JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 24
October 16, 2019
There Is No Gene For the Human Spirit
[image error]
In the movie Gattaca, people were divided into two segments.
The Superiors and the Invalids.
The Superiors had the perfect storm of DNA, they were destined to win at everything.
The invalids had flaws and were destined to fail.
In one of the best scenes of the movie Vincent, an invalid beat his brother Anton, a Superior, in a swim race to the other side of the lake and back.
According to the laws of Gattaca, this shouldn’t have happened.
Vincent explains how he beat his brother in a race to the other side of the lake and back.
“I never saved anything for the swim back.”
What Gattaca didn’t realize is that there is no gene for the human spirit.
Whole People
[image error]
Human greatness
Does not lie in wealth or power,
But in character and goodness.
Anne Frank
In John Mackey’s book “Conscious Capitalism” he tells the story of when
Whole Foods was just starting out.
Early in the company’s history, when Whole Foods had only four stores, Texas was hit with a great flood.
It wiped Whole Foods out.
They lost everything.
All inventory.
All equipment.
All hope.
All four of its stores were completely flooded.
Absolute and utter destruction.
They had no resources to recover.
They had no cash, no credit and no way of rebuilding.
In his book, John Mackey reminisces about the day after the rains had stopped when he literally swam to one of the Whole Foods stores.
When he arrived after the mile swim he was surprised by what he saw.
Total strangers were uniting to rebuild the Whole Foods store.
Strangers had cleaned up the debris, they pumped out the water, they swept away the dirt.
They offered him money.
Vendors extended him credit.
It took 28 days but the store recovered.
When John Mackey asked the strangers why they did what they did without being asked they replied,
“We love and believe in Whole Foods.
It is a good thing and you are a good man.
We just couldn’t see it destroyed.
We just had to help rebuild it.
It means that much to us.”
[image error]
Whole Foods currently has 2,100 locations and produces over $11 Billion dollars in annual revenue.
It has been the primary catalyst for healthier eating in millions of our lives.
[image error]
And in the process, it has touched the lives of millions of people in a positive way.
It is amazing what Whole Foods has turned into.
To think if it weren’t for the kindness of total strangers, Whole Foods wouldn’t exist today.
We all need love, especially in our time of need.
A company with 11 billion dollars in annual sales would have failed to exist if it didn’t get love at the right time.
Imagine, a few people’s love allowed Whole Foods to go from 4 stores to 2,100 stores and 11 billion in sales.
Every one of us has an opportunity to do the same thing.
We all see people in need every day of our lives.
Dante wrote: “He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he refused it.”
Act before being asked.
We each can be there for one another, providing hope and kindness in the midst of utter devastation.
Not allowing a good person or a good thing to die.
To rebuild.
To keep the mission alive.
Imagine if this rebuilding concept is duplicated 278 million times daily in the United States.
Imagine how many “Whole People” we could rebuild.
It has been said the way you value a life lived is by the army that comes together in its time of need.
If you value ones’ life, be there to help rebuild that life after a storm has hit.
Everyone alive today has a teetering Whole Foods in their lives they could help resurrect.
Imagine the difference you will make by showing up, without being asked, when all hope seems to be lost.
From 4 stores to 2,100 stores and 11 billion in revenue magnified 278 million times.
Imagine.
JohnA Passaro
A Good Man
October 15, 2019
My Wish – For Everyone to Have Just the Right Amount of Pain In Their Lives.
The harder the conflict,
The more glorious the triumph.
What we obtain too cheap,
We esteem too lightly.
It is dearness only
That gives everything its value.
Thomas Paine
There is a sweet spot in becoming a member of the “Life-Changing Events Club.”
There has to be just the right amount of pain and hurt caused by the event in your life that introduces you to the club.
“Too little” pain and hurt, where one forgets and reverts back to their original life without gaining proper perspective to fully appreciate life is pointless.
“Too harsh” pain and hurt, where one’s will is broken, will destroy one’s outlook on life and make that person useless.
It has to be just enough pain and suffering that makes one change their perspective on life while still being able to move forward and live, unwilling to ever let go of the pain and suffering, realizing how important it is to one’s perspective.
That is just the right amount.
Pain and suffering when channeled become perspective.
Perspective leads to gratitude.
And gratitude leads to love.
And love is what makes the world
a better place.
My wish is that everyone has just the right amount of pain in their lives.
JohnA Passaro
[image error]
October 14, 2019
Trust Yourself
[image error]
“Trust yourself.”
That’s the advice I always gave my two sons before they walked onto a wrestling mat, right before a match.
It took me a long time to get to that point to trust them enough to leave it in their hands.
“I just can’t figure him out.”
“I do everything for him, and he just won’t listen to me anymore.”
I can hear the frustration in the voice of every wrestling parent I hear mutter these words.
Believe me, I know.
I’ve been there myself.
I understand.
It took me a long time to figure out that they no longer want you to figure it out.
If you have one of these young men who no longer listens to you, I attest instinctively, they yearn to figure it out for themselves.
Thus, they no longer listen to you.
Which is the reason for your frustration.
I have learned this frustration emanates from the fact that the child is ready for Phase 2 in the development of an athlete, and you are still stuck in Phase 1.
I believe there are two phases to being a Sports Parent and developing an athlete with the overall goal of preparing him for life.
Phase 1, is the Partnership Phase.
The phase where you, as his parent, do everything necessary to put him in the position to have the opportunity for success.
You run ahead of him and clear his path.
With your efforts he sees success.
If the purpose of sport is to prepare young men for life, then in the overall scheme of things, it is not Phase 1 that is the most critical phase, it is Phase 2.
The Development Phase.
The hardest of the two phases.
The phase where most sports parents frustration levels start to rise.
The phase where the partnership with their son ends and his preparation for life begins.
The Development Phase is the phase where your child takes what you have shown him and learns how to ‘figure it out’ on his own.
The two-phase process can be best illustrated with this baseball analogy.
Imagine you are the coach of your son’s baseball team.
Your son is your catcher.
You would like him to be the best catcher that he can be.
As a coach, your job is to get him ready for the next level of
play.
There are two parts to being a great catcher.
The first part is to learn how ‘to receive a game.’
The second part is for him to ‘call a great game.’
The first part of being a great catcher can be learned in Phase 1.
The second part can only be achieved in Phase 2.
In Phase 1, the Partnership Phase, you may be more important to his overall success than he is at this early stage.
You as the coach, call the game for him.
As his coach, you are synchronized with him to execute a precise game plan –to win the game.
Your calling every pitch allows him to concentrate on becoming a great receiver.
He will see success from the results of the calls you made.
You will have virtually made all the decisions for him.
And he, to his credit, will have trusted you enough to follow your every instruction.
I suggest once an athlete gets to this part in the process he craves to be more involved in the decisions that created his success.
He craves to be the most important part of his success.
And if his cravings aren’t met, you run the risk of over-ripening him.
His appreciation for all you do for him will slowly turn into resentment as he comes to realize and understand the significant role you have played in his success.
Which in his mind translates into the realization that people feel he has played a much smaller role in his success than he knows he has.
And he hates that realization.
He yearns to figure it out on his own.
Without you.
Don’t be offended by this, for this is a good thing.
Aren’t sports supposed to prepare a young man for the real world?
Obviously, you won’t be there in his life to make every decision for him.
He must learn to succeed with the decisions that he makes.
He must learn to figure it out.
It is a natural progression in the process of preparing a young man for life.
As a parent, you must not get stuck in Phase 1.
It is an easy trap to fall into.
Let me warn you, the longer you stay in Phase 1, the more diminishing of returns you will see.
If, as a sports parent, you do not embrace the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2, the price paid will be your son’s passion for the sport.
Don’t burn that passion.
Flame it.
Allow him to develop.
Allow him to figure it out on his own.
To gain experience.
Which comes from making mistakes.
Obvious ones to you, but understand it is not you who is figuring it out now.
It is him.
You have to allow him to make calls that you don’t agree with – allow him to attempt and fail on his own.
A minor league baseball coach once told me that when he gets highly touted Phenom’s in the minors for the first time, he allows them to fall flat on their faces, on their own, before he offers them any advice.
His reasoning is that they are more receptive to his advice after they failed on their own.
When they fail on their own, they are then ready.
For change.
Up to this point, they have been a Phenom who has always done things that worked.
But now the ante has been raised.
The competition is increased.
What worked for and against 99% of the population is no longer the mission.
To beat the best 1% of the competition is the new mission.
And that requires an entirely different mindset.
A mindset of preparation, of execution, of drawing on one’s experiences to make hard decisions, to think outside of the box.
A mindset that is exactly like the one they will need when they go out into the world on their own.
They need to be able to figure it out.
Without you.
Having your son have success by figuring it out for him is not the goal.
Preparing him to make decisions in life that lead to his success is the real goal.
And this occurs only in Phase 2.
It is only by allowing your son to call a great game, that he will ever be able to make decisions in his life, without you.
And if he happens to call for a fastball over the plate when the right call was for a curveball low and away, well then he will remember that the next time he is in that same situation.
And the pain of that memory will cause him to make an adjustment.
They say great catchers make great coaches.
Great catchers also make great parents.
What is the difference between a franchise and a sole unit business?
The magic is in the duplication.
And that is the reward.
That someday the son you allowed ‘to figure it out’ on his own will one day teach his kids to do the same.
Trust yourself and in the process.
So, the next time you catch yourself saying,
“I just can’t figure him out,”
Realize that your son is trying to ‘figure it out’.
Trust in him to be able to do so.
Trust me.
It has taken me a long time to learn the best way to get rid of frustration is to embrace Phase 2.
Trust Yourself
Is one of 50 Inspirational Wrestling Stories
Which can be found in
Wrestling Writing
Capturing the People and Culture of the Greatest Sport on Earth.
October 13, 2019
The Worlds Deepest Pit
When you come to the edge
Of all the light you know,
And are about to step off
Into the darkness of the unknown,
Faith is knowing one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on
Or you will be taught how to fly.
Barbara J Winter
Sometimes we are given our greatest gifts by experiencing the worst events in our lives.
My inspiration today comes from watching the Netflix movie, “Fundamentals of a Caregiver.”
In the story, thirty-something-year-old Ben Benjamin, who is an author who no longer writes and a father who no longer has a family, has taken a job as a caregiver to a teenage boy named Trevor, who has Muscular Dystrophy and is confined to a wheelchair.
Both Ben and Trevor share the commonality of not living in the present.
Ben can not comprehend the events of his past.
The loss of his young son has paralyzed his life.
Trevor can not comprehend his foreboding future; and the random and unfairness of it all.
They both are in a bad place in their lives.
Each is in a grief ditch, one in which neither can seem to climb out of.
With each passing day, grief deepens their respective ditches in their lives.
The statistics of Trevor’s disease say his health will progressively get worse, and ultimately he will die a premature death.
Ben has been dead ever since he lost his son.
The universe has orchestrated chaotic events to bring each into the others lives.
Ironically, more out of need than design, Ben has taken a job to take care of another human being when it is quite obvious that he can hardly take care of himself.
Trevor, who all has but succumbed to his fate and demise has allowed Ben to see the vast difference between merely existing and truly being alive.
After months of taking care of Trevor; waking him up at the same time, bathing, stretching and dressing him the same way, preparing the same meal for him to eat while watching the same TV show within the same four walls each day, Ben frustratingly asked Trevor,
“Don’t you get tired of all this? Doing the same thing each day.”
He continued, “This isn’t living. This is existing. Don’t you want to go somewhere, do something?”
Trevor then reveals to Ben his map of roadside attractions that he has privately kept.
Ben notices one roadside attraction is circled, with a big star near it he asks Trevor, “What’s this one?”
“That is the The Worlds Deepest Pit,” he says.
He adds that he’s drawn to the name because of how depressing it sounds.
“Wouldn’t it be great to take a road trip and see it in in person?” Ben asks.
Which they do.
After traveling for days across the country, they finally arrive at the “The Worlds Deepest Pit.”
They climb the steps to the tower and look over the guard rail down into the “Worlds Deepest Pit,” and a funny thing happens.
They prepared to look into the darkness of an abyss and unexpectedly the magnificence of the universe appeared instead.
[image error]
To their surprise, the “Worlds Deepest Pit” is filled with pristine aqua blue water.
They are mesmerized by what they see.
Time stands still.
Their only desire is to appreciate the moment.
Ben no longer carries the burden of his past while Trevor lets go of his fear of the future.
Having a sick child is much like being on a journey to the “Worlds Deepest Pit.”
When one looks into the abyss, the absolute worst in life, expecting only to see ruin and destruction, life’s beauty is revealed instead.
The journey has a way of making both the past and future inconsequential, compared to the magnificence of this moment.
I have looked over the guard rail of my life a couple of times in my journey with the “Worlds Deepest Pit,” and each time when I saw no foundation for my footing for my next step, a single stair miraculously appeared.
October 10, 2019
It Is Simple But Not Easy
Never confuse simple and easy.
Simple is easy to understand but hard to execute.
Figuring out the path to success is simple.
Walking the path is hard.
The execution is always the hard part.
The execution requires sacrifice and discipline.
The execution requires precision planning and prioritizing.
The execution requires massive work, insane boredom, and extreme loneliness.
The execution requires you to feel the acute pain of failure
and requires you to grapple a few rounds with self-doubt and discouragement.
Everyone wants to
be a champion.
What they don’t want
is to live the lifestyle and endure the pain that is necessary to become one.
Have you ever
witnessed a wrestler come up with an off-season plan?
Most execute the
plan while their mood is still right, but once the mystique of having a big
goal has worn off and the actual grueling work is required, they fall to the wayside.
Others, the
champions, continue to execute their plan well past the point of being in vogue
to do so.
They do things
others are not willing to do.
That is why they
get what others are not able to get.
Never confuse
simple and easy.
The difference between
simple and easy is the work.
And work is hard.
October 9, 2019
Podcast
[image error]
EPISODES
Trailer
Rule #1 – Don’t Beat Yourself
Rule #2 – Dream Big Dreams
Rule #3 – Believe Before
LISTEN ON:
[image error] – Coming Soon
If You Enjoy The Writing of JohnA Passaro
Consider supporting it
With a donation of your choice.
Support the writing of JohnA Passaro
Podcast – 1st Episode Released
[image error]
EPISODES
Rule #1 – Don’t Beat Yourself
Trailer
LISTEN ON:
[image error] – Coming Soon
If You Enjoy The Writing of JohnA Passaro
Consider supporting it
With a donation of your choice.
Support the writing of JohnA Passaro
There Is No Guarantee of Success
[image error]
Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?
That is the only time a man can be brave.
George RR Martin
Game of Thrones
It takes time, experience, and pain to acquire knowledge.
Certain knowledge must be realized at the right time as if it is revealed too soon it may not be able to be handled properly.
There is a point in a wrestler’s career when they will come to a fork in the road.
The All-In fork.
They weigh the cost of going all in verse the reward of what they want and determine if they are willing to pay the price.
They determine that they are willing.
So, they take the fork and go “All-In.”
They then go on to do everything right, they become the best at what they do.
They hold up their end of the bargain.
But all the information wasn’t given to them at the time.
Key information was withheld.
The “All-In” fork contained a lie of omission.
The lie is that even if you do everything right,
Even if you are the best at what you do,
Even if you have done everything to get every advantage,
Even if you have won before,
There is no guarantee of success.
That is the reality.
And that changes things.
Not everyone who goes “All-In” factors going “All-In” and then not getting the reward.
If they did, some would elect not to proceed.
Thus, the reason for the lie of omission from the “All-In” fork.
Later, during their journey, after some time and a series of setbacks, a wrestler will face a new fork in the road.
A more truthful fork.
A much scarier fork.
The “All-In-With-No-Guarantee-Of-Success” fork.
At that fork the wrestler will be asked to recommit to the “All-In” fork with the additional information of that even if you go “All-In” and hold up your end of the bargain, this may not work out the way you have planned.
That is a scary thought.
It takes a brave person to proceed down this new fork knowing the whole truth.
There is a possibility, heck, maybe even a probability, that you will give everything you have and not get the reward you sought after.
When one reaches this part of the fork’s road, there is enlightenment.
When traveling down this new fork one is given the knowledge and realization of the Universal Law of,
“The reward you seek may not be the reward you receive.”
And something great happens.
They trust in the Universe that the outcome that they will receive will be the outcome their life needs.
Mahatma Gandhi said it best,
“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important.
You have to do the right thing.
It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit.
But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing.
You may never know what results come from your action.
But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
There always is a reward for taking the journey.
It just may not be the one you sought.
It may just prove to be more powerful than you could ever wish for.
There In No Guarantee of Success – Pdf Free
This is a chapter excerpt from,
“Wrestling Rules for Life.”
If You Enjoy The Writing of JohnA Passaro
Consider supporting it
With a donation of your choice.
Support the writing of JohnA Passaro
October 4, 2019
Don’t Let Victory Defeat You
[image error]
There is a kind of success worse than failure,
And a kind of failure
Worth all the success in the world.
Jean Cocteau
Paris Album
It is much harder to stay on top than it is to get to the top.
Granted, getting to the top is extremely difficult, but when you arrive, it is quite common to forget how you got there, to overlook the little things that you concentrated on, the focus you had, the desire that was inside of you.
Victory can become your worst enemy for future success if you let it.
Don’t.
Understand what it took to become victorious.
Reminisce with the loneliness, the sacrifice, the exhausting work that it took to become victorious.
Never lose sight of the work and sacrifice it took to get where you are and every day after your victory ask yourself,
“Am I working harder now after my victory than I did before my victory?”
“Am I living the same lifestyle as I did before I became a champion?”
“Have I set a new goal, a bigger goal?”
If all the answers to the above questions are yes, then you have a chance of staying on top.
If any answer to the above questions is no, then you won’t.
It is that simple.
You will find that the formula of staying on top is the same as the one that is needed to get to the top.
The formula doesn’t change.
So, if you want to stay on top, you shouldn’t change either.
Chapter Excerpt from “Wrestling Rules for Life”
If you find joy and value in my writing,
please consider supporting this blog with a one-time donation:
Making your donation a monthly contribution
Will allow me to create and post quality content more frequently.
All monthly contributors get a FREE eBook of their choice each month.
