Get Fit With Inspiration And Always Have a Why

It’s not enough to simply imagine what kind of physique or level of success you’re trying to develop. To form a powerful mental picture of your goal,  pick individuals who have already achieved the level that you’re trying to emulate. It’s important to write down and get pictures of those goals and keep them close at hand, In my case I admired the Herculean physique of Arnold Shwarzenagger, I have a charcoal portrait of him in my office to this day. He  had the  kind of size and strength that I wanted to develop in my own physique. He also had a huge Why and developed the drive and determiation to never quit with a burning desire for success. Over the years when times got tough I would literally look up at Arnold and rember my Why and I never gave up, neither did he and neither will you if you just remember your very own WHY.

Go The Extra Mile

When I say “going the extra mile,” what do you think about? Hard work? Doing the unexpected? Other people? Someone special? You?
Where does the Extra Mile come from? How are Extra Mile stories created? What do they mean to companies and people? Extra Mile actions by individuals (and the ensuing stories attached to them) create the foundation for a company that goes from good to great to world-class, using the power and the strength of internal and external hard work, dedication and loyalty, combined with doing the right thing—no, let me say, doing the best thing for your fellow workers and your customers.
The Extra Mile comes from you. And the Extra Mile stories come from you, based on your ability to think, react, respond, recover, serve and add plus one (the Extra Mile) using your best skills in time of need.
The interesting part about the Extra Mile is that it usually begins when something goes wrong. The weather. The inventory. The delivery. Co-worker needs. Customer needs. Or when incidents or accidents occur that are beyond your control when they happen—but in your control in the way that you respond to them, and the way you react to them. There’s No Such Thing as a Bad Day

The Extra Mile also comes from service and having a service heart—doing something extra right or extra best. MAJOR CLUE: The underlying element in the Extra Mile process is your prevailing attitude at the moment an Extra Mile opportunity shows up. If you’re in a bad mood, or a down mood, based on other things that have happened throughout your day, the odds are, when an opportunity arises to turn something bad into something great, you won’t even see it. You’ll look at it as “one more thing in a bad day.” Let’s get one thing straight: Bad days are self-inflicted. You give them to yourself. And it’s likely when you give them to yourself, you’re also giving them to others. In order for an Extra Mile story to blossom, YOU, most important person in the world, must be mentally prepared to make it blossom. You’ve heard the phrase, “Every obstacle presents an opportunity.” You’ve also heard, “When it rains lemons, make lemonade.” Those are easy phrases to talk about when there are no obstacles, and it’s NOT raining lemons. Your challenge as a person of attitude and opportunity is to have a bowl of sugar and a lemon squeezer at your desk at all times, and in your mind at all times, so that when someone calls with a complaint, with an emergency, or with an obstacle of any kind, your first thought is “What is the real opportunity here?” And your second thought is “How can I help?” They give lemons—you make lemonade because you’re PREPARED and WILLING to make lemonade.

The Prerequisites

Being alert, being willing, having the right attitude, and being prepared are the prerequisites for going the Extra Mile. And as with all of my lists, ideas and concepts, there’s a .5—the Extra Mile. The .5 is your answer to the question: “AM I DOING MY BEST?” That’s not just the question you have to ask yourself; that is the mantra by which you guide your career and your life. I’m going to make you a promise: There’s one Extra Mile story in you, every week. Your job is to recognize it, take the actions with a service heart, document it, learn from it, and get into the habit of being an Extra Mile person. Once you do this, you won’t have to tell your own Extra Mile story—people will begin to tell them about you. The Extra Mile isn’t just an action or a story, it’s a reputation. And the best part is you create it. You make it happen. All things are possible in your life and in your career if you will only dedicate yourself to the continuing process of being your best and going the Extra Mile. Think About It! Steve

Bazi Is The Real Deal!

Sandy Greenberg likes to call his sales force a “volunteer army.” He steps to the podium and looks out over the hundred enlistees who have crammed into this hotel meeting room for the May 2 regional conference of XELR8, the Denver-based nutritional supplement company. Among the troops are nurses, real-estate agents, retail workers, construction supervisors, homemakers, teachers, shop owners and the recently unemployed; some have driven here from New Mexico and Arizona. Even seated and silent, they radiate enthusiasm as if it were a commodity. And they are just a fraction of the more than 6,400 independent XELR8 distributors across the U.S. and Canada, a number that Greenberg hopes will soon explode, bringing in far more than the $7.4 million in revenues his company reported last year.
Colorful banners line the room, all devoted to the company’s primary product, Bazi. Named after the Chinese word for “eight elements,” the liquid supplement boasts a “synergistic blend” of twelve vitamins, 68 minerals and various fruits and berries. Fervent followers insist that drinking a shot a day of the “drink of life” will do everything from improve athletic performance and mental clarity to fight off headaches, allergies, arthritis and even cancer. Bazi’s ardent endorsers include such sports celebrities as former Broncos quarterback Brian Griese and ousted coach Mike Shanahan; even John Elway, while not an official spokesman, told TV cameras last year that sucking down the stuff gave him greater energy. And XELR8 marketing materials offer this proclamation from New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady: “I don’t look at it like I’m buying Bazi, but as investing in myself.”
So are the people here tonight. Billboards across the metro area feature Bazi’s distinctive red bottle and white cap alongside this exhortation: “Increase your health and your wealth!” Call the number on the billboard and you get a call back from a Bazi distributor inviting you to a tasting and “opportunity presentation,” where you learn that you, too, can be a Bazi distributor.
A sixteen-ounce bottle of Bazi sells for $25 — but you can’t buy it in stores. Instead, hundreds of thousands of units are sold each year through a multi-level marketing network. Distributors earn commissions by selling Bazi directly to friends and family — and they’re also rewarded when they enlist others in the cause.
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Greenberg was considered a prince of the penny-stock trade, he managed a huge force of brokers trained in the art of the hard sell. These days, though, the tanned 51-year-old knows that an unsalaried sales force needs a different kind of motivational speaker, and so Bazi’s top distributors give the pep talks. “Everybody, let’s give it up for Mark Jackson,” Greenberg says, announcing the former Broncos wide receiver who, as one of the legendary Three Amigos in the late ’80s, made the storied touchdown catch from Elway in the 1987 AFC Championship.
“My rookie year, I had a chance to quit a couple times,” Jackson tells the crowd. “What I learned in the Broncos is sometimes you need help to be successful.” After retiring from the NFL, Jackson worked in the mortgage industry for several years — and then some friends helped him find his way into the Bazi business, where the money now chases after him. “Some of you guys might be thinking about quitting,” he says. “Sometimes you need a little help. You have to be able to sacrifice if you want to go from good to great.”
Becoming great at XELR8 means reaching the Diamond ranks of distributorship — with commissions in the realm of six figures a year, as well as the chance to win tropical vacations and luxury cars — by pushing greater volumes of Bazi through your “downline” network of recruits, an army of Bazi-pushers who then find their own recruits to preach the path of making your “dreams of health, success and overall well-being a reality,” as Bazi’s marketing materials promise.
“There’s magic inside each and every one of us,” Jackson insists, “and it comes out in different ways with Bazi.”

Bazi has a brick-red hue and a light, carbonated froth. For anyone who has choked down a wheatgrass shot, the taste isn’t bad; it’s slightly sweet and mineral-y, like crushed Flintstones vitamins sprinkled into a cocktail of various juice concentrates. And, in fact, that’s not far off from the actual contents of Bazi, according to the label on the bottle. It contains vitamins A, B, C, D and E; minerals such as zinc, calcium, potassium and some unpronounceables like dysprosium and praseodymium; and 72 other nutritional ingredients. The “8 superfruits” include old staples like raspberry, blueberry and pomegranate, along with more exotic produce that’s become a hot trend in liquid supplements: the Himalayan goji berry, the Indonesian mangosteen, the seabuckthorn berry from Russia and the Brazilian açai berry. But it’s the jujube (pronounced joo-joob) from China that gets top billing.
“Deep in the cool mist of China’s prized Shandong Province grows an ancient, superior fruit of almost magical power,” begins the voiceover on the Bazi website. “Carefully cultivated for over 4,000 years, this amazing fruit is rich in life-giving nutrients and steeped in legend.” Ancient healers and high priests would use the “mystical” jujube fruit to cleanse vital organs, revitalize the kidneys, detoxify the blood, slow the aging process and provide a “sense of immortality” to those who drank it. With Bazi, the voice concludes, XELR8 has used the “jujube in its most potent form so it may provide you with all its astonishing health benefits.”
XELR8 won’t disclose how much of the magical jujube is in Bazi, citing its “proprietary blend,” and most of the evidence offered to its efficacy are citations from Chinese studies of the individual fruit; no studies have been conducted on Bazi itself. But there’s no denying the head rush and energy many report after a first gulp of Bazi — whose ingredients also include caffeine. Bazi, Sandy Greenberg
That’s a “natural caffeine,” explains Sanjeev Javia, XELR8′s vice president of product development, and it’s added to the mix to further activate the powerful antioxidants and B vitamins in the formula already working at toxins and radicals in the body. “I like to describe the body system as a tree, where the roots and trunk are the base, and all the individual branches are certain issues that one may have,” Javia says. “When you feed your body powerful nutrients, you are feeding the roots of this system. The indicators of how well these roots are being fed are how strong, lively and vital the branches become.”
Javia, a lively, affable 34-year-old with the looks of a Bollywood star, is the “mad scientist” credited with formulating Bazi. He also manages the relationships with the company’s athletic endorsers and oversees their nutritional programs. While Javia is neither a scientist nor a nutritionist, he did study biology and biopsychology during his undergrad years at the University of Michigan, which is where he became friends with several athletes, including Griese. After working for a few years in California as a sales trainer for an Internet company, Javia moved to Colorado in 2004 to help Griese set up his non-profit charity. It was through Griese that Javia met Greenberg, who was operating a company then known as VitaCube Systems (V3S), marketing nutritional supplements to athletes.
Nutritional supplements were big at the turn of the new century — too big. VitaCube’s line included more than forty different products. One package, Elite Cube, consisted of a tackle box filled with various pills and powders that was marketed to athletes at a cost of $300 a month.
“It’s not easy to swallow down six or seven pills at a time,” Javia says. “They didn’t know what to take, how much to take, when to take it. So now all of a sudden people stopped taking their supplements and they stopped being healthy.” Intrigued by the possibilities, Javia took a job with Greenberg and began researching ways to fit all of the supplements into a single dose that people might actually take. “So that was the original concept: Okay, why don’t we put these vitamins into a system, give them the solution,” he remembers.
To test possible solutions, Javia worked as a liaison between VitaCube and a research and development laboratory that he declines to name. “We went through about fifty iterations,” he says, “just sampling and making adjustments, sampling and making adjustments, for about a year.”
While they were working on the formula, Greenberg was working on his company, changing the name to XELR8 to reflect its streamlined mission. “What we learned is that if we were going to be successful as a company, what the American public really wanted was something really convenient they could take that had all the stuff in it and tasted good enough,” Greenberg says.
That something was Bazi. And by early 2007, XELR8 was ready to launch its all-in-one wonder drink.

Tell me why you love Bazi!” says Tom Chenault.
Right now, Buzz Coffee looks more like a strip-mall church during a revival than a Longmont coffee shop. That’s because in addition to owning Buzz, Chenault is XELR8′s “master distributor.” Colleagues call him a “pied piper” for the Bazi cause.
“I love how Bazi gives me energy all day,” says Vikki from Boulder. Kristy from Lafayette “hasn’t had a cold in the past two years” while using Bazi. Alex, a part-time DJ, loves Bazi because “it helps my mom with the Parkinson’s; she’s 88.” Bazi allowed Darlene, a mortgage broker, to finally get rid of gnats breeding in her nasal passage: “I started drinking Bazi, and it cleaned up the entire infection in, like, three days,” she says.
So it works wonders for increasing your health. But these people also love Bazi for the promise of wealth.
“Do you have dreams of being rich some day?” asks Chenault.
“Oh, yeah,” replies twenty-year-old Austin, the youngest recruit, who works at a 7-Eleven.
Chenault, who fizzes with fellowship, pauses and looks at Austin like he’s the only person in the room. “I can see it in your eyes,” he says, then turns back to the crowd. “Bazi can give him that. That’s the magic of this business. That’s why I am so committed to each and every one of you having the kind of life that we’re talking about. The business is about people.
“If you teach four people to do exactly the same thing and your four people come in at five cases and they teach their four people? That means you get paid ten dollars apiece on those people,” Chenault continues. As he explains the Bazi distribution system, an assistant writes numbers representing potential income on the whiteboard, starting at the top and moving down. “And your biggest goal is to drive this thing five levels deep, because [XELR8] doubles your commission to 10 percent and you let geometric progression take over. And you’ve got 1,024 people in your business, times a two-case auto-ship, times 10 percent, you made $20,480 on that level — and you just made yourself that $800 a day. That’s incredible money. And that goes on forever, and it’s happening right now.” But money isn’t the end in itself, Chenault says. It simply buys us the freedom to be with the ones we love. That’s the way it was for him twenty years ago when he left his high-flying life as a stockbroker, quit drinking and began looking for a way to work from his Littleton home. He and his wife, Denise, wound up becoming one of the top distributors for a health-products multi-level marketing company called Youngevity, where they built an organization of over 93,000 distributors; Chenault also hosted a radio program focusing on home-based business. Chenault knew Greenberg from his days as a stockbroker, and when he heard that his friend was getting ready to introduce Bazi, he got so excited about the product and its potential for growth that he came on board as the very first distributor. And he brought many in his network along.
For Chenault, the beauty of the XELR8 model is that it allows individuals to use the equity of their own effort and their relationships to build a business. “You want to make darn sure that you have got the ability to leverage yourself,” he says. “Denise and I get paid a little tiny bit off of every person in this room. And you go out and multiply and we get paid a little tiny bit on those people, and those people and those people. You are leveraging other people’s money, other people’s time, other people’s efforts.”
Andrea Vahl, a stay-at-home mom, recently signed up as a distributor; she’s working hard at building a downline by using XELR8′s “invite, taste, follow-up” recruitment method. After Chenault’s presentation, she turns to the potential recruit she brought to Buzz. “There are people who have a real negative attitude toward network marketing and they don’t really understand it,” she says. “I think the tide is turning where people are realizing it’s not a scam. It’s just a different way to make money.”

In his XELR8 office, Sandy Greenberg points to a wall filled with framed photos of Bazi endorsers. “Cadillac Williams at one of our events,” he says. “He was rookie of the year and the top running back for Tampa Bay. That’s Mike Alstott; he’s a fullback for Tampa. Darick Holmes. Becky Quinn, she’s an amazing cyclist.” Some of the celebrities in the photos — Arnold Schwarzenegger chilling with Greenberg, for example — haven’t endorsed Bazi. Not yet, at least.
The supplement also has found fans among prominent Denverites. Auto pitchman “Dealin’ Doug” Moreland was among the early investors in XELR8, as was Denver developer/restaurateur Jim Sullivan. Steve Rosdal, founder of Hyde Park Jewelers, is a top distributor; he recruited former CBS4 sportscaster Les Shapiro.
Greenberg’s pictures aren’t limited to athletes and other celebrities. He also displays tigers. “This I bought in Hawaii,” he says, pointing to the large, brightly colored painting of a tiger’s face in front of a full moon. “I saw this back in the day, and my thing was ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ So I just fell in love with this picture and had to have it. I think I bought this fifteen years ago. Now everyone tells me it’s dated, get it out of the office. But I like it.”
XELR8 headquarters is located in a stucco building on South Holly Street that’s actually owned by Greenberg’s father, former stockbroker Arnold Greenberg. “It’s a pretty efficient little building,” says the younger Greenberg, who went to George Washington High School, just down the street. “We’ve been in there since we started. And the rent’s right — for right now.” Bazi is actually produced in Phoenix by Arizona Production & Packaging, which ships the bottles directly to a Bazi warehouse near Denver International Airport. The Denver offices are used solely for administration and presentations for potential distributors. And there are plenty of those, recruited by friends and those billboards promising health and wealth. Bazi got another boost this February, when XELR8 announced “an affiliation” with the renowned Steadman Hawkins Clinic, a specialist in sports medicine with facilities in Vail and Greenville, North Carolina. “We did due diligence on its quality, and now our dieticians can offer Bazi throughout our facilities,” said Dr. Jim Silliman, CEO of Steadman Hawkins.”Bazi and XELR8 has signed a contract with the Greenville Hospital System, and Steadman Hawkins doctors are employed by GHS. That’s a big hospital system.” Although Hawkins says he drinks Bazi himself and has appeared in XELR8 videos shown at events promoting Bazi. “Many companies know that there are many expenses to get to the point where you can become profitable.”
The vast majority of XELR8′s expenses are in sales and marketing, which increased from $3 million in 2007 to $5 million in 2008. “It’s commissions, it’s producing marketing materials, promotional materials, events,” says Elias.
Events like the May 2 conference — and the annual convention in Las Vegas in February, which attracted 400 Bazi distributors from across the country for two days of seminars, presentations, ceremonies and general cheerleading for the cause. And many of those athletic endorsements come with a price. The XELR8 website proudly showcases more than 350 professional and Olympic athletes, all adamant Bazi drinkers: pitchers Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson, NHL goalie Marty Turco, golfer Tom Pernice Jr., Super Bowl champs Marco Rivera and Mike Alstott.
While a frequent exhortation of distributors is that “none of the athletes are getting paid to endorse XELR8,” the company’s president, Doug Ridley, does acknowledge that some of the athletes receive cash, stock options and free product for appearing in marketing videos and at promotional events. But he says that such compensation is minuscule compared to the endorsement fees handed out by larger companies. “I think the distinction is that most of the athletes we have are not endorsers,” he explains. “They’re customers, and they pay for the product because they love it.”

I believe I am a changed person,” says Les Shapiro. “Multi-level marketing doesn’t just teach us how to be better salespeople, it applies to life in general — being a better father, mother, husband, whatever. It does make you a better person.” Shapiro, who was laid off by Channel 4 in 1999, says he never imagined getting involved in this type of business until his friend Rosdal, who’d recently retired, gave him a bottle of Bazi.
“I didn’t like the taste at first,” Shapiro admits. But after about a week, he started noticing that his health was better. “I was no longer wanting to take a nap in the late afternoon; my workouts were longer and harder,” he says. “I play a lot of baseball, and I had a lot of junk going on in my shoulder. It totally went away. My allergy symptoms subsided. I had started using reading glasses in the morning for small print, and I didn’t need them in the morning.”
Today Shapiro has 200 distributors under him and says he makes a good residual income with Bazi.

The magic is strong. Both the FTC and the Colorado Attorney General’s Office report that they’ve received no complaints about the company. Greenberg says that’s because he and his executive team have worked hard to build XELR8′s credibility, launching it as a publicly held security and making regular financial disclosures to federal regulators, even when those disclosures are disappointing. But the work has paid off with Bazi’s army.
“I think we’ve paid our dues and certainly invested a lot of money and time,” says Greenberg. “We’re right at the tipping point.” XELR8 collected $7.4 million in revenue last year, an increase of 53% over 2007, and Greenberg says it’s only going up from here.
“I’ve seen what corporate America looks like,” says Greenberg. “They’re laying people off. The old structure is going down.”

Happiness Is In You :)

There once was a very wealthy and successful man. He had more money than he could ever spend and he was admired and looked up to by his community. Still, he knew that something was missing in his life. He wasn’t happy. All his life he had pursued happiness and strived for happiness but had never been able to find it.
Then one day he heard about a hidden temple in Nepal that had a special room that contained the secret to happiness. He immediately sold all that he owned and set out to find this hidden temple. After many years of searching and countless hardships he arrived there. He was weary and pennyless, but he knew that none of that mattered now that he had found the temple.
He asked a wise, smiling monk if he could enter the special room. The monk agreed and showed him the stairs leading to the room. He climbed them with legs shaking with anticipation and slowly opened the door. He stared into the room with sunlight streaming through the window and saw what he had come so far to find. There hanging on the wall was the secret of happiness. The man gazed at his reflection in the mirror and laughed.
It is time that we all realized that we are the secret to our own happiness. Happiness is a choice that we make within. God loves us and gives each one of us the ability to fill our lives with love, joy, peace, happiness, and oneness with Him. We need only choose to do so moment by moment and day by day.
It doesn’t matter what our outer circumstances are either, because the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Don’t spend the rest of your life searching the world for happiness then.
Just look in the mirror and laugh. Just let the happiness flow from your heart, mind, and soul until it fills your life and the lives of all those around you.

Financial Worries About The Recession Driving Tens Of Thousands To Network Marketing Refuge

The 4th quarter of 2008 was the worst in 75 years, unemployment is higher than it’s been in decades and the only thing falling faster than home values is the stock market! Frightened middle managers are turning to Network Marketing. Unemployment lines are growing as jobless rate soars

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Press Release) – Mar 06, 2009 – Times are scary. As middle managers are scrambling to find new jobs or protect their income, many are turning to Network Marketing or Social Marketing. Network Marketing companies grow much like FaceBook or MySpace groups with friends telling friends.

However, choosing the right Network Marketing opportunity isn’t as simple as many think. The two most important questions anyone should ask themselves when they are considering becoming involved with Network Marketing is: Which company should I join? and, who should I choose as my sponsor? In reality, you’ll want to reverse the order of those two questions, because when you find the right sponsor, you will have also found the right company. If you ask yourself those two questions first, the answers will save you a great deal of time and money! Most Network Marketers never make any real money. It’s True! In fact, many of these distributors never get a bonus check at all. Over 90% are wholesale buyers of the products or services and only hope they will one day be financially successful. Chances are, their brother, sister, cousin, friend or co-worker shared a product with them that they liked so they joined as a distributor to get the best pricing. From that point on, if they ever sponsor anyone, it’s pretty much by accident. I am not saying that inexperienced or under-skilled distributors are bad people, only that their chosen company is often by accident rather than design. In other words because someone of some influence showed them a product or service that appealed to them, they basically fall into the company they end up representing. Then, at best, they become what is know as a “some-timer” or someone who works their business only occasionally or sometimes. Meaning they only go to work when you happen to drop by their house and ask them why they have all those products on their kitchen sink or in their bathroom. Then you join their company because you like the products too. The problem with this method of due diligence is most Network Marketing companies fail in their first few years. Or to put it another way, you have about a 95% chance that any time you spend building your Home Based Business, is probably going to be wasted time!

“It’s the economy stupid.”

This of course is the now famous advice given to a presidential candidate several years ago that got him elected. Because today’s economy looks as though it’s dangerously anemic (oh what the heck, it’s going in the toilet!), literally thousands are looking for ways to supplement their income. And some want to create a backup position as a hedge against the very real possibility of losing their job. It isn’t about having a strong desire to own their own business or even building financial independence, it’s about survival! That’s why the sponsor they choose is so IMPORTANT! They simply cannot afford to take a chance on a friend or relative or under-skilled networker trying to teach them how to build a successful business when they have never been able to do it for themselves. And they certainly can’t leave it up to them choosing which company you will represent.

The bottom line…

These terrified masses are running every which way because, metaphorically, someone yelled fire in a theater. These financial crispy critters don’t know where to go, they just want to escape. Many will get trapped without a stable company, without a viable product and without proper training from a professional who can make all the difference. When facing what has been touted as the financial apocalypse, choosing the right sponsor and the right company is too vitally IMPORTANT to leave to chance! The fact is, I have the the experience and the track record you are looking for…or should be. Why not contact me for more information and we can talk further. When you do, it might just change your life!

Cause I Want To Grow A Tree

“What are you doing with that acorn?” Jimmy Squirrel said to his best friend Tom.
“It’s the perfect size,” Tom replied. “I’m going to drop it in the big field.”
“What for?” Jimmy queried.
“`Cause a huge oak is just a nut that held its ground,” Tom smiled and the banter began. Every fall they played at words while collecting food for winter.

“You did that last year,” Jimmy quipped.
“Yeah,” Tom grunted.
“Didn’t work,” Jimmy jabbed.
“Failure is the fertilizer of success,” Tom retorted.
“Didn’t work the year before either,” Jimmy stabbed.
“The greatest weakness lies in giving up,” Tom claimed. “The best way to succeed is to always try one more time.”
Jimmy scratched his ear. “What if it never works?”
“The only reason you’re sitting in the shade right now is because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Tom smiled in satisfaction.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you,” Jimmy gloated.
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor,” Tom fired back.
“You’re not even going to live long enough to eat any of the nuts.” Jimmy batted his eyebrows.
“I’d rather sow in the spring than beg in the fall,” Tom nodded. “We all know that success is a matter of luck. All you have to do is ask any failure.”
“Ouch!” Jimmy winced. “That’s harsh. Are you always this poetic?”
“Only when it comes to acorns. If you can’t be the poet, be the poem.”

“Why don’t you store that nut in your cupboard for a snowy, February morning?”
“`Cause I want to grow a tree, Jimmy,” Tom said quietly. “Nobody is remembered for how many times they failed—only by how many times they succeeded. No one will remember the fallen acorns but all will gaze upon the oak scratching the sky.”
“Lot of work for not much reward,” Jimmy moaned.
“Anyone that argues for their own limitations gets to keep them. I never saw a statue put up for a critic.” Tom taunted his pal, egging him into debate.

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” Jimmy smirked.
“The harder I work the luckier I get,” Tom responded.
“Even a blind pig finds an ear of corn now and again,” Jimmy challenged. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“One who wants milk shouldn’t sit in middle of a pasture waiting for a cow to back up to him.” Tom started walking. “I’ll bury an extra acorn, for luck’s sake.”
Jimmy tugged his friend’s tail. “Sometimes you feel like a nut,” he sang, bursting into laughter.
“Sometimes you don’t,” Tom chuckled with him.

Keep planting seeds for your future if you want a bountiful harvest.

Just Jump Out Of Bed and Smile.

The world is changing every day. More, now than ever before, people are waking up and realizing that in order to make a difference and be their best in the world, they need to follow their soul’s lead and let go of those old beliefs about themselves that aren’t serving them anymore. So many people stay stuck where they are because they don’t value themselves fully. Recently I started working with a person – we’ll call her Tiffany that was having trouble getting herself to believe that she could find her power. Tiffany who has so many obvious talents and abilities she’s smart as a whip and has an encyclopedic knowledge of a variety of interesting topics. She happily rattles off resources, ideas, tidbits of information. She is extremely easy to look at and it’s very clear that Tiffany loves to help others and is always right there with some relevant information.
While Tiffany has many talents that are obvious to me, she has a difficult time recognizing them in herself. In a recent meeting I was telling her how much I appreciated her intellect and she started to cry. She shared with me that she doesn’t really feel that way about herself and struggles to appreciate her own qualities. I can certainly relate. There was a time when I struggled with my own gifts too, thinking they weren’t really that special.
But I got  over that, and Tiffany is on her way now too, she is now one of my best team mates. All of us have wonderful qualities that are unique and special. And we should lovingly appreciate ourselves for all of these qualities. It’s a delicate dance, though isn’t it? We don’t want to come off as an ego-maniac or a jerk by flaunting how great we are. But we also owe it to ourselves to heal the part of us that tells us to play small and undervalue our own gifts. Are there qualities that others tell you they appreciate, that you can’t appreciate in yourself? Are you hanging on to past hurts or beliefs that aren’t serving you?  Well then it’s time to let this all go. It’s time to get in touch with yourself, your gifts and let your inner star shine brightly. The world needs us now more than ever before, to stand in our power, to know who we are, what we believe in and be willing to take a powerful stand for those things that we care about. Believing in yourself is a very powerful tool to self empowerment. Loving yourself is the best gift you could ever give yourself – or the world.

Don’t  settle for an unhappy life no matter what, ANYONE can change!

Virtues for Fitness Success

These are the  virtues that I think are necessary to have a successful training program and they are 1.) Desire 2.) Commitment 3.) Be Goal Oriented 4.) Intensity 5.) Persistence and Perseverance.

Desire is the underlying force which has impelled you to seek change. It is a powerful thing when a person who has long desired to change their body, finally becomes so fed up, that in their their mind there is no alternative but to begin taking the steps to create change. In short, a person has to want to change, and to truly create radical physical change takes total commitment, NOBODY can make you do it.

Commitment is a dirty word to many in our culture today, but with respect to creating physical change total commitment is necessary. What is total commitment; it is being willing to do whatever it takes to achieve your goal, no matter what. Re-creating your body necessitates a 24/7 commitment. Your food intake must be strictly regulated every meal and snack, every day. You cannot miss workouts just because you are not feeling one hundred percent that day. You cannot miss workouts because you had a bad day or your boss or your spouse is angry with you. Success necessitates that a person overcomes all adversity and sticks to the workout program and eating plan no matter what, without any excuses. If it was easy everyone would be in great shape.

Goal Oriented is having, at the very least, a mental picture of how you want the outcome of your training to be. I strongly advise each and every client of mine to obtain a picture which represents how they want to look. I require that it be a person of similar physical structure who has optimized their physical condition. Constantly meditating on that image keeps a goal visually present and helps immeasurably in fueling the desire to go on to total success. Hang a picture of your pefect self somewhere that you can see it daily.

Intensity, if you want to get results from your training, you must train with sufficient intensity. What does this mean? It means pitty-pat workouts will not do the job. I, as a trainer regularly see people who by no means are training with sufficient intensity to create change. They go through workouts which do not create results for months, even years, but results will never come unless they put in the sweat and elbow grease it takes to reshape a body. Proper intensity is training as hard as you are capable during the entire length of the workout. Workouts without deep muscle burn will not create change. Sweating is good thing, it is the body’s response to vigorous exercise. No sweat in this old trainer’s book equals insufficient intensity.

Persistence and Perseverance. Do you want to succeed? Dogged determination to create results must be practiced for a successful training program. What is persistence? It is doing what needs to be done to create physical change each and every scheduled training day without exception. Intense weight training sessions done as scheduled without calling off and never missing your cardio sessions, this will create change Perseverance is gutting it out, sticking to the program even when your mind tells you that you are wasting your time. There will be times when you think that you are not changing quickly enough and it is at these times that you will be tempted to throw in the towel and quit. Perseverance is what causes a person to stay the course, do what needs to be done for a long enough time to attain desirable results.

You can do it I know you can. Just get off your fat ass and start!

Neil Armstrong “Moon Landing Was Faked”

I am not sure who wrote this but it is truly saddening!

LEBANON, OHIO—Apollo 11 mission commander and famed astronaut Neil Armstrong shocked reporters at a press conference Monday, announcing he had been convinced that his historic first step on the moon was part of an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the United States government. According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman’s website, OmissionControl.org.  “It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind’s so-called ‘greatest technological achievement’ for me to realize I had been living a lie, ” said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. “It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico.”  “This is the only logical interpretation of the numerous inconsistencies in the grainy, 40-year-old footage,” Armstrong added. Amstrong was swayed by OmissionControl’s use of bolding and capital letters to highlight NASA’s many blatant fallacies. Although Armstrong said he “could have sworn” he felt the effects of zero gravity while soaring out of the Earth’s atmosphere and through space, he now believed his memory must be flawed. He also admitted feeling “ashamed” that he had failed to notice the rippling of the American flag he and Buzz Aldrin planted on the surface, blaming his lack of awareness on the bulkiness of the spacesuit and his excitement about traveling to the “moon.” “That rippling is not possible in the vacuum of space,” Armstrong said. “It must have been the wind from an air-conditioning duct that I didn’t recognize because you can’t hear a damn thing inside those helmets.”  “This is all just common sense, people,” he added. “It’s the moon. You can’t land on the moon.”  In a symbolic display of his newfound skepticism, Armstrong then grabbed a collection of moon rocks he had kept as souvenirs and dramatically dumped them into a trash can. One of the main arguments posited on Coleman’s website—that America could not, in 1969, have realistically possessed the technological capabilities needed to put a man on the moon—was reportedly one of the first things to cause the legendary astronaut a pang of doubt. Despite having spent thousands of hours training for the historic mission under the guidance of the world’s top scientists, technicians, and pilots, Armstrong said he knew the conspiracy theories were true after learning that website author Coleman was “quite the engineering buff.”  “Yes, at the time I thought those thousands of NASA employees were working round the clock for the same incredible goal, but if anyone would know what was really going on, it would be Ralph Coleman,” Armstrong said of the 31-year-old part-time librarian’s assistant. “He knows a lot more about faked moon landings than I ever could. He’s been researching the subject on the Internet for years.” “Literally years,” he added.  Addressing another inconsistency brought to light by OmissionControl, Armstrong explained he was probably so focused on piloting the lunar module that he failed to notice that one of the moon rocks visible in footage of the landing appears to have the letter ‘C’ stamped on it. An emotional Armstrong said that the only possible explanation for this detail was that the rock actually came from NASA’s prop department. “They forgot to turn it over,” Armstrong said, removing his eyeglasses to wipe away tears. “Those lying bastards at NASA went through all the trouble to fake the moon landing, but they forgot to turn over one little prop rock. And now the whole damn thing’s blowing up in their faces.” Although Armstrong initially questioned why the U.S. would attempt such an elaborate cover-up, he cited one overarching explanation provided by Coleman: that it was a ploy to defeat the Soviet Union and fulfill the Illuminati’s plan to unify the world’s banks and control the dissemination of information.  “Just ask Ralph Coleman,” Armstrong said. “He’ll answer any questions you have.” To conclude the press conference, Armstrong showed reporters footage of his first steps on the moon to demonstrate that the most daming evidence was “right under our noses.” Speeding up the tape and replaying the graceful moonwalk several times in a row, Armstrong explained that the iconic images of humanity’s triumphant dance with the cosmos was actually just a film of him walking backwards, slowed down, and played in reverse.  “What other explanation could there be?” Armstrong asked. “It’s all right here. Everything is all right here if you’d just open your damn eyes and see!”

Added Armstrong, “I suppose it really was one small step for man, one giant lie for mankind.”

Slow Down and Love Life

The other day I was just to busy for my friends,my family and even myself and I was in a whiney kinda mood which is highly unusual for me I guess I whined just a little to much cause a friend of mine emailed this to me and reminded me that “Life is Good”

 

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the The Mayonnaise Jar and 2 Cups of Coffee. A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed. “Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions – and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else – the small stuff.” “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.  “Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.” One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. ”I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Uncomfortable Success

I’ve heard it said before that if you want to be successful you’ve got to learn to be uncomfortable at times. I learned firsthand that there is a lot of truth in that statement.
As a budding 8 year old entrepreneur I quickly realized that if I did what other people were unwilling to do, then I was always able to find something to do that would help me get to were I wanted to be and I also learned the importance of dealing with being uncomfortable. Of course I didn’t think about it like that back then I just knew that if I got up real early on Sunday morning I could go next store to the church and sell newspapers (nobody else in the neighbor hood was willing to get up early) I love getting up early, still do. What I didn’t like was walking the short distance next store to the church through the woods I was always petrified. And It always scared the hell out of me to talk to people I didn’t know.

So when you really think about it… What’s comfortable about putting yourself out there and asking for a promotion or raise? What’s comfortable about asking someone to use or buy your product or service? What’s comfortable about reaching out and making contact with someone you don’t really know that well? What’s comfortable about taking the first step towards learning a new skill? What’s comfortable about starting to work out again? Not a whole lot now is there?
This is actually a good thing. If you are willing to be uncomfortable and stay alert you will put yourself in a much better position to take advantage of the opportunities that are all around us — even the ones we don’t always notice. Generally the reason that most people don’t achieve greater levels of success is because they either don’t recognize the opportunity in the first place, or they lack the ability to move past their self-imposed comfort zones and do the uncomfortable actions necessary to get on with finding success in their lives. Of course this is not all bad news. For one thing if you’re willing to be uncomfortable just a bit from time to time you’re going to put yourself in a much better position to take advantage of a lot of the opportunities that are all around us — even if we don’t always notice them. Keep this in mind – if you always have to feel comfortable you’re probably not giving your success the full chance it deserves and limiting yourself in ways you may not even fully realize.
Anyone can develop the mindset to try new things – always be on the lookout for new opportunities and be willing to reach beyond what you think you are capable of and go for it. Even when it doesn’t work out, you’ve still gained an invaluable life experience. It is through trying new things that we grow to the point where we realize that we’ve got every resource we need inside us to live our perfect life if we just believe in ourselves.