Tools

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“Which key tools will you turn to regularly to maintain your mindset and how will you use them effectively?” - The Suitcase Entrepreneur

Any tool that lets me move my life forward as a Life Athlete is a tool that helps me maintain my mindset.

I’m going to start with the tools I DO use and maybe talk about other I’d like to adopt another time.


I’m going to look at a few areas of life and the tools I use to train myself. Here we go...

Body.

I'll start by saying that I think that a stopwatch is the most important exercise tool you can have. 

Here are some of my favourite formats for a workout: 

-The first is taken from Crossfit and is called an AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible). Choose two or three movements and set a number of repetitions for each at a weight that will challenge you but not stop you. Then choose a time duration (usually 10 - 15 minutes) and see how many rounds you can do in that time.  You should be a puddle on the floor at the end.  Remember to keep an eye on your form!


-The second is to set an amount of work in front of me and then to see how fast I can get it done. It might be 30 heavy cleans and presses or deadlifts or anything really. This is also a Crossfit mainstay. 

-Next is something called Tabata. It was developed by a Japanese speed skating coach I believe and has been heavily adopted by people who want a quick workout. The basic idea is that you get more of a fat-burning, cardio hit by doing intense sprints than by long duration training. So what you do is choose a movement and go as hard as you can for 20 seconds, then rest for ten and repeat for a total of 8 rounds. This is hard to manage with a normal stopwatch and so I use the Tabata timer built into the “GymBoss” app. 

-Another feature of the GymBoss application is the ability to create custom timers. I have used this to make a yoga routine for myself that I’ll actually do. Up until setting up this timer, yoga existed as a good idea that I often had but didn’t follow up on.  I have done yoga in India and used to work for a yoga clothing company and I LOVE yoga and think that it’s very beneficial but I’ve struggled to do it on my own. As I’m not always geared up to go to a class, I wanted something I could do to break at home between bursts of work and so I created this timer. It tells me to what positions to hit and how long I have to hold them. I just hold on until the timer beeps and tells me to move on to the next position. It might not be the purest form of the discipline but it’s getting me to do the movements and my body and mind are happier for it. 

Mind

-Being an expat is a lovely existence but it does have a few drawbacks.  Being in a place that doesn’t use one of the three languages I speak means that I’m essentially using a mangled form of English to make myself understood most of the time. It can have a detrimental effect on the way I speak which I believe is connected to the way way I think. In talking about this with a number of expat friends, I have discovered that many of them have experienced the same degradation of their mother tongue while living in foreign lands.  Luckily we live in the internet age and there are resources to rescue us from this predicament. I’ve found that listening to podcasts featuring eloquent and informative people is a GREAT countermeasure to language decay.  I have started using a combination of iTunes and Stitcher to manage my podcasts. Some of my favourites are: Q, The Moth, The Dirtbag Diaries, Quirks and Quarks, Under the Influence, and Entrepreneur on Fire. 


-Additionally, I am almost always listening to some sort of “self-help” content as I believe it’s a good way to train my mind to think in a way that works for me. I’ve found that this kind of content is great for me to listen to while I go on longer runs as they allow me to focus on something other than running. Listening to music has me changing my tempo to keep pace with the beat. Audiobooks and self help audios don’t have that effect. They just let me contemplate life and reconnect with the language of possibility. (Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Eben Pagan, and Fredric Lehrman  are some of my favourites.)

Work
The book Making Ideas Happen lays out an “action method that I have used for my projects lately.  Essentially it’s a system that has three categories. Paraphrasing the sections are “do now”, “do later”, “resources and notes” (here’s the author, Scott Belsky giving a TED talk.)  . I’ve added a “completed” folder to the mix and aim to move things there. It’s been surprisingly effective. I’m planning on giving the book another read as I’m sure there’s more depth I can glean by going through it a second time. 


There are other tools I use, but I’ve already gone on here longer than I’d planned. I am actually very curious to hear about some of the tools you use to make your life better and to play full-out in the game of life. Please post yours and if you have any questions about the things I mentioned here or about any other tools I might use for specific things, please ask. 

A call to action!

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LIGHTS! CAMERA! ... um...

Action. It’s a sexy word, dynamic and brash. It’s also a word that I’ve added to today’s post in the blog challenge. It’s not there, but when I read it “action” is all I saw. 
Perhaps this quotation was playing in my head:


“Action expresses priorities.” 

                                                                                                             -Gandhi-
To bring everyone up to speed, the question of the day from the Suitcase Entrepreneur’s blog challenge was this: “What are my three priorities for the next 30 days that will move me closer towards living life on my own terms?” 

This was the first of the questions for which I sought outside assistance. After skyping two dear friends in different parts of the world It became clear that I was scared. 

I was scared to commit to action and even though my friends showed me easy outs I had to face the fear and act. 

The question is ambiguous enough to be interpreted in many ways. One of my friends talked about what “living on your own terms” really meant. Shifting your perception, you could conceivably talk yourself into believing that whatever is happening at this very moment is on your terms. We create our own realities after all, right? 

Buddhist monks are said to find happiness through being desireless. 

The mirror in the first Harry Potter book (yes, I read them all...) showed people their greatest desires and it was said that the happiest person was the one who could look and just see themselves, just as they were already. 

I agree with that and yet, there are things I want in my life that I don’t currently have and I enjoy the pursuit of growth. Living life on my terms would mean transforming a few areas and taking new actions. 

‎"Without action, without decision, you remain in possibility, which is safe and beautiful but eventually enervating and boring." -- Jennifer Louden

I have lived in possibility for long enough. Now’s the time for action. 

My philosophy through Life Athletics is that the greatest possibilities for growth are found in the areas where we’re the weakest. This is all relative and open for interpretation so, if you’re playing along in your own life, please look through whatever lens you wish and find where the biggest bang for your transformational buck will come from. 

For me it’s in business. I’ve been making strides creatively, and physically. My emotions are getting stronger after a few recent tough life events and all in all I’m feeling good. 

The most important thing about the last while is I’ve given up my resistance and have just accepted and celebrated that I‘m enough. 

From that place, the thing that would make the biggest difference is to develop an income source that replaced my day job and allowed me the freedom to pursue my vision of life fully. 

I have a number of projects in mind that could be turned into businesses but currently my heart and mind are focused on building Life Athletics into the life changing resource I know it can be by building the tool I have in my head. 

This is where that fear I talked about from earlier comes up. My favourite limiting subconscious phrase is “I don’t know”. People have teased me for years that if you ask me a question, I’ll say “I don’t know” before thinking for a moment and then laying out a detailed and thorough answer. 

It is then no surprise that my initial reaction to this project is “I don’t know how to do this”. 

It’s something I’ve been embarrassed to admit in the past. Now, I don’t care that I don’t know. I’m clever, I’ll figure it out. 

My target goals for the next 30 days are:

  • Wire frame the new Life Athletics tool so that it can be shown to designers and developers.


  • Talk to developers to determine what’s involved in the build and developing a plan to see it come to life as easily and quickly as possible. 


  • Reach out to people who I want to be part of this project from the start. The measurable part of this goal is that I want to have at least 5 people committed to building modules for use in the Life Athletics. 


This will of course be done while respecting the Life Athlete’s way of making sure that the other areas of my life are also being looked after. 


What are your target goals for the next 30 days? 

My Perfect Day

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“I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank Piña Coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over?” - Phil Connors, Groundhog Day.

What's MY perfect day? 

I was surprised when thinking about my perfect day that pure hedonism only lingered in the recesses of my mind for a moment or two.  Initially I thought that I’d be writing a post confessing that my perfect days would be filled with nothing other than sexual exploits on a private beach with occasional breaks for meals and naps in shaded hammocks.

Those days are great and I welcome them into my life but the question of a perfect day for me has morphed into my ideal “regular” day.  

Surprisingly work featured heavily in my initial brainstorm of my perfect day. I love working on this stuff, and would choose to do it inside of my perfect day. Drawing, writing, creating and contributing to people, are all part of who I am. 

Rest also jumped in as an essential element. Previously the “I’ll rest when I’m dead” mentality felt like the way things were done and anything but that was laziness. Recently however my views have changed.

I’ve been implementing some of the concepts from the book “The Power of Full Engagement” and have become an advocate that managing your energy is the key to not only personal productivity but also happiness. So a siesta or a nap would have a place in my perfect day.

Before I get started mapping out my perfect day let me acknowledge that this is part of the blog challenge through the Suitcase Entrepreneur. Here’s the challenge directly from their website:
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My Perfect Day:
My perfect day starts with me waking up next to my girlfriend at around 7am. 
I do some breathing exercises and make a light meal. 
We then walk / run our dog(s) to a park that has a training area and I do a 5-20 min met-con. 
I then stretch, and play with the dog, and my girlfriend, a bit and we head back. Once home, showered and fun is had, I have another small bite of food. and get ready to work. 
I move a project forward and would have 2-3 hours to do it. 
More food and some reading on a couch or hammock would follow the working and if a nap happened, great!  
At this point I handle any personal correspondences that need to happen. Once I touch base or talk to the friends and family that need to be reached I check basketball scores, movie reviews facebook and other similar extracurricular interests I might have in that moment. 

More snacking wouldn’t be out of the question here. 
I would have another work session moving either the same project forward a little more or working on a different  one. 
I would do a quick sprinting or skipping workout and once cleaned up we have dinner out with friends.
My girlfriend, and I walk the dog(s) again. 
Home for more fun time. Read before bed.  
End of day.

There could easily be a beach version of this where the workouts are replaced by scuba diving or ocean kayaking... BUT the main vision is to be primarily in a very livable city like Vancouver, Montreal or Barcelona. The main concept for me is that I would get 4-6 hours of work in every day broken up into two chunks. I would train my body and my mind and make time for important people in my life. 

The work I’d do is an extension of Life Athletics. The future of Life Athletics is exciting with the site becoming a powerful tool that puts Life Athletes in the most empowered place they’ve ever been. It  will be a place that allows you to create and live the life of your dreams. 

My perfect day is one where I’m living fully as a Life Athlete and am surrounded by people I love, in a place I love, and where I get to look forward to a tomorrow where I get that day over and over and over. 

What is your definition of location independence?

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A HUGE part of creating a life you love is choosing a place to live. ... or is it? This is a response to a question posed by Natalie Sisson, the Suitcase Entrepreneur after all. The question of “home” is shaken a bit when dealing with dealing with someone who is proudly “homeless”, or nomadic.

At first when I read the question of the day for the blog challenge, “What is your definition of location independence?”, my reaction was that we’d finally started on the indoctrination and were meant to start into buying into the idea of selling our stuff and sleeping on other people’s couches.

As I reigned in my reactive side, I realized that my dream is indeed to become location independent, just not in the same way as Natalie.

So, what is MY definition of location independence?
My definition of location independence is to have the freedom to live your life on your terms, regardless of where you are geographically. This isn’t as radical as it sounds at first, let me explain what I mean in more detail and through the use of an example. 

Years ago when I lived in Montreal, many English speaking friends expressed a desire to live there as well, but felt that the language requirements of most companies made living in Montreal an impossibility. 

Could they have found a way to make it work? Of course! But... they didn’t feel that they could do it on their terms and that was the clincher. 

To me, being location independent means that you can live and work anywhere you want because you are not tied to a place, and only your choices determine where you are. 

Another factor in location independence is the freedom to move when you choose. Being able to set up a business anywhere is great but if you can’t take it with you or if you can’t go on vacation, or react to the demands of life, then you’re as trapped as anyone else. 

A person close to me has set up an impressive and thriving business in India  which is wonderful... except that they hate where they live. They hate it but feel that they can’t leave because of their business. Exotic can lose it’s luster quickly if it’s not what you want to be surrounded by daily. 

I’d go so far as to say that without location independence we’re caged. The cage might be gilded but, does it really matter? 

“Choose Freedom” is the slogan on the Suitcase Entrepreneur’s new swag and it’s fitting, even if you don’t want to live, full-time out of a suitcase. 

So, Life Athletes... what’s your definition of location independence and what does look like for you?

What’s your definition of freedom in business and adventure in life?

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What’s your definition of freedom in business and adventure in life?


The question in of today’s blog challenge through the Suitcase Entrepreneur is: “what’s your definition of freedom in business and adventure in life?” I find it to be a fascinating question as it speaks to two of the pillars of Life Athletics that many people often see as opposites, work and play. 


It’s a wonderful cliche that when you love what you do, it’s not longer work, but I do wonder how many people achieve that. I used to have a fairly severe mental block to the idea of making money for doing something that I love. My upbringing was one where hard work was emphasized, by at least some of the adults around me, and looking like you were having fun would get a stern response. Hard work was meant to be hard and not enjoyed. This is something I carried with me for some time. 


I used to paint a lot and would show my work in galleries. It was all for fun but when people started to inquire about purchasing them I freaked out. To me at the time the idea of selling my paintings meant that I would be giving up the joy of it. I stopped painting for years. I’m not the only one who has had this limiting belief. Just yesterday I asked a friend who blogs, if she wanted to join me in this blog challenge. The idea of it being daily and assigned freaked her out and she said that she couldn’t stand to lose the fun.

My way out of this kind of thinking has to just focus on the fact that I’m doing something that I like and to remember how often in life I’ve wished to be doing just this very thing. My dream of turning Life Athletics into a network and community of people all working to live extraordinary lives is fueled by my love of seeing people grow and my desire to surround myself with extraordinary people.

To me, freedom in business means doing something that I love, surrounded by people I love, with enough flexibility to maintain other interests, manage my important relationships and to powerfully deal with anything that might come up in life. Essentially freedom in business means that I’m empowered to live well by the work that I do. It also means mobility and the chance for lots of adventure.

Adventure... excitement... a Jedi craves not these things!

Not being a certified Jedi allows me to enjoy adventure and excitement without disapproving comments from little green aliens with awesome ears. The dream of running business primarily through the internet is that it would allow a freedom of movement or of home. Being able make money from anywhere means that I could live anywhere. I’ve long dreamed of living in Spain, or spending my winters on a beach in Bali. A life that involved healthy doses on SCUBA diving, sailing, kayaking and motorcycle trips in gorgeous locals would be my kind of adventure.

Now it’s your turn, Life Athletes! What is YOUR definition of freedom in business and adventure in life?


If you woke up tomorrow and were free to do anything you wanted with your life, what would you do and who would you be?

A friend of mine recently shared this gem: “Life's not always going to be as good as you want it to be, it can only be as good as you’ll allow it to be.” At Life Athletics, we often talk about the life we want. But stepping back and reflecting upon the life we’re allowing ourselves to have ... that’s potentially more powerful. 

People become comfortable with the familiar, and while there is a giant industry built on trying to help people change from their previous versions of “normal” into some new and better form, it’s hard to battle against what is familiar. 

We are the way we are because we think that’s the way we are. 

What this means is that we manage ourselves by the image we live so the idea we have of ourselves is the byproduct. We’re only as fit, healthy, happy, or wealthy as we think we should be. Are there exceptions? Certainly, but by and large we all revert to our own self-concept. 

I’ve heard it described as comparing people to a climate-controlled condo. If it gets too cold, the heat comes on and if it gets too hot, the AC turns on. 

This concept has played out in a number of ways in my own life, but I’ve noticed it the most physically. I keep myself reasonably fit. Fit enough that most people comment that I seem athletic, but not really fit enough to amaze myself. I’ll go through periods where I’ll gear up and workout harder, eat cleaner and I’ll see changes and then...become complacent. Traditionally, once I see that I’m in great shape I coast and fall back into “good enough”. Essentially, I am used to seeing myself a certain way, not just in the mirror, but also in terms of how I train, how often, and in any number of habits that keep me looking and acting like “me”. To change my body, I’d have to change my self-perception. 

This brings me to the portion of the post where I address the blog challenge of the day: If you woke up tomorrow and were free to do anything you wanted with your life, what would you do and who would you be? If I woke up free from any constraints, I would be working full time on turning Life Athletics into the tool I know it can be for people. That, and I’d be doing it from a beach... possibly in Bali. The glib answer to whom I’d be is “a Life Athlete”. To be clearer, I’d be decisive, self-assured, and relaxed, while also excited and present to the expanding difference I, and my work, make for people around the world. I’d also be very happy with all of that. 

Why I haven’t done this already is simple enough, and has to do with the first part of this post. I’ve become used to life a certain way and this has kept me doing things the way I’ve done them in the past. In realizing that I’ve held myself back from becoming the physical athlete I could be, I’m now training smarter and seeing the results, while also maintaining a workable schedule. In seeing that I’ve held myself back with Life Athletics, I’m declaring that I’ll be doing the same thing and working smarter to get the results I want in order to make the greatest contribution. How good am I going to allow things to be? 

Extraordinarily good.

I'm doing the 30 day blog challenge!

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Life Athletes, I've got to come clean about something. Lately I've been so focussed on my plans for the future of Life Athletics that I've been ignoring this space and this blog. The 30 day challenge I'm participating through the Suitcase Entrepreneur in is an effort to let go and be present. It will likely lead to more personal content than ever before but it will all be filtered through the lens of Life Athletics and designed to add value to the growth and development of the Life Athletes who read, watch and listen to the content here. Thanks for the support and let's begin! 

Matt and Cherie Chan

 Outside of the Crossfit community, where they are rock stars,  Matt and Cherie Chan might not be household names but they are world class individuals who are an inspiration to the people who know them and it's my pleasure to present them to you here. I was as excited to meet them as I've been to meet anyone in a long time.  I had admired their candor, elegance of being and their pursuit of excellence from watching prior interviews with them and from watching them compete. These people embody what it is to be Life Athletes and it was a supreme pleasure to be able to sit down and have this chat with them. The topics range and I've done minimal editing so that you can get a sense of who these people are. 
 Matt Chan was crowned the second fittest man in the world after placing second in the 2012 crossfit games and his Wife Cherie has been a high level competitor also competing in the Crossfit Games. They have a number of videos on Crossfit.com and have a blog detailing their current adventure: http://theeternalpursuit.com/

Reid Koss of the Seattle Sockeyes talks about Sports and life.

The Seattle Sockeye are one of the top Ultimate Frisbee clubs in the United States. Earlier this year players from the team came to Ulsan South Korea and put on a skills clinic. Here are four excerpts from an interview with Sockeye player Reid Koss where he talks about tips and techniques that he's learned through his Ultimate career that have helped make him successful on the field and off. 

Habit: act. now.

Welcome Life Athletes!
    This week’s habit is one that comes from a number of sources as well as my own observations. That said, Eben Pagan put it perfectly in his program Get Altitude when he said that the one trait all successful people share is a fast “rate of implementation”, so we’ll use that term for it.  

This is one that I’ve struggled with and have been injecting into my life lately so it’s close to my heart.  Essentially, those who are successful in any field do things and they do them now. They take action while other people are still thinking about any number of things other than. 


The thing about this habit is that it’s counter to many parts of my thinking as well as many others I’ve spoken to.  We want to make things perfect, we want to consider, ponder and observe. However well those traits have served us, it isn’t until we focus on this habit that we can move things forward and start creating what we want in life. 

While I’d be the first to extol the virtues of the clever and the cautious, I think that there’s a danger to them, one expressed beautifully in one of my favourite quotations:

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Ray Bradbury

A fast rate of implementation means that when you hear something that you think is a good idea, an idea that would serve you and your life, you take an action towards putting it into effect immediately. 

It’s simple, magical, and people throw fits for the right to do things later.  

It can’t be denied that the people who I’ve met who exemplify the habit of a fast rate of implementation make lots of mistakes and have jumped the gun from time to time but what they also do is take notice of their mistakes earlier than most and act to change them. 

My father, who might be the living embodiment of this habit said this when I mentioned this topic to him: “The thing about doing things that are new is there are going to be new problems. Seeing too many sides is a definite disadvantage and god help you if you can see what might go wrong that will turn your guts to liquid. You need to be a little bull-headed for sure”. Watching him operate in his life can be dizzying and at times befuddling to me but what he’s accomplished in his business and in his life are impressive by any metric.

He expects problems but unlike the people who get stopped by them he treats problems as a driver would react to other cars on the road.  Sure it’s easier to drive when the road is clear but it’s not always that way and waiting for the road to clear is a good plan if you want to spend the rest of your life in your driveway. 

I made a comment to a friend of mine a little while back that my dad would have already completed some of the projects I had been just starting to plan.  It wasn’t that he had more money than me, he does, or that he was more clever, although he might be.  It was his ability to put things into action and not stop until it was finished, or he was, that would have got it done. 

That realization is why these last few posts are going out imperfectly. They don’t have photos, they might not have the best prose I could muster given the time to craft. What they do have is the distinction of being good enough and published. “Good enough and published” beats “perfect but existing only in my mind” any day. This is me putting a success habit in place, one post at a time. Life Athletics isn’t about being perfect, it’s about seeing where you’re weak and taking action to make those area stronger to benefit you, your loved ones and your life. What action are you going to take to make your life better today? 

Action step: Take some action towards your goals now. Listen to the reasons you have for not doing it now and ask yourself if those reasons sound familiar, then take the action anyway. 


Journal it. 

How to get what you want.

Last week we spoke of the importance of habits and then focused on the habit of “being responsible”. This week we’re also looking at a mental habit and it flows from the same vein as the first. 

I picked up this habit from Brian Tracy and want to give him full credit. I read what I’m about to share, put the book down, shook my head, rubbed my eyes, and felt like I’d found the secret to happiness.

So... without further ado, here is a paraphrased version of Mr. Tracey’s concept. 

Happy and successful people think of two things exclusively, while unhappy and unsuccessful people think of another two things exclusively. In order to be happy and successful, you must train your mind to think of the two things in the happy column and... that’s it. 

First, unhappy and unsuccessful people think only: “What don’t I like?” and “whose fault is it?”. 

To me that was a powerful revelation. I immediately saw a myriad of experiences from my life which weren’t working as I would have liked fit the “unhappy and unsuccessful” format perfectly. 

One that is both shameful and funny was how much I blamed my mother for my poor basketball skills. I’m tall and all my life people have asked me if I played basketball. In fact it happened on the subway again yesterday. I  didn’t grow up playing organized ball but played with my friends and always wished I’d be on a team. I was raised by a single mother who was also a student and sports weren’t a priority and so, my potential languished and in my head it was all her fault. 

Even later when I was able to go to practices on my own and take some responsibility for my own experiences, the blame stuck around and so whenever I felt as though I wasn’t as good a player as I should be, I would immediately blame my mother in my mind. It wasn’t conscious but it was powerful as it completely stopped me from being able to improve. My mind worked to make me “right” and so I had to stay at a low level. 

Once I caught this blame loop, I was able to unhook, apologize to my mom and I made a HUGE jump in skill on the court. I’m certainly not a world class basketball player but I’m good enough to have fun and have played in gyms and parks with a smile on my face all over the world. 

Disliking that I didn’t have the basketball skills that I felt I should have and blaming my mother for not putting me in a situation to have developed them at a young age was a road map to failure and upset. While I didn’t like seeing that I had so often frequented that neighbourhood, I also felt relieved that I was now aware of the road signs and would be equipped to steer clear in the future. 

It’s important not to go into a blame loop of your own upon reading the above “bad” habit. Some people I know have responded by saying “I do that and I don’t like it! It’s (fill in whoever’s name... it doesn’t really matter) fault because (fill in whatever reason... it doesn’t really matter)!”,  or they might blame themselves for not having caught and changed this habit sooner. My advice is to skip that blame cycle entirely and move onto the next part: moving toward happiness and success.

According to Brian Tracy, the two questions that all happy and successful people asks themselves are: “What do I want?” and “how do I get it?”. 

A Life Athlete is actively practicing this by aiming their actions to drive them towards their goals. All people will fall into the “what don’t I like and whose fault is it” trap from time to time but it’s your job to make sure that the majority of your thoughts revolve around some form of “what do I want” and “how do I get it?”.  When you find yourself participating in the thoughts of the unsuccessful, stop and think the thoughts of the Life Athlete, “What do I want in this area?” and “How do I get myself there?”.

This week:
-Look at 1-3 situations in your life where you’re happy and successful and see if your thinking in that area matches “What do I want? and how do I get it?”

-Look at 1-3 situations in your life where you’re not happy or successful and see if your thinking in that area matches “What don’t I like and whose fault is it?” 

-Be aware through the week of instances where your mind clicks into one mode or the other. 

-Challenge yourself to operate from “what do I want and how do I get it”

-Journal your responses. 

Dave Smart: Celebrating  the lows.

Of the many successful people I have spoken to, Dave Smart is perhaps the most used to winning. In the two years I covered the team he coaches, I think I saw them lose once. The Carleton Ravens in Ottawa Ontario are now the National Champions once again and that marks their 9th championship in the last 11 years. Despite this unprecedented amount of winning, Smart's focus might surprise those of us who aspire to that level of success in our chosen fields.  

Habits

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
-Aristotle- 

Life Athletics, for those of you new to the site, is about living your life well. It’s not about being anything other than the best version of you.  To that end, best practices are sought out and highly valued. The core of a Life Athlete's philosophy is that they are defined by their actions and thoughts. They are their habits of thought and habits of action. If you want to have a better life, start with cultivating better habits.

Classifying your habits into the categories of thought and action is convenient but can be misleading. We’re still going to keep doing it but first; an attempt to clarify. Often our actions are governed by our habitual thoughts. In other words, they’re connected. Being aware that the things you do regularly are a direct result of the way you regularly view yourself and the people and things around you is a powerful and necessary step in building yourself into the person you want to be. 

Every week Life Athletics is going to highlight another habit. It might be one of thought, or of action. It could be something to do with finance, or romance, or fitness or... anything really.  Don’t feel like you need to try to adopt each one mentioned. Try them on, see how they fit and keep the ones that you think will improve your life, leave the rest. 

The habit this week is the foundation for living the life you want. Make this thought a part of you: “I am responsible.”

Now, quickly... how did you react to that? Some of you have already internalized this practice to a high level and will just nod and move on. Others will read “take all the blame” where I wrote “be responsible” and for those people it needs to be made clear that responsibility has NOTHING to do with blame. Responsibility simply relates to having a say in the matter and that your experiences are yours. As soon as you resist that concept, you’re setting the table for upset. If you are not actively living as though you are the cause of the experiences in your life, you are going to struggle and will until you give up that practice and adopt complete responsibility for your life. If you LOVE your job, you’re responsible. If you HATE your job, you’re responsible. If you tolerate your job, you’re responsible. Hopefully by this stage you’re getting the point. No matter what you’re experiencing in your life, claiming total responsibility will allow you to begin moving towards something you truly want. 

As a teen, my chiropractor broke the word down for me as “the ability to respond” and I think that’s a beautiful way of looking at it. Unless you accept that you hold total responsibility for your life, you won’t be able to respond to anything powerfully and you certainly won’t be able to put any new habits in place that will make you a more effective Life Athlete.

This week:
-Look at 1-3 situations in your life where you’re happy and fulfilled and pat yourself on the back. Congratulate yourself for creating those in your life and being open to experiencing them.

-Look at 1-3 situations in your life where you’re not happy of satisfied and ask yourself “if I was 100% responsible for the success of this situation who would I be and what would I do?”

-Journal your responses.



Spencer Wilkerson - Team buy-in

"If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Three seasons ago, in the Ultimate frisbee league I play in, I watched an expansion team lose by one point in the finals. They lost but there was no shame in it and they opened a lot of eyes. They played a crisp, confident style and appeared, to the gathered crowd, to be a team that had played together for years. Again, they hadn’t, they had just formed up and soundly beat teams who had been together for some time.

I wanted to know how they did it. I wanted to know if there was some secret to their success and so I asked their captain, Spencer Wilkerson. I asked how he got his team to play together with purpose and with passion. 
I wanted to know how they got to be so good so fast. What he said struck me. He said, “I asked them.” He said that he put it to them that they could play and have fun and be a pretty good expansion team or they could allow him to coach them and they could work for it and they could be great. They thought about it and each of them chose the second option. They all bought into this vision that he’d laid out and together they became a dangerous unit on the field. 

In the summer after their second season I asked Spencer to revisit that conversation on camera during a beach tournament where we played together and he was generous enough to do so.

This season, his team’s third, they won the league championship. 

I remember sitting in a bar at a league event after doing the interview and talking about the idea, and importance, of a team buying into a unifying team concept and an engineer who was sitting at our table said that it was exactly what he was trying to do at work. He told me that it was something he and his team were actively working on. He became excited as he saw how the idea related to his work, which was gratifying as it’s what Life Athletics is all about.

It’s important not to focus so much on the actions of leadership that you forget to make sure that everyone is all in. This applies in sports, in business, in relationships, and in life.



"You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere." – Lee Iacocca

Tyson Gay

Tyson Gay, the American record holder for the 100m dash and 4th place at the 2012 London Olympic games, with a blistering time of 9.80 seconds, stopped and talked with us at the Daegu Track and Field world Championships last year. 

Having not even heard the words "Life Athletics" before the interview started, Gay answered our questions thoughtfully and in a way that made it seem like he was a regular visitor to LifeAthletics.com.

Don't worry about "it", just do something!

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Contributing writer Vince Nance encourages you to find fitness wherever you can.

Get up.

Our ancestors didn’t live their lives with the intention of “burning calories” or “getting in shape”.  They didn’t do pushups or sit ups, but they did push things and sit up.  They didn’t have stair machines - but they did have stairs.  They didn’t have treadmills, but they ran.  They didn’t have pools, but they swam.  They didn’t have ipods, but they had songs.  They didn’t have pull up bars, but they climbed.  They didn’t have “weights”, but they lifted things.


All of our advances in fitness technology have done some amazing things for our understanding of health and exercise, but it’s important to remember that there was a time when they didn’t exist - and we weren’t all morbidly obese without them. 

One of my favorite quotes is, “If it’s important, you’ll find a way.  If not, you’ll find an excuse.”  Well, I think that our intricate network of technology, memberships, supplements, etc can be as much of an obstruction as they are a tool.  How many times have we all used a lack of technology, equipment, access, or time to justify lethargy?  The bottom line is that you don’t NEED all of the toys, trinkets, and tech.  All you need is a few minutes, a cubic meter or so of space, and a decision to move - everything else is a detail.  Don’t let your goals get lost in the details. 

We all have hours and hours a day when we’re doing nothing - literally standing around wishing that something was happening faster, ending sooner, already here, killing time, checking our watches, surfing the Internet, checking our makeup, or rereading messages.  The problem is that those “hours and hours” are broken up into 2, 5, and 10 minute segments.  Our ancestors moved - pretty much constantly - from the time they woke up until they went to sleep.  We evolved to eat ENOUGH food (and  the quality, quantity, and type of food you’re eating is highly significant, but I digress...), and DO lots and lots of things with our bodies.  Being “fit” is no more than returning to the environment in which your genetics succeeded.  What’s my point?  MOVE MORE.  How?  Do it in small doses.  

You don’t NEED a solid 2 hour block of time to start pursuing your fitness goals.  You don’t NEED a gym membership, or a new credit card to buy all of the drugs and chemical powders that plenty of people will tell you that you NEED.  These prerequisites are all imaginary.  MOVE!!!  Go for a walk, take the stairs, do calf raises or curl your groceries in the elevator or hallway, do some pushups before lunch, do 10 squats in the bathroom before your shower, do 5 minutes of Tai Chi or yoga outside or on a roof once a day, lunge walk to your car or house, do a pullup or hang from anything you can get your hands around that won’t break, keep two bottles of water and do some simple shoulder exercises for a minute or two, do sit ups or crunches whenever a commercial comes on, do iron chair against a wall when you’re bored - WHATEVER YOU CAN!




A lot of people develop formulas for what works and what doesn’t, what is worth it and what isn’t, and these formulas are either irrelevant, distracting or just plain bullshit.  Something will always be better than nothing.  Suppose there are two versions of yourself.  One version does some exercises every day for a year, whenever they can, and eats as healthy as they can.  The other version does no exercises because they can’t afford the time to do a “real” workout and don’t bother caring about what they eat because they can’t go 100% vegan/organic/raw food diet yet.  Which version do you suppose will have less fat and more muscle?  Which version will feel more energetic in the morning?  Which version will sleep better and look more vibrant?  Which version is more likely to take the next step in their fitness goals?  Which version is more likely to even HAVE fitness goals?

I’m not selling anything.  If you find that you need something - buy it.  If having a gym membership or pool access or taking a class is available, I certainly think that’s a great idea.  But don’t think for a second that just because you can’t do everything, you can’t do anything.  You can do something, right now, today - to improve your fitness.  And it won’t take two hours, any money, or a commute.  Just do something.

MOVE.


-Vince Nance-


Vince Nance is a Brazilian jiujitsu and MMA fighter, rock climber, women’s self defense instructor, writer, creative consultant, English teacher, and Ultimate Frisbee player in Busan, South Korea.