JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 13
June 19, 2020
You Can’t Fool Yourself
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Your brain will not sow lies,
And then reap the truth.
There is a saying in life,
“You can’t run from yourself.”
You are the only person with yourself 100% of the time.
Only you know if your toe touched the line when running suicides.
Only you know if you had more to give after the final whistle blew.
Only you know if you deserve the special force stored in your soul when you are reaching down for more.
Most people don’t have confidence because they feel that they don’t deserve it.
Why?
They know everything about themselves.
They know what they did, what they didn’t do.
And their subconscious mind made an evaluation that they didn’t deserve success.
Other people know they have done all that was asked of them, and when they reached down to get more, it is delivered because their subconscious made an evaluation and determined that they earned it.
Be in harmony with success by doing the work.
Convince the judge and jury, your subconscious mind, that you deserve success.
And success will appear.
This is a chapter from:
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June 17, 2020
Let’s All Be Americans
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In America, on September 12th, 2001
There were no democrats or republicans,
Only leaders working together for the betterment of our country.
There were no strangers,
Only friends you hadn’t met yet.
There were no blacks or whites,
Only fellow human beings needing comfort.
There was no hesitation to comfort someone who was in need.
We, as Americans, took action.
We reached out to people who needed our help.
Without being asked.
When we saw a person in need, we made that person feel loved, as best as we could.
We learned that words could never fully express our feelings, but our presence could.
Every person alive touched our soul.
Every life was important, every family was honored, and every breath was gold.
We united.
We helped.
We comforted.
And we consoled each other.
We were there for one another.
We treated each other with love.
I would never want to see any person of any generation, of any nation to ever experience anything like that dreaded day, ever again.
The combined pain and loss of our nation from that day is still incomprehensible and always will be.
It is amazing how it took adversity to bring the best out of all of us Americans.
We, as a country, as a human race, need to live every day as we did on that September 12th.
JohnA Passaro – Your Soul Knows
________
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Available at:
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June 16, 2020
Nobody Outworks You
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There may be people
That have more talent than you,
But there is no excuse
For anyone to work harder than you do.
Derek Jeter
Wrestlers are known for their work ethic.
It is what separates them from others in real life.
It is a great feeling knowing you the hardest worker in the room.
It is a characteristic most sought after by many employers.
It is the reason why wrestlers make great employees.
I’ve worked for companies that only hired athletes, especially wrestlers because they knew their work ethic would be supreme.
Many things are out of your control.
Your ability to be the hardest worker in the room is not one of them.
Take pride in the fact that nobody will ever outwork you.
This is a chapter from:
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June 11, 2020
Hard Work Wins
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Short cuts
Make long delays.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring
It is a very simple formula.
Do the work.
Put in the time.
Learn.
Apply.
And eventually, you will achieve your goals.
If you haven’t yet achieved your goals, work harder, put in more time, be smarter, and apply better.
Become wiser and more efficient with each passing day.
In “The Divine Comedy,” Dante wrote,
“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
Whenever you find yourself in a position of reflection of why you haven’t yet met your goals, the corrective action to take will be simple.
Get back to work.
Work harder.
Work smarter.
Put in more time.
Learn from your mistakes and failures.
Apply what you learned.
And then it won’t be if, but only a matter of time before you succeed.
This is a chapter from:
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June 9, 2020
Be Coachable
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You must always be
The apprentice.
Even when you become
The master.
Christopher Cumby
Whether you think you can learn from everyone, or whether you think you are too good to learn from anyone; you will be right.
Wouldn’t you rather be right increasing your knowledge rather than restricting it?
Don’t cut off your ability to learn or limit where your education will come.
I believe, how coachable you are as an athlete will dictate how you will see people in life.
If you feel you can learn something from everyone, your outlook on people in life will be vastly different than if you feel there is nobody you could learn from.
The ability to treat every person you meet with kindness, whether they are the janitor or the CEO of a major company, will allow you to learn from everyone in life.
Every person alive has a story worth telling.
A story worth hearing.
A story worth sharing.
Listen to people’s stories, and your life will be better for it.
Hear their trials and tribulations, their moments of glory, how they overcome adversity.
Meet the people they love and learn the reasons why they do.
Be curious.
Learn from other people’s lives, and your life will be fuller for doing so.
Be open to the fact that every person on this earth can teach you something.
And you will find, they will.
This is a chapter from:
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June 7, 2020
Make Your Teammates Better
We’re a team.
One person struggles; we all struggle.
One person triumphs; we all triumph.
Coach Carter
It is so easy to get caught up thinking that wrestling is an individual sport.
It is, but it also happens to be one of the greatest team sports in existence.
In wrestling, your teammates are your coaches, your workout partners, your family, your fans, and your mentors.
They are all there to make you better.
Your success, in a small way, is their success.
Your pain is their pain.
Your growth is their growth.
****
One day wrestling will be over.
And your new opponent will be life.
And your new teammates will be your family.
In life, the greatest team you will ever be on will be your family.
And the most important family member will be the one who makes everyone around them better.
The one during times of crisis holds everyone together.
The one who at the lowest level of hope has the highest degree of belief.
Every family member is an individual within the team.
That’s what wrestling is.
That’s what being part of a family is.
That’s what being part of a community is.
That’s what being part of a country is.
As Timo Cruz said in Coach Carter,
“We’re a team. One person struggles; we all struggle. One person triumphs, we all triumph.”
The ability to treat every person you meet with kindness, whether they are the janitor or the CEO of a major company, will allow you to learn from everyone in life.
This is a chapter from:
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May 31, 2020
Iron Sharpens Iron
As iron sharpens iron,
So, one person sharpens another.
Proverbs 27:17
Rivals bring out the best in you.
They make you train harder; they make you obsess over the details, the small things, the important things.
They require you to be at your best or pay the price.
The process of seeking out, training, and preparing for the best competition will push you, drive you, inspire you.
It will sharpen you.
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When asked if he would rather fight against the best fighters or be undefeated, the legendary Sugar Ray Leonard responded with these wise words,
“They think being 25-0 means something.
It doesn’t mean anything.
It’s okay to have two or three losses.
It’s what kind of fighter you are that the people respect.
I have a few losses on my record, but that doesn’t justify who I am.
Hearn’s had losses.
Duran had losses.
Hagler had losses.
That made us better fighters.”
Competition with losses against elite opponents is more valuable than competition without losses against inferior opponents.
This is a chapter from:
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May 28, 2020
Feed the Good
Your life is your garden,
Your thoughts are your seeds.
If your life isn’t awesome,
You have been watering the weeds.
Terry Prince
Every person alive has chatter inside their heads.
Some of it is good, some of it bad.
We don’t get to choose the chatter.
But we do get to choose which chatter becomes louder.
The chatter that becomes louder will be the chatter that you feed.
Henry David Thoreau put it this way,
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so, a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
To make a deep physical path, we need to walk again and again.
To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”
Your brain is miraculous.
Inside your brain are good thoughts that will steer your life.
Your job is to find them and feed them.
This is a chapter from:
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Surround Yourself With Great People With Like-Minded Goals
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You are the average of the five people
You spend the most time with.
Jim Rohn
Imagine you are part of an experiment where you must relinquish your thoughts and your decision-making process to someone in your life for a full month.
And the goal is that after a month you must be closer to your goal than before the month started.
Now go through every person you associate with in your life and ask yourself,
“Would I trust that responsibility to anyone?”
If your answer is no, then you got some cleaning house to do.
If the answer is yes, that’s your inner circle.
That’s your alliance.
Those are the people you keep in your life.
You might say this experiment may seem far-fetched, that you will never allow anyone in your life to 100% think for you or to make all decisions for you.
I beg to differ.
There will be a time in your life when you will not be at your best, and you will have to rely on those closest to you for guidance.
They will influence you.
For good or for bad.
Choose wisely who you associate with as one day they may be the one asked to take life’s wheel for you.
This is a chapter from:
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Live In the Zone
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Good and great
Are seldom in the same man.
Winston S. Churchill
Cracker Barrel has a hand-held game where the object of the game is to roll a small ball into a tiny hole by minutely tilting the board it is on in different directions.
It looks easy.
Until you attempt it.
And when you do, no matter how precise your tilt of the board may be, the ball will get close to the hole and carom away.
It takes many, many attempts to get the tilt just right so the ball falls into the hole.
After many attempts and lots of frustration, your tilt will be just right, your poise and balance will be exactly appropriate, and the ball will magnetically roll into the hole.
That is the best description of The Zone.
The Zone is the time and place in life where everything comes together perfectly.
It is where good transitions into great.
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The Zone is a self-made state of massive production.
It is where focus, work, and time combine for phenomenal results.
It is the place where everything goes your way; every break, every call, every roll of the ball, it all goes your way.
The Zone is an extremely rare state, one which is most difficult to get into.
You get “In the Zone” by having extreme focus, discipline, and perseverance.
You get “In the Zone” when you keep pushing good to become great.
Once you arrive “In the Zone” you must preserve your time there like a rodeo rider attempting to stay on a bucking horse for as long as he can.
Every second counts.
Every experience counts.
Time and experience are prerequisites for entry into The Zone.
On each attempt and subsequent failure, you are writing your algorithm for success.
Each attempt becomes better than your last as failure supplies new information for you to incorporate in your next attempt.
With each attempt and subsequent failure, good is getting one step closer to becoming great.
How many attempts will be needed to have good become great?
That is unknown.
But there is an amount.
The challenge is to walk with the unknown until the known is revealed.
Learn to be comfortable in the unknown.
As its mastery is vital to your success.
Thrive in it.
As it will lead you to The Zone.
Where good gets turned into great.
Live In the Zone
Is a chapter from,
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