Born in the Dark

Return of the Body Snatchers

Pushing; Forty

Usually the patient comes in and tells me how they are doing so many things, staying up late, waking up early and basically just burning the candle at both ends.

It’s my duty, as a holistic practitioner, to address their lifestyle with Chinese medicine and some lifestyle advice.

I’m usually the one telling people to slow down.  Get more rest.  Drink more water.  Eat better.  And then I give them acupuncture that essentially jacks up their root water and root fire processes of the body.  It’s a long process and is more common than not in today’s rat race.

A new patient came in two days ago.  Burnt out.  When asking her about her sleep she told me that she doesn’t get a lot of it.  When I pressed some more she told me that she never wakes up feeling rested.  Two kids.  A job to help support the family.  But there’s more.

She wakes up at 4am every day to work on her Masters in Epidemiology.  Then she goes to work, comes home to take care of her kids – and get this – she’s coming to see me for plantar fasciitis so that she can keep running.

So instead of telling this 40-year-old woman who is burning the candle at both ends the usual, I told her to keep pushing for another six months and get it done.  I told her that she should be proud of herself.  And I gave the best supportive treatment I’ve got.

Never settle.

Growl.

It’s All In The Mind

People with a soft mentality disgust me. They live and die the same person they were made.

-David Goggins

Inside or Outside The Ring: Keep Fighting

Stolen from Ross.

If They Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say

Elementary school isn’t so far away when one looks back because of all the hurtful things that were said.  I’m average height now, but spiked in my early years.  Every year we had an event called a walk-run.  It’s where you could either, you guessed it, walk or run.  It was designed to improve company fitness morale and it worked.  For every lap of a very long course, one would attain a painted-on-both-ends-popsicle-stick.  After the event that lasted a few weeks, we would trade in our popsicle sticks for awards and certificates.

I was always out there running but was always made fun of.  My legs would flare out as I would run because I didn’t have control of my body yet.  I actually didn’t even know this was happening until I saw one of my student peers running, throwing their feet out to the side mid-stride and laughing and pointing at me.

In High school, I had the same English teacher for three years beacuse that class split with another one.  Over the course of those three years, she proceeded to tell me that my writing skills were deteriorating.  I had been writing the same way she had wanted and she was failing me.  When it came time for provincial exams before graduation, I told her that I was going to an exam prep course for English writing.  She told me that they were worthless and it wouldn’t be able to help me anyways.

If they don’t have anything nice to say, f*ck ‘em.

I now run sprints and compete in local trail race events.  That exam prep was the best time I’d had, learned a new way to write essays and brought my average up in her class because I rocked that provincial exam.  Now I’m a published author.

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

CTK

Something In My Veins

Birthday is coming up in January.  Capricorn.  Goat.

Chinese Zodiac is a Goat as well.

Ninjagoat.

Another year almost done and I’ve got more drive than ever.

Feelings of running out of time – who has time for burnout?

Something in my veins.

I Don’t Watch TV

But when I do, it’s with my wife with melted cheese on nachos with salsa on a Friday night with the children tucked warmly in bed.

Jay-Z State of Mind

Watched Jay-Z on Oprah’s Masterclass series a while back.  Said he was taught to walk fast through the projects so that if anyone was tailing him, they wouldn’t be able to keep up.  I believe this also taught another important life-lesson.

While it’s not the projects, the Darkside at night, with its ~7 bars, brand new sex shop and all-nite pizzeria, lights up with undesirables when I leave the clinic to walk to the car.

But walking fast has more to do with being a modern-day hustler than getting away from the baddies.  I park several blocks away to avoid the $12.00 fee to park.  I walk fast for the exercise of it.  I walk fast because I’m going places.

CTK

Actuate

Less waiting.  Put the plan in motion.

Go buy that house so that your house will sell.  Go write that book so that those customers will have something.  Go run those sprints so that you’re ready at all times.

They asked me how I do it all.  Time management.  No TV, only books.  Four days of push.  Teaching, clinic, writing between patients, personal training before the house wakes up, eating 16oz gloves for lunch and when I’m not at work – I’m not working (read: family time/downtime).

“We cannot control the winds, but we can direct the sails.”

Talk Test

It is a common response, in the fitness industry, when asked, “How hard should I be going at it?” to be, “Make sure you can still talk.  If you can’t talk, you’re going too hard.”

Bullocks.

If you can still talk, breathe, feel your legs underneath you and still have the ability to comprehend my instructions (which is why I might be yelling at you) – you ain’t working hard enough.

’nuff said.

CTK

100 Pull-up Challenge

46 years old.  Stolen from Ross Boxing blog.  What’s your excuse?

Are You Ready to Succeed?

(The book is good, too.)

I’ve Decided

I’ve decided to stop caring if I’m any good or not at Wing Chun.

But I’ve decided to keep caring if I can outlast you or not.

CTK

You Are Not A Robot

A conversation with a patient stirred this up in my head.  You are not a robot – we are not robots.  We are human beings.

What is about emotions that we shun?  She was angry but didn’t know what to do with it.  “Be angry!” I said.

What good is it to stuff it way down?  To not make time to feel?  Sure, the treatment would calm and ease and soothe the emotion, but what of the situation that brought it on in the first place?  Surely she would be angry again unless the situation changed.

And that’s the point right there – change.  How can we possibly change the outcome if we didn’t get angry?  If we didn’t feel sadness?  And how would we know that we should keep doing what we’re doing if we didn’t feel happy wash over our being?

CTK

Now or Never

Everything’s changing around me
And I want to change too
It’s one thing I know
It ain’t cool being no fool
I feel different today
I don’t know what else to say
But Imma get my shit together
It’s now or never

More Than Time Management

First, we need to

Use The Opportunity

so

We Can Get Free

CTK

10 Minutes

I had 10 minutes.  I came prepared.

10 minutes to get changed.

9 minutes to get to the park.

8 minutes to get my 100 burpees done.

3 minutes to get back to the clinic.

2 minutes to get dressed.

1 minute to write this post.

It’s show time.

CTK

 

Stop Whining

Ambition; Motivation, Drive, Desire

Are you committed?

Definition of COMMIT

: to place in a prison or mental institution <a patient committed by the court to a state hospital>

Have you put yourself in that place?  That institution of your mind that breeds nothing but motivation, drive and desire to become what you are to become?

Or are your shirking the responsibility bestowed upon you by your soul?

I don’t know about you – but they gon’ love me for my ambition.

CTK