time you find yourself dwelling on something negative, just jot it down on a piece of paper. Why should you bother?

Simple. Most people think of themselves as nice, fun-loving and positive. In reality, that’s just the way they want to appear to others. However, if they were to take stock of what really goes on between their ears, they’d find a veritable avalanche of negativity.

To accumulate Personal Power effectively, you need to learn a new way of relating to negative emotions. You need to see them as a wake-up call, a signal that when you sense their approach, you’re starting to lose Personal Power. The easiest way to reverse this downward spiral is to turn your attention immediately to something you’re thankful for. Gratitude is the strongest positive emotion and part of cultivating peak performance and Personal Power is realizing you’re surrounded by things to be grateful for.

In other words, you need to start taking responsibility for your own emotional life and decide to be happy, joyous and optimistic. No one else can do that for you.
This means refusing the subtle emotional payoff of negative emotions. There’s a payoff to anger, rage, even fear. That payoff is related to the victim mentality, the mentality that absolves you of all responsibility for the quality of your own life. Needless to say, there ain’t no Personal Power there!

The good news here is that once you begin cultivating your peak performance and Personal Power on an ongoing, consistent basis, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more impervious to other people’s negative emotional energies. And that brings us directly to Step Three…

Step Three: Stop Associating with Negative People

The negative attitudes of people around you can suck your Personal Power, especially at the beginning. So if you’re surrounded by whiners and complainers, it’s time to do something about it. Seek out people who are peak performers, who are strong, positive and definite in their approach to life. You’ll begin to notice significant shifts inside you that come from this.

Following these three steps consistently can literally remake your emotional world within a matter of weeks. And no amount of exercise, no nutritional program and no daily visualizations will magically give you peak performance and Personal Power unless you take back control of your emotional life. So resolve to begin today!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Get your FREE Special Report on the secrets of Personal Power and resilience here:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/specialreport/index.php

Peak Performance Training: Step Two to Personal Power

Welcome to the second in our 5-part series on Peak Performance Training and building your Personal Power to take back control of your life.

Last time, you learned that Personal Power is just a new word for an age-old concept, a concept that the ancient world’s best schools of spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts were well aware of. Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change your life and yourself at will. If you think about it, most people you know have never demonstrated this ability and my guess is that you’d like some help too.

This time, we’re continuing with your physical body, since your body is really the key to peak performance training and to control your mind you must work through your body. Last time, working through your body meant leaning proper diet and introducing periodic detoxification cleanses. This time, we take it to the next level.

1. Get that Wet Noodle of a Physique into Shape!

Why would you want to do this and what does getting in shape have to do with Personal Power? Just this:

You’ll feel better physically and have lots more energy
You’ll realize you can generate energy on demand
You’ll find yourself dealing with fewer negative thoughts
Your self-image will improve
You’ll start to dig your way out of the unseen spirals of disease creation that you don’t even recognize (see below)

How Should I Get in Shape?

You can use any exercise program or combination of programs that develops the following in equal proportions:

Strength (of muscles, tendons and ligaments)
Flexibility (of joints and soft tissue)
Endurance (cardio vascular)

Please note that developing Personal Power doesn’t require cultivating extremes of fitness. In fact, the extremes of the tri-athlete, the marathon runner or the body builder can actually cause long term damage and in themselves won’t help you on your quest for Personal Power.

2. Get Internal Exercise

What’s that? Well, internal exercises include such things as Tai Chi, Qi Gong and Yoga. These are systems designed to produce both health and fitness at the same time. And remember, you can get really fit without producing health. We want to build them in together in a balanced way.

The greatest advantage of internal exercise is that it does a much better job than our usual external exercise at overcoming the “7 Deadly Spirals of Disease” – these are downward spirals resulting from lack of proper maintenance that begin around age 30, accelerate after age 50 and produce serious medical challenges. Internal exercises will:

· Take all your joints through their total range of motion
· Cleanse your energy meridians
· Inject potent energy into your bodily tissues
· Cleanse and energize your internal organs, muscles, tendons, ligaments, bone marrow, skeletal structure, blood cells, central nervous system, fasciae, diaphragms and skin

Personally, I believe the top 5 Qi Gong systems are the fastest and easiest way to get these results.

The Personal Power Payoff

If you start working on your body with these internal and external methods, you’ll notice the payoff in terms of health, energy levels, self-confidence and sense of control over your life is one thousand percent.

There’s lots more that goes into peak performance training and accumulating true Personal Power. However, without a strong foundation in your physical body, the rest won’t help you much. So start now so that you can experience the overwhelming joy that comes from realizing you really can change your life!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger
Warrior Coaching International

Watch the video here!

For more information on mastering internal exercise, defeating disease and building true personal power, go to:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/RSHQG/index.php

Peak Performance Training: Step 1 to Personal Power

Feeling lately like your life is just out of control? If you’re getting hit with health challenges, faltering relationships, increased stress, and other things all at once, you’re probably asking yourself how this happened and what you can do about it.

If I were the standard self-appointed guru of modern times, I suppose I’d tell you to visualize what you want, take a particularly magical nutritional product or use some other simplistic solution. However, none of that will change your life unless you first recover what you’ve lost. And what you’ve lost is your Personal Power.

Personal Power is a relatively new term for an age-old concept. There is no true peak performance training without Personal Power. At the most basic level, Personal Power is the measure of your ability to change anything in your life – and especially yourself – at will. Ask yourself how many people you know can do that - you’ll be lucky to name even one. Yet it’s the birthright and the calling of every human being to exercise their free will to become the master of their own life.

After decades of studying the ancient world’s top approaches to spiritual life, health maintenance and martial arts, I realized these traditions were able to consistently turn out people who were exactly that – masters of their own lives, graduates of the ultimate peak performance training of their time. And yet in my pastoral work and counseling and coaching it became quickly apparent that most people are exactly the opposite. They are so short of Personal Power that they have been reduced to “coping” with a life they don’t like but can’t change.

“Authentic Ancient Traditions (AATs)” – as I’ve called them in my book, The 5 Pillars of Life – were those ancient traditions capable of proving that they consistently got the transformational results they claimed. Among them are certain schools of Buddhism and Taoism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the direct continuation of the ancient Christian approach), some native American approaches and yet others worldwide.

They all know that Personal Power is the vital foundation for all spiritual development and for true happiness. They also know Personal Power is the fruit of “resilience” – becoming physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually stronger, more effective and more resilient than average. And knowing you can only develop resilience by deliberately facing tough challenges created for that purpose, these traditions put their newbies through some pretty tough stuff. To be real and produce results, peak performance training has to challenge your mental, physical and spiritual capacities.

So how can you start to develop Personal Power today and take back control of your life? Simple. You absolutely must proceed methodically, step by step, and the first step is your body.

The Body and Personal Power: Diet

If you want to develop your Personal Power and take back control of your life, you must get really serious about your body. There are some deeper reasons for this I’ll explain later, but for now here’s what you have to put into place:

1. First, you must stop eating all harmful foods at once. This includes all white flour, white rice, white and brown refined sugars, table salt, trans fats and preferably also meat that’s been subjected to antibiotics and growth hormones.

Once you start to hydrate yourself properly, eat what your body needs and not what it’s craving, you’ll find your energy levels go way up.

2. You need to cleanse your body from accumulated toxins. That means you’ll want to do a week long cleanse at least twice per year (fall and spring are often the best times) and once a week you’ll want to take a day where you go really easy on your digestive system. You see, modern research on mice and ancient research on monks came to the same conclusion: if you reduce the burden on your organism’s digestive system, you’ll quite likely live a lot longer.

3. The Mindset You Need. To make all this work, you need to create a burning desire to do it. And, strangely enough, that’s easier than you think! Here’s what to do:

Take time every day to visualize your body-mind organism as absolutely pure and functioning perfectly
Visualize yourself in perfect health
Visualize yourself with boundless energy

If you do this every day for a month, you’ll find your cravings for junk food will disappear on their own.

Is it easy to build up your Personal Power? No. Is it a magic pill that will fix everything you’ve screwed up over the years so you can continue in the same self-destructive behaviors with no negative consequences? Nope!

If you find it’s tough to take charge of your diet at first, just ask yourself, “How much do I want to live a powerful, deliberate and stress-free life?” “Am I willing to go back to the life I’ve known so far and spend the rest of my days this way?” Accumulating Personal Power and true mind-body transformation aren’t the result of pills, gimmicks or quick fixes. They take commitment and persistence. So if you’ve got what it takes, you’ll want to read this whole 5-part series on Personal Power and discover a whole new approach to what it means to be human.

And there’s a free special report for you on Personal Power, resilience and how to transform your life at:
http://www.warriorcoachinginternational.com/specialreport/index.php

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger

Watch the video here!