Richard Branson on his love for risk
October 19, 2009 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
The Committment
May 1, 2008 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
The most important commitment you can make is the one that you make to yourself. When you make a commitment to yourself and fulfill it you demonstrate that you have the ability and motivation to succeed and excel in your life.
Fullfiling a commitment is the first step in reaching and achieving your goals. Being successful at something that has real importance in your life is not an easy task. It takes hard work, perseverance and the commitment to stay the course and see it through.
Martial arts offer many benefits to help improve your life. One of the most sought after benefits is the pursuit of health and fitness, and in our opinion there is no better method by which to achieve this. Developing a healthy lifestyle is not an easy task and in the beginning it may seem a bit overwhelming. Everyday we see average people achieving the results they seek and meeting goals, and everyday we see average people failing to see results and meet their goals. So what separates these people? The answer is simple enough, make a commitment and see it through. Work through the hard times, persevere to maintain the same enthusiasm you had when you made the commitment and above all else refrain from letting excuses derail you from your path.
In all actuality the people described above who succeed in their goals are not average at all. They are the ones who desire to improve themselves and understand that the only thing standing in the way of success is their ability to stay committed to the cause they have set fourth and persevere even in the tougher times. Unfortunately the average person will not do this, even though they posses the ability they lack the desire and drive to accomplish there goals. Usually they will quietly retreat from sight trying to convince themselves and others that this is not what they really wanted in the first place.
This is an all too common occurrence; just take a look around you. The good news is the ones who do succeed shine with integrity and a character that can become inspirational to those who seek to follow the path to success.
Till next time…
- Eric Galvan
Related Tags: blog
Evolve Your Brain
March 30, 2008 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
We determine the experiences we want to engage in, based on how well we can predict the familiarity of the feelings those experiences will trigger.
-Joe Dispenza, D.C.
This wonderful eloquent quote from Evolve Your Brain essentially sums up the human process. Stop and think for a minute about the leaders, agents of change, and those who create history books and how they have mastered the ability to harness this natural human process and use it to their great advantage. That ability is to proactively alter the “prediction of familiarity” of their feelings so that they can pre-determine what they feel when they reach their goals. And perhaps by far most importantly what they will feel (and what it means to them) when they “fail.”
All of the geniuses and people of excellence I have studied share this attitude. Unlike nearly everyone else, they have learned (or even taught themselves), that failure is a precious gift when you have a strong purpose. Those who are not afraid to fail, even welcome it, are the ones that win.
Personally I like to embrace failure because that’s when I truly learn quickly and effectively. But I also recognize that most people still choose to interpret the word “failure” so negatively that it derails them. So I usually try to transform the linguistic representation into “feedback.”
Feedback is the breakfast of Champions!
move over wheaties.
Related Tags: blog
World Changers – Inspiration Sergey Brin
April 22, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
If you’ve followed my blog you might know that I’m a big student of Google’s philosophy for business, work, creativity, leadership, etc. This story here is an amazing look into the events that shaped Sergey Brin’s model of the world and is truly inspiring.
4 Hours Sleep Project – 1 Month – Final
March 8, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · 2 Comments
The final result of training myself to sleep 4 hours like Dean Karnazes has been so much better than I could have ever expected. After really sticking to the training through February and testing the progress every Friday night, I’ve taken the last few days to start to zero in on the new ideal sleep time. I’m excited to report that I’ve been really happy with right about 5 hours at night from midnight to 5 am. Then usually one 20-35 minute nap again before starting work or in the afternoon. The naps are the best part! I almost always wake up feeling totally juiced!
It continues to amaze me how much less is necessary when the quality is that much better.
I seem to have just as much energy as I ever had, if not more. Especially with training, working out, and in general. The human body’s ability to adapt is unbelievable, and usually ignored and accepted as is. For me, what works and what’s good, usually isn’t good enough and I want to improve it.
On that note, I’ve already started my next self-training experiment. For this month I’m shifting my focus, attention and energy into immersing myself into learning Spanish. I can stumble through understanding and (barely) speaking it right now. And it’s my intention to accelerate that process as much I possibly can through this month by finding the best of the best when it comes to learning, developing, and engaging myself in the process of being fluent in Spanish. Hey, with 3.5 extra hours every day now, I’ll even have more time to work with.
More on this later and my initial strategies and thoughts.
About my 4 Hour Sleep Project
Dean Karnazes – It’s Not About Running, It’s About Life
February 5, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · Leave a Comment
Just reading about Dean Karnazes can inspire anyone to tap into deep wells of strength and courage. Here are a couple of clips that I found particularly powerful. I wanted to post it here because it has helped me to experiment with pushing my own limits of human performance such as sleeping, and has been amazing.
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!”
Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.
Outside Magazine Interview
Take a look under the hood of this engine by reading Dean’s blog.
Read about his enlightened epiphany from Wired.
Related:
Quote – Our Greatest Fear Is Not That We Are Inadequate
Secrets Of Greatness
The Alpha Project
Making Decisions – Could It Be This Easy?
January 26, 2007 by Ryan Merlin · 1 Comment
What if you could label everything in your day either:
Expanding or Distracting
Expanding – Anything that contributes, adds, increases your energy, makes you feel alive, takes steps towards your goals, communication with key people, learning something, you get the idea. Anything that increases the quality of your life.
Distracting – Anything that takes your attention away from what you really want. Thoughts, perceptions that put you in a bad mental state and sap your energy. Trying to force something you don’t have control of or the timing isn’t right. Procrastinating, waiting, escaping from your mission. (read this Powerful Quote)
Everything you do, buy, read, watch, think, say. Everything you try, everything you ignore. Every moment of the day you have a choice of what you think, pay attention to or do. Try applying this system of labeling everything you do.
Tag it just like everything on the web, like this blog post, social networks, images, etc. It makes it a whole lot easier to make decisions much faster. And like a faster computer processor, making better decisions faster will get you to what you really want much faster.
Try this challenge for one full day and see the incredible results in what you accomplish, how much easier things flow, how much better you feel because you know what you’re doing really matters.
Deciding to do it is easy, but remembering and reminding yourself all day might take some work. So here’s what you do:
- Make the commitment to do this for at least one full day from when you wake up to when you go to sleep.
- Write something on your dominant hand, discrete like “E – D”
- Recruit a friend, spouse, relative, to challenge each other
- Carry a notebook and keep track, jot some notes like notes from a meeting.
- What are some other ways you could remind yourself throughout the day?
This has everything to do with learning to direct your focus. It is the premise of the movie The Secret. I’ve talked about it before as one of the most important lessons in bike racing. Learn to direct your mind and everything else will follow. I’ve talked about how this is the Champion’s Path from Tiger Woods and other greats. Even if you don’t quite know what your goals and intentions are like I talked about here, you can still use this as a guidance system.
If you do this right, I guarantee you’ll be surprised at some of the automatic decisions that are made throughout your day. As the CEO of your life, the trick is to fire those automatic decisions (habits) and hire some new ones.
Related:
Directing Attention Focus & Results
Secrets Of Greatness
The Alpha Project
“I Am The Greatest” Muhammad Ali