JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 47
February 2, 2016
Be Incapable of Discouragement Poster
Get a Copy For Your Wrestling Room
“Be Incapable of Discouragement” is now available as a poster to hang in your Wrestling Room.
The poster comes in 3 sizes, and your choice of being laminated or being mounted.
LAMINATED
All prices are plus shipping.
MOUNTED
All prices are plus shipping.
January 30, 2016
The Season Starts Today
The season starts today.
The last 80 days have only been a warmup.
The last 800 days a preparation.
February has reset your once intimidating record to a mere mortal.
It now contains two zeroes and a dash.
0-0
The post season brackets don’t care if you were undefeated all year.
The only thing they care about is that you score more points than the opponent lining up across from you.
Every time.
For a full month.
11 Matches in total.
February is my favorite season.
The post season.
The mission is to go undefeated in February.
UIF
To win 3 consecutive high school tournaments.
One, progressively tougher than the other.
That is every wrestlers driving force.
It is the reason a wrestler subjects himself to the sports torture.
It is why a wrestler endures the pain and suffering of the grind of a long season.
It is why every wrestler competes.
February is the toll booth that only lets a wrestler continue their travel on to their desired destination only if they have paid the price.
In Full.
No Promises.
No IOU’s
Exact Change Only.
Having paid the price only allows you to be able to travel on.
It allows you to have a chance.
How much gas you have left, what condition your body is in, and whether you have the wherewithal to overcome unexpected detours that will suddenly erupt on your journey are questions that will only be answered by the quality of your training and the burning inside of your heart.
The field of 8,600 will be narrowed this weekend.
And again the following weekend.
To come up with the 325 most deserving individuals.
Across 15 weight classes.
Will you be one of them?
And if you do reserve your seat on the bus, will you fight hard and smart enough to make the final cut?
To be one of the 15 wrestlers in the state who win their last 4 high school matches of the year.
6:00 pm Saturday February 27th will be here in no time.
The only question that remains is, will you one of the 10,000 in the stands or one of the 15 atop of the podium?
Only February will tell.
Get your of copy of “Sharing Inspiration And Optimism”
Which includes:
Be Incapable of Discouragement
And 18 more short stories.
Paperback – $12.99
Ebook – $6.99
Or download a copy off of:
The iBookstore.
January 27, 2016
Sharing Inspiration and Optimism – NOW AVAILABLE
NEW RELEASE – Sharing Inspiration and Optimism Now Available.
Thought provoking, insightful and funny too.
JohnA takes his experience as a parent, coach and member of “The Life Changing Events Club” and spins wonderful stories that will change your perspective on life, love and happiness.
This collection of 20 short stories includes the favorites:
The Pursuit
Be Incapable of Discouragement
Scold, But Then Mold
I would Have Missed…
And 16 more.
Get all of JohnA’s short stories all in one collection.
Get your of copy of “Sharing Inspiration And Optimism”
Paperback – $12.99
Ebook – $6.99
Or download a copy off of:
The iBookstore.
Get the KINDLE Reading App – Read on any device.
January 24, 2016
Today is my Re-Birth Day
The evidence suggests Johannes Vermeer’s daughter Maria was his likely model and a crucial part of his art when he painted the iconic – Girl With a Pearl Earring
Today is my birthday.
I have been on this earth for 51 years.
18,626 days to be exact.
Of which, I have only been truly alive for 2,345 of those days.
I no longer look at my birthday as the point of reference in the timeline of my life.
I now look at my Re-Birth day as that point.
2,345 days ago I became a member of “The Life Changing Events Club” and was welcomed into the inner circle of life.
2,345 days ago was the day my daughter lost oxygen to her brain for six minutes.
I call it my Re-Birth Day.
You would think I would refer to that day as the day I died.
But I don’t.
I refer to that day as the day of my Re-Birth.
The day I was turned.
Converted.
The day I started becoming the best version of myself.
For it is the day as an adult that I woke up to what is truly important in life.
Life itself.
That day I started to pull every once of invigoration out of life.
Each of my last 2,345 days on this earth have been super turbo charged.
Magnified.
Intense.
Memorable.
Each day has been deeply branded into my soul to produce the person I am today.
The best version of myself that I have ever been.
I have been a club member for only 12.5% of my life.
I don’t ever remember what it is like to not be a club member anymore.
Although I would change the circumstances that made me a member, I would never renounce my membership.
By design or disaster I would recommend you become a member.
Hopefully by design.
But even if by disaster, realize membership into this exclusive club is a gift.
And your present is a new perspective on life and it’s value.
As a club member, you are invited into the inner circle of the universe.
It’s like in a vampire/zombie movie where one doesn’t know who has been turned or not. Insiders of the club know who’s been turned. It is a sense that comes with being a club member.
It’s different though than vampire movies, a club member doesn’t try to turn others into becoming a member.
They leave that up to life.
Club members are not there to suck the blood out of anyone.
They are there when the blood is sucked out of someone to rekindle their human spirit.
I beg of you, don’t ever let life suck the blood out of you.
Don’t wait for a life changing event to become the best version of yourself.
Truly live.
Each day be reborn anew.
Each day have your feelings magnified.
Each day have your memories burned into your soul.
Set out to improve the quality of other people’s lives and the universe will improve yours.
Do it now.
By design.
So live.
Fully.
Intensely.
Impactfully.
My only wish is that you and I will have many days like this.
If you wait for a disaster to truly live each day you will limit your time inside the inner circle of life.
I would never want to relive my last 2,345 days on this earth.
But I wouldn’t trade them either, for the world.
I read something that a good friend posted the other day that said:
“We should start referring to age as levels instead of years.”
The older we get, the higher the level we reach in obtaining life’s wisdom.
2,345
I have become progressively better at life, not as I got older, but rather as I have reached higher and higher levels in life due to the time I have spent in the inner circle, as a life changing events club member.
2,345
I have reached level 6.
And I can’t wait to feel the intense magnification of life, to share it with you and to somehow, someway know when you need a rekindling of your human spirit.
As a club member, today may be my birthday, but more importantly, every new day has become my Re-birth day.
By design or disaster.
I beg of you, don’t wait for disaster to strike to start to truly live.
It is much less painful, and you get to spend more time in the inner circle of life, if you choose to get there by design.
Be Incapable of Discouragement
The Pursuit
I Would Have Missed…
The Reward…
Sometimes, Texas Is Not Forever
How Long Is – For a While?
Scold, But Then Mold
Why Do You Wrestle?
The Point
You Can Only Hope…
January 23, 2016
Consider The Odds
Consider the odds.
They’re astounding even by athletic standards.
In the late fall of each year, somewhere north of 8,600 wrestlers begin the journey that will take them around the state and right on through hell, an extended stay replete with wind sprints and projectile vomiting and blood and contortionist acts and stinging, salty sweat.
By February, 632 of these wrestlers will have earned the most sought-after placement in Iowa, a spot in the four-day State Tournament.
In the end, the tournament will produce a winner in each of the sport’s fourteen weight-class winners, and it will do so in each of Iowa’s three high school wrestling classifications, Class 1A, 2A and 3A.
That makes for a total of forty-two state champs, or roughly .005 percent of those who began the season.
That is the math behind doing the unimaginable, taking your school and the town or the rural communities that surround it on a wild, emotional ride, and winning it all—one time.
Now factor in the truth of the adolescent body, which is that no matter what you do (and wrestlers have pretty much tried everything), it more or less refuses to stop growing and changing shape.
Factor injuries and luck.
Factor the potential of everything else going right, only to result in an inexplicably terrible draw at State—getting an enormously difficult first- or second-round match, for example, because of the tournament’s history of not seeding the wrestlers in any sort of pecking order.
Factor nerves and slippage.
Factor, let us say, a severe weeklong case of bronchitis that robs a superior athlete of one of his greatest advantages, his conditioning, and returns him to the land of the merely mortal at precisely the worst time. ( We’ll get to that.)
Factor the sport’s enduring truism, which is that even the great ones are usually one false step removed from being put on their backs by some kid they’ve never heard of.
It isn’t a lonely existence so much as a select one, and the wrestling coaches and parents and fans use that fact as a sort of proof of virtue: wrestlers are better than other athletes because their drive is so pure, because their pursuit is so solitary.
So few people outside their closed circle of fellow wrestlers could ever even begin to understand the sacrifices they make in order to simply get on the mat, much less compete and win.
Mark Kreidler
Four Days To Glory
Be Incapable of Discouragement
The Pursuit
I Would Have Missed…
The Reward…
Sometimes, Texas Is Not Forever
How Long Is – For a While?
Scold, But Then Mold
Why Do You Wrestle?
The Point
You Can Only Hope…
Be Uncommon
Get back to the boat.
Pat Riley tells of a time that he went white water rafting and the guide told the group that if they fell out of the boat – and into the rapids that you would be alone for a while – the boat couldn’t stop for you.
You would have to take part in your own survival.
Getting back to the boat was up to you.
Riley said that getting a devastating health diagnosis was like falling out of the boat.
You could simply get caught up in the rapids and watch the boat get smaller as it floated away, or you could fight your way back to it.
Stuck in these rapids, man would find his essential self, stripped bare of all else.
The common man would just drift.
The uncommon man would fight back to the boat.
Ben Petrick
Be Incapable of Discouragement
The Pursuit
I Would Have Missed…
The Reward…
Sometimes, Texas Is Not Forever
How Long Is – For a While?
Scold, But Then Mold
Why Do You Wrestle?
The Point
You Can Only Hope…
January 22, 2016
The Best Hugs Occur On A Wrestling Mat
In recognition of National Hug Day here’s the 2011 NYS Celebration hugs…
Here are some of my all-time favorites…
Click to view slideshow.
And Here is My All Time Favorite
Please feel free to post your all-time favorite wrestling hug
In the comment section below.
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Related Posts:
Be Incapable of Discouragement
You Must Beat ALL of Your Opponents
Greatness vs. Greatness Arrived
January 21, 2016
Sharing Inspiration And Optimism
Pre-Order a copy of “Sharing Inspiration And Optimism”
Will Include “The Pursuit” and “Be Incapable of Discouragement”
To PRE-ORDER Ebook ($6.99) Click Here
Release Date February 4th, 2016
January 19, 2016
From Impossible to Inevitable
When you decide that you are going to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, some time during your seemingly infinite journey the positive winds of change will start to blow against your back instead of into your face, and the weathervane of impossibility will suddenly start to change direction.
Things will suddenly get easier.
You will start to see progress.
What once was deemed as impossible,
Suddenly, will seem inevitable.
And, inevitabile is just a matter of time.
And time is what you have.
Whatever it takes, for as long as it takes –
That is the formula.
To have more will,
Than there are sands in your hour glass.
January 15, 2016
Sometimes, Texas Is Not Forever
There is a scene in the pilot episode of Friday Night Lights, where Tim Riggins turns to his teammate Jason Street and says:
“Here’s to God, football and in ten years from now, good friends living large in Texas.”
They toast, as they gaze into the future.
A bright future, one which has Jason Street on a clear path to the NFL.
They are on top of the world.
They feel invincible.
Tim Riggins and Jason Street would soon learn that sometimes, Texas is not forever.
Or at least, not here on earth.
In his next football game Jason Street would take a hit that would paralyze him for life.
And in one play many lives would, forever change.
Tomorrow I get to attend the 32nd Annual Kujan Memorial Wrestling Tournament.
Kevin and Stephen Kujan died tragically in a motorcycle accident in 1984, only a few years after graduating high school.
Kevin and I were teammates for 6 years.
For the majority of the last 32 years, in honor of a teammate, I have sat in the William Floyd stands on the 3rd Saturday in January.
And I will do so again tomorrow.
Kevin was one of the strongest persons I ever met.
He was freakishly strong.
Strong, as in if he held you in a tight waist your priority wasn’t to get out – it was just to attempt to breathe.
I remember for two seasons in junior high, Kevin was undefeated and unscored on.
His opponents didn’t score one point on him.
Not one takedown, not one escape, not one reversal.
Not one point.
On the same day of the Kujan Tournament, another wrestling teammate of mine, Chris Clay, will be inducted into the William Floyd Athletic Hall of Fame.
Chris recently lost his life in an ATV accident.
Chris was a tough, hard nosed, competitive athlete who had a smile that never left his face.
Not only were Kevin and Chris great wrestlers, they were great human beings.
Both Kevin and Chris are truly missed by all who have ever come in contact with them, especially by their families and close friends.
Memorial tournaments are an all too real reminder that we are not invincible.
One day you are in a picture with a teammate, a friend, and a few years later they are gone.
Forever.
We need to understand, embrace and fear that vulnerability.
No one is invincible.
Knowing “Texas is not forever” has to drive our daily actions in our lives.
If there is ever a time you leave a loved one on bad terms, go back and mend it.
If there ever is a time in your life that you find yourself unhappy, immediately correct whatever needs to be corrected for you to find happiness, as you shouldn’t waste one second of your life in any state other than joy.
Life is a great thing, not to be wasted, overlooked or to be taken for granted.
If there ever is a time that you feel invincible, attend a memorial wrestling tournament honoring someone you know.
It will ground you.
High school, like life, is a time of innocence and invincibility.
Until it’s not.
Every second of every day needs to be lived.
Every chance we get, we need to express our love to the people who are most important to us in our lives.
Life teaches us ever too quickly that every “Texas Forever” moment that we believe will last,
Won’t.
We need to cherish life.
We need to live it.
We need to embrace it.
We need to bask in it.
Having sat in the stands for the majority of the last 32 Kujan Memorial Tournament’s made me want to start for people to get to know more about the individuals that the memorial tournaments honor.
Even though the feeling of “Texas” may not last forever,
I believe the spirit and our memory of the person we lost –
Must.
So, if you ever want to find me on the 3rd Saturday in January, I’ll be in my usual spot.
Top row in the stands at William Floyd High School.
Teammates forever.
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Related Posts:
Be Incapable of Discouragement
You Must Beat ALL of Your Opponents
Greatness vs. Greatness Arrived
