JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 27
September 15, 2019
Nobody Can Want It More for You Than You Want It for Yourself
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None of us will ever accomplish
Anything excellent or commanding
Except when he listens to this whisper
Which is heard by him alone.
Emerson
Is “your dream” more important to someone else than it is to you?
If it is, I hate to tell you it is not your dream.
It is theirs.
If you answered that your dream is more important to someone else; your dad, your coach, your brother, anyone else, you may have initial success, but there will reach a point when the other person wants you to do things you are unwilling to do.
To reach down deeper than you care too.
To sacrifice more than you want.
At that point, you will meet resistance.
And unless you want it more than anyone else wants it for you, resistance will win.
And the law of deterioration will be set in motion.
Resentment will set in when the difference of what others want from you and what you want for yourself collide.
At first, the battles will be small, but they will escalate in time.
And one day they will come to a head.
You can’t “wrestle/live your life” for your parents.
You can’t “wrestle/live your life” for your coach.
You can’t “wrestle/live your life” for your brother,
teammates or friend.
You can only “wrestle/live your life” for yourself.
When you do and reach an obstacle that requires you to reach deep down, you will.
There will be no resistance.
“Nobody Can Want It More for You Than You Want It for Yourself”
Is an excerpt from the newly released,
“Wrestling Rules for Life”
Be Yourself
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BE YOURSELF
This above all else
To thine own self be true
Shakespeare
One of the reasons why wrestling is such a great sport is because there is no prototypical body type needed for success.
There are many different body types in wrestling, and all can be successful.
There is the long and lean, the short and stocky, the athletic body, the unassuming.
There are so many to list.
Each body type has its unique strengths and weaknesses.
The wrestler who uses their body type to the best of their ability develops a style unique to their own.
One of the keys to success in wrestling is to utilize the resources given to you for their maximum benefit.
If you are long and lean, then legs and cradles will be moves you should learn to master.
If you are short and stocky, then double legs will be beneficial to master.
The biggest mistake a wrestler can make is comparing themselves to successful wrestlers and then trying to emulate their style without having the same body type as they do.
If you want to emulate a successful wrestler, emulate the fact that they used their body type to their maximum advantage and developed a style that was unique to their own.
Do the same.
Take your body type and use it to your advantage and develop a style unique to you, and success will follow.
****
In life, there is no prototypical way to achieve success.
There are many paths which lead to success.
Every person in life has different circumstances.
Every person has different resources.
When you study success, the individuals who maximize their unique strengths and utilize all resources available to them often become successful.
Learn to use your uniqueness and success will follow.
****
Ralph Waldo Emerson succinctly said,
“Insist on yourself; never imitate.
Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation.
But of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”
“Be Yourself”
Is an excerpt from the newly released,
“Wrestling Rules for Life”
September 14, 2019
Believe Before
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Rule #3
Believe Before
We know what we are,
But not what we may be.
Shakespeare
Have you ever wrestled an opponent you knew was better than you?
I bet you didn’t wrestle like yourself at the beginning of the match.
I bet you were hesitant; you didn’t react the same, you let opportunities pass you by, you allowed your opponent to recover from errors without consequence.
And I bet somewhere mid-2nd period you said to yourself,
“What am I doing? I could go with this guy.”
By that time, though, it was too late as half the match was over.
I bet after the match you said to yourself,
“If I only wrestled like myself right from the beginning, I know I could have won that match.”
The key to beating someone better than yourself is to believe that you can way before you get confirmation that you are correct in your thinking.
To believe before confirmation, you need to trust yourself.
You need to trust in your talent, your work ethic, your dedication, and your perseverance.
Trust is the cousin to belief.
When trust and belief team up, they don’t require outside confirmation they thrive on inside collaboration.
When trust and belief team up, their ears are deaf to the words “can’t.”
Their eyes don’t need to see it done before.
Their heart knows.
Trust in the belief in your heart.
Believe in your trust.
****
Shakespeare wrote,
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
The most important people in your life are the people who believe in you before confirmation of their intuition.
These people will have the biggest impact on your life.
They see something in you, way before you even see it in yourself.
Always keep these people in your life at any cost.
Give them a perpetual place in your inner circle.
Hold them in a special place in your heart.
Better yet, learn from them and become one of them.
And start to see in others what they haven’t yet seen in themselves.
And in the process, you will teach them to do the same.
“Believe Before”
Is an excerpt from the newly released,
“Wrestling Rules for Life”
Paperback
$28.99
Order Today
September 13, 2019
Dream Big Dreams
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RULE #2
DREAM BIG DREAMS
There is nothing like a dream
To create the future.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
Magic is made when you dream big dreams.
To reach a goal bigger than you thought you could ever accomplish, you will need to become someone greater than you ever thought you could be.
And that is the magic.
The magic of your unique personal transformation into the best version of yourself.
The power of the magic begins with the audacity to believe you can and will accomplish your biggest dream.
When you believe, you will become a first-hand witness to the Universe, through trials, tribulations, adversity, and setbacks, forge you into a diamond.
Know, the bigger the dream, the greater the journey.
The greater the journey, the deeper the transformation.
So, dream.
Then have the audacity to dream even bigger.
As a big dream will necessitate taking inventory of assets and tapping into resources you never knew existed.
A big dream will force you to use everything at your disposal.
It will require hard work and commitment.
It will require tenacity and persistence.
It will require getting back up more times than you have been knocked down.
It will not be easy.
The journey will test your preconceived limits.
There will be times that you will curse the journey.
Understand, that is also the precise point when the alchemy of your transformation is taking place.
So, overcome the obstacles you never thought you were able to be overcome.
Put dedication and perseverance to work.
The journey is the process that makes the man.
The bigger the dream.
The greater the journey.
The better the finished man.
So, dream big dreams.
Greatness is waiting for you.
It is inside you beckoning for you to call upon it.
Make the call.
Dig down deep into your reservoir of belief you never knew existed and allow the magic of dreaming big dreams transform you into the best version of yourself.
Live life as Walt Whitman once profoundly wrote,
“From this hour, I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary boundaries.”
And watch your life blossom.
Dream Big Dreams
Is an excerpt from the newly released,
“Wrestling Rules for Life”
Paperback
$28.99
Order Today
September 12, 2019
Don’t Beat Yourself
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Rule #1
Don’t Beat Yourself
To see a man beaten
Not by a better opponent
But by himself
Is a tragedy.
Cus D’Amato
You will reach a point in time in your life when you will stop wrestling.
It is at that time life will become your new opponent.
Life will be the most formidable opponent you will ever face.
No amount of training will ever prepare you for the onslaught that life has in store for you.
To win in life, as in wrestling, you must first learn not to beat yourself.
A new wrestler learns not to beat himself by eliminating putting himself in bad positions and by deciding never to do anything that exposes his back.
In life, you must first learn to do the same.
Having a great stance in wrestling is of paramount importance in the process of learning how not to beat yourself.
A great wrestling stance has three lines of defense:
The head, the hands, and the hips.
Each line of defense is designed to protect the most valuable parts of a wrestler’s body from attack from his opponent.
Never breaking stance is key to a wrestler’s success on the wrestling mat.
In your battle against life, your new stance is your lifestyle.
A great lifestyle will keep you out of bad positions.
A great lifestyle will keep your back from being exposed.
A great lifestyle will stop life from scoring easy points on you.
A great lifestyle has three lines of defense
your mind, your body, and your spirit.
They will always be under attack by life.
Decide early on not to partake in any activity, especially the use of drugs, alcohol or the reliance on any chemical that will change the state of your brain, as it will inevitably and undoubtedly diminish your mind, deteriorate your body, and evaporate your spirit.
Thus putting you in a bad position and exposing your back to life.
Living a clean lifestyle is the fundamental building block to sustained happiness and success in life.
You must never break your lifestyle.
As soon as you do, life will take you down.
And if you happen to break your lifestyle and life doesn’t take you down, well, that outcome is even worse.
Mistakenly, you will feel that your lifestyle is not as important in stopping the attack from life.
You wouldn’t be more wrong.
Your lifestyle must protect the three most valuable areas in your life; your mind, your body, and your spirit.
You need your mind to make good decisions,
your body to be in ultimate health, and the fortitude of your spirit to win verse life.
Imagine for a moment that you are in a wrestling match verse a highly trained, extremely motivated opponent.
An opponent that is not only looking to beat you but looking to annihilate and humiliate you in the process.
For a few years of your life, that opponent will be the competition lining up across the circle from you.
For decades after wrestling, life will be that opponent.
Have you ever been thrown to your back early in a period in a wrestling match and had to fight off your back for the entire two minutes to not get pinned?
It’s not a fun thing to have to do.
It takes a lot of energy to survive and stay in the match.
Now, imagine getting thrown to your back early in life and having to spend the next ten, twenty, or even sixty years fighting, trying not to get pinned.
With the full faculty of your mind, the health of your body and a razor-sharp spirit, you will have the tools needed to beat life.
With any portion of your mind, your body or your spirit at less than full capacity you will undoubtedly give up easy points to life, put yourself in bad positions and ultimately life will throw you to your back.
Life is too skilled of an opponent to attempt to beat with anything less than your best.
If there is anything in your lifestyle that makes you vulnerable to giving up easy points to life, it is imperative that you immediately drop everything and direct your full attention to making the necessary corrections.
Do not go on to any other rules until those necessary corrections have been made, as no matter what you do if you do not master Rule #1, “Don’t Beat Yourself,” mastering all the other rules will prove fruitless.
There is nothing more important to the quality of your life than living a clean lifestyle.
As Cus D’Amato, the former trainer to Mike Tyson so prophetically said,
“To see a man beaten, not by a better opponent but by himself, is a tragedy.”
“Don’t Beat Yourself”
Is an excerpt from:
“WRESTLING RULES FOR LIFE”
Limited Edition
Signed, Numbered (x/250)
Paperback
$28.99
BUY NOW
September 12th
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I was extremely fortunate on that dreaded day.
Evil plowed into so many lives on a day the sky was so blue.
I vividly remember the beauty of the sky on that day.
I also remember asking myself a few minutes later: “Why does God let bad things happen?”
I remember the day after our nations most horrific tragedy that we, as Americans, united.
Never before had the words:
United under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All.
Ever had more meaning to me.
On September 12th, the day after the most horrific experience the people of our nation have ever experienced, 238 million Americans were indoctrinated into “The Life Changing Events Club.”
A club you do not choose to join; one, which chooses you.
A club no one ever wants to be part of, but once you are a member, you never want to give up your membership.
A club that transforms pain and hurt into life clarity and purpose.
A club that draws out of its members the greatest of the human spirit.
If you remember back to the two weeks after 9/11, starting with September 12th, you will recall the greatest two weeks of human spirit ever displayed in our countries history.
I vividly remember every car, driving on the road, having an American flag attached to its driver’s side window, rapidly and proudly blowing in the wind.
No other time in my life was I ever more proud to be an American than in those two weeks that started on September 12th.
In America, on September 12th, 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 like we did on that September 12th.
JohnA Passaro
Your Soul Knows
September 10, 2019
Prioritize or Agonize
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Rule #36
Prioritize or Agonize
Many of us never realize our greatness
Because we get sidetracked
By secondary activity.
Og Mandino
A Wrestling Life.
An Academic Life.
A Social Life.
As a wrestler, you get to choose 2 of the 3.
You can choose any 2, but never 3.
I repeat you can choose any 2, but never 3.
If you are arrogant enough to attempt to choose all 3, the choice you value the most will suffer the greatest.
Test it at your own peril.
There is not enough time, nor do you have enough energy to accomplish everything every day.
There will be days you will have to sacrifice something you value.
When you live in order with your priorities and then run out of time or energy in your day the choice of least value to you will get sacrificed.
When you live out of order of your priorities, what gets sacrificed is of the choice of most value to you.
To achieve the life you envision, you must live each day in order and harmony with your priorities.
As an adult, there will be three new choices.
A Healthy Life.
A Family Life.
An Undisciplined Life.
You get to choose 2 of the 3.
You can choose any 2, but never 3.
I repeat you can choose any 2, but never 3.
If you are arrogant enough to attempt to choose all 3 the one you value the most will suffer the greatest.
Test it at your own peril.
Living life in order and harmony of your priorities sometimes will seem boring, like you are missing out on something.
You are.
You will be missing out on dealing with the agony of regret and missing out on cleaning up the messes of an undisciplined life.
Prioritize or agonize.
————
“Prioritize or Agonize” is from the newly released book,
Wrestling Rules for Life
Order Paperback today
August 26, 2019
Don’t Let One Loss Beat You Twice
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Pay attention
To what you pay attention to.
Amy Krause Rosenthal
Have you ever witnessed a wrestling semi-slide?
Or perhaps experienced one yourself?
It is one of the most helpless experiences to witness.
Walt Whitman wrote,
“Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.”
There has never been a truer statement written regarding the wrestling semi-slide.
A wrestling semi-slide is when a wrestler experiences a traumatic loss in the semi-finals and instead of reconciling the loss, they fixate on it.
Their mental focus shifts from their goal to their loss.
They are no longer present in the present, they are fixated on the past.
Instead of resetting a new goal, because their original goal is now unobtainable, they refuse to, and they persistently attempt to get back something that they can’t.
And their mind gets stuck in an endless infinite loop,
trying to solve an unsolvable problem.
This fixation on the loss makes them unable to recover quick enough for their next match which they lose to an inferior opponent.
Their self-sabotage repeats itself their next match too, against an even more inferior opponent.
Thus, completing the slide from the semi-finals,
all the way down to 8th place.
Allowing one loss to beat them twice.
The wrestling semi-slide is a torturous experience for all involved.
Like every coach, parent or any other person who has ever attempted to shake some sense into the wrestler during a semi-slide knows, witnessing a semi-slide is one of the most helpless feelings one could ever experience in the sport.
No matter what you say, no matter what you do,
no matter if you use fear or praise to motivate,
your words, actions, and concern fall on deaf ears when someone is in a semi-slide.
As the wrestlers in the semi-slides is determined to self-destruct.
Your words, actions, and inspiration will prove no match to their self-sabotage.
The brain of the wrestler in the semi-slide isn’t functioning the way it should because it can’t reconcile the magnitude of their recent loss.
The only way out of a wrestling semi-slide is for the wrestler to be present in the present, to find gratitude and to reset a new goal.
If the wrestler who experienced a traumatic loss in the semi-finals was able to remain present in the present, he would have beaten his next two opponents and capped his loss at one.
If the wrestler found gratitude, however hard that may have been at the time, their brain would have refocused itself to find the good and allow the wrestler to rebuild again.
If after the initial loss the wrestler reset a new goal to take 3rd place, he would have capped the loss at one.
Inside the torturous experience of the wrestling
semi-slide is one of the most important life lessons the sport of wrestling will ever teach.
Have you ever witnessed a life-slide?
Or perhaps experience one yourself?
Have you ever known a person who just experienced a traumatic event in life?
Who suffered a severe loss?
A person whose brain just can’t reconcile the event that just took place?
Or a person who is addicted?
As any person who has ever attempted to reason with anyone who has, or is, knows, it is one of the most helpless feelings one could ever experience in life.
No matter what you say, no matter what you do,
no matter if you use fear or praise to motivate,
your words, actions, and concern fall on deaf ears when someone is in a life-slide.
As the person in the life-slides brain isn’t functioning the way it should in the present situation because it can’t reconcile the magnitude of their recent loss.
It is determined to self-destruct.
Your words, actions, and inspiration will prove no match to their self-sabotage.
Until,
They reconcile the event in their minds, by staying present in the present,
They find gratitude,
And they reset a new goal.
After a traumatic loss in life it is often difficult to reconcile the event in your mind, but being present in the present gives you the best opportunity to.
As it is never the first wave that drowns you,
it is the inability to recover from its force
that allows the smaller second, third and fourth waves to do the deed.
If the second, third or fourth waves were taken by themselves they would have been easily handled and proven to have been of no danger.
Their real danger is in their immediacy after the first wave redirected one’s attention and forced one to lose focus.
Finding gratitude is the key to life.
Appreciation is the bridge from suffering to gratitude.
Gratitude is the fertile land where love flourishes.
And love is the greatest achievement in life.
After a traumatic loss whether in wrestling or in life, the way you stop one loss from beating you twice is that you remain present in the present, you find gratitude and you reset a new goal.
Unfortunately, no amount of the care given to a person in a life-slide by the people who love them will have a permanent impact on them until they do.
Everyone will get back to the present, find gratitude and reset a new goal in their own time, at their own pace.
And when they do, they will rebuild.
“Don’t Let One Loss Beat You Twice”
Is an excerpt from the newly released
“WRESTLING RULES FOR LIFE”
Paperback
$28.99
ORDER NOW
All Pre-orders for Wrestling Rules for Life are being processed.
They are a Limited Edition version of the book.
They are numbered and signed.
Thank you for your patience and support.
August 21, 2019
A Letter to My Ten Year Younger Self
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John,
I’m watching you about to sit down on that couch, this is hard.
Even for me and I’ve been through it.
That foreboding feeling which has been gnawing at your soul for some time now is actually my indecisiveness of whether I should tell you, or not.
I am in conflict, thus you know something is wrong but you don’t know what.
Let me back up a bit and allow me to introduce myself.
I am you.
Just ten years further in life.
I am here to guide you.
We share the same soul, and it is through our souls that I sometimes send advice and information to you.
Many believe this internal advice and information we hear inside ourselves is intuition.
That is partly true.
The part that most don’t know is where that intuition comes from.
It comes from me, which is you, further on down the line in life.
We share the same soul so I am able, when totally needed, to send you what you need to know to get you through hard times and to help you make the right decisions.
That’s how it all works.
Now, getting back to what I said above,
about you having that foreboding feeling,
that is me.
I have been uncertain what to do.
I am in conflict.
Every life has a “Before and After” line in it, where your life has been one thing up until you reach a specific event and it suddenly then becomes something totally different.
You are approaching your line today,
And I am uncertain what to do.
Once you cross over into “The After,” you will never see “The Before” again.
That is okay.
“The After,” although much more difficult, has just as much to see and experience as “The Before.”
And you will be much more aware, more present and every one of your experiences in “The After” will be more acute due to your newfound perspective.
Your “Before and After” line is fast approaching, you will reach it by the end of the day today, your time, not mine.
Tonight you will sit down on your couch to watch the movie “Serendipity”
And your world is going to explode.
Life, as you knew it for forty-four years, will become unrecognizable to you by tomorrow.
After much internal debate, I have decided to write you this letter to provide you with one piece of information and to give you one piece of advice before you cross over.
No, I’m not going to tell you the specifics of what is about to happen to you in your life, I don’t think knowing that would be healthy for you at this time.
I believe it would be too much for you.
Rather, I’ve decided to write you this letter to give you one piece of information and one piece of advice, both designed to guide you.
I know you are expecting the information part of this letter to be that you are going to be okay.
It isn’t.
I can’t say you will be okay.
At least not yet.
Not from the timeframe from which I now sit.
But I still hold out hope that maybe you will be in the time ahead of me.
So should you.
The valuable piece of information I am going to reveal to you, one I want you to hold onto, and fall back on in your darkest moments, is this,
You are going to get here.
Where is here, you ask?
Here, is where I am writing this letter to you.
Ten years in the future.
Here is a good place.
I know you are thinking that this doesn’t seem like such valuable information to you right now,
But it will.
Soon, “whether you make it”, “whether you can get through this,” “I wonder what is going to happen to me?” will become your controlling thoughts, they will attempt to dominate you.
I am here to alleviate those worries from you, so they don’t.
I want you to concentrate all your efforts without distractions on your recovery.
Always remember,
You get here.
Battered, bruised and barely recognizable with casualties because you are in a war, but,
You get here.
How do you get here?
I’ll leave that up to you.
Now on to the one piece of advice portion of the letter.
My one piece of advice to you is this,
“When the enemy attacks and people you love are caught behind enemy lines always go back and get them.”
No matter what.
No matter the degree of danger nor the reason they are there.
No matter what.
Always go back and rescue them.
There is one more thing I want to add,
If you take my advice,
Your family makes it here, too.
Now, the rest is up to you.
Use your intuition,
Follow your soul,
Give off a spirit of love.
Know as true as your soul,
You make it here,
And, always go back behind enemy lines to be there for those who didn’t get out,
And if you do,
When you do,
I’ll see you and your family here.
Actually, when you get here, I’ll have left, off experiencing our journey ten years ahead of you once again.
Keep your soul receptor open and keen as I will always send intuition for your guidance.
I will talk to you soon.
I pray it will be in better times with more clarity in our soul.
Until our souls converge in the end,
Your self,
JohnA
July 12, 2019
Arete
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Arete
Is about looking into your own soul and not only discovering what it is that can make you great, but also identifying the source of that greatness and activating it every single day of your life.
It’s the well you draw from when there is no other resource.
It’s the absolute truth that sits in the deepest part of your soul.
George St. Pierre
The Way of the Fight
