JohnA Passaro's Blog, page 5
December 9, 2021
You Will Not Always Get Paid For Your Work – Work Hard Anyway
No effort that we make to attain the beautiful
Is ever lost.
Helen Keller
There will be times when you will do the work, and you won’t get paid.
There will be times when you will do everything right, and things will still go wrong.
There will be times when you will put in a full season of training, and the payoff never comes.
What should you do when this happens?
Well, the best advice comes from Shakespeare when he wrote in Othello,
“The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.”
You see, some events are designed to discourage you.
To break you.
Don’t let them.
Detach from negative emotions.
Flip the script and turn turmoil into fuel.
Be unable to be discouraged.
Believe you always get paid.
Then, even when you don’t, you do.
Your payment will not always come in the normally expected fashion.
But hard work and a full effort always get paid.
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November 26, 2021
Make Adjustments, Not Excuses
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us.
They will be stumbling blocks or stepping-stones.
It all depends on how you use them.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Excuses provide a reason why something didn’t happen in the past without an adjustment to correct the reason to why it won’t happen again in the future.
It is the adjustment that is key, so that same thing will not happen again in the future.
Adjustments take the reason and add an action that solves the problem.
Always go further than looking for the reason why something didn’t work out as you had liked.
Invest the time to look for the adjustment you need to make to ensure it won’t happen again in the future.
You win, or you learn.
Apply what you learned when you didn’t win and then that non-win can never be deemed a loss.
November 25, 2021
Trust Yourself
Intuition
Is seeing with the soul.
Dean Koontz
Your intuition is a key component in figuring it out.
People get similar results because they act and respond similarly.
Trust your instincts when they scream out to you to act differently.
Sometimes it takes making a wrong turn that requires you to make another wrong turn that somehow puts you back on course.
You can never see the two wrong turns turning into the right path ahead of time.
But your intuition can.
It can see around corners and over mountains.
It can see two wrong turns ahead.
Be still and listen to your soul.
It will whisper to you.
Trust it.
Trust it even when it is telling you to do something that is not completely solving the problem.
As it may be working a few steps ahead.
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November 23, 2021
Don’t Make the Same Mistake Twice
Once is a mistake. Twice is a choice.
There are too many mistakes in this world to make once.
Don’t exponentially increase the number of mistakes there are available to make by repeating one.
Mistakes can be very useful.
When you make a mistake and learn from it, that mistake is not as a waste.
When you make a mistake, and you do not learn from it, well, that is a waste of time and energy which are both in limited supply in life.
Don’t waste either by not applying a lesson that you have already paid the price to learn.
November 22, 2021
Take Complete & Absolute Ownership
I am the master of my fate.
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
Invictus
Placing blame or making excuses is a futile endeavor.
It wastes time and energy.
I have never seen a wrestler who came off the mat placing blame or making an excuse ever wrestle his next match with a better outcome.
Blame and excuses lead to a downward spiral because subconsciously you are telling yourself that they were out of your control; thus, cannot be fixed.
Downward spirals are not conducive to winning championships.
By taking complete and absolute ownership to all circumstances, you are telling your subconscious mind that you are in control and can fix what needs to be fixed to have a better outcome next time.
This action leads to improved performance.
Improved performance leads to championships.
****
In life, there will be many opportunities to blame others for poor performance.
There will be many opportunities to make an excuse as to why something bad occurred.
Don’t.
Always remember that your objective is for better future performance.
Take complete and absolute ownership instead.
Doing so will give you the greatest opportunity for future success.
Remember, you are the master of your fate; you are the captain of your soul.
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November 17, 2021
Always Move Forward
Success is not final.
Failure is not fatal.
It is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
An unrelenting forward attack.
Never backing up.
Never stopping.
Moving forward for seven minutes.
Leaving everything you have out on the mat.
That’s the Iowa Style.
Approach life the same way.
An unrelenting pursuit of becoming the best version of yourself.
Never backing up.
Never stopping.
Failing forward.
Putting everything you got into each new day.
Having an unrelenting quest for a better life.
To improve the quality of life for yourself and others.
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November 11, 2021
Weigh Everything
Rule #33 In Wrestling & In Life – Weigh Everything
The price of anything
Is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Have you ever witnessed a wrestler weigh his food?
Why do you think they do that?
Wrestlers weigh their food because they understand the Universal Law of Cause and Effect.
A person can do whatever they choose, but there will always be a price to pay for one’s actions.
If you are willing to pay the price, do the action.
If you are unwilling to pay the price, don’t.
Can you eat mashed potatoes when you are two pounds over?
You can; you always have a choice.
But by doing so will require you to run an extra mile on top of the already grueling schedule you have planned to lose the two pounds you already need to lose.
Not worth it.
Can you eat 16 ounces of chicken the night before weigh-in while being on weight?
Yes, worth it.
Clean protein can be floated off overnight.
Want to eat a burger instead?
Need to run a mile.
Most people mistakenly look at a wrestler who weighs his food and says he isn’t allowed to eat.
That is not true.
A wrestler weighs his food to determine if the price he must pay for eating is something he is willing to pay.
If the food a wrestler weighs has dense nutritional value, the answer will be yes, it is worth it.
If it is of low nutritional value, then no, it won’t be worth the price.
Life is the same way.
You can do anything that you want in life.
Everything will have a cost.
Weigh every one of your decisions carefully.
And decide ahead of time if you are willing to pay the price.
If you do something stupid; your choice.
Remember, you’re going to have to pay a larger price than just running a mile.
Look at your life as always being on weight.
If the action you want to do will improve the quality of your life or the life of a loved one, the answer will be yes; it will be worth the cost.
If the action you want to do will not improve the quality of your life or the life of a loved one, then the answer will be no, it will not be worth the price you have to pay.
Weigh every action, every decision, every choice in life, and always remember how grueling it was trying to get those mashed potatoes off an hour before weigh-in.
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Submit a form.November 10, 2021
Rule #32 In Wrestling & In Life – Always Choose the Harder Option
Once you get past the point of expecting life to be easy,
It becomes much less difficult.
I can always tell a wrestler out in the real world.
They seem to always gravitate toward the difficult.
When given a choice, a normal person will choose the path of least resistance.
When a wrestler is given a choice, they will always choose the path of difficulty.
Why is that?
Because wrestlers know that nothing ever worth it was easy to obtain, and that nothing easy to obtain was ever worth it.
A wrestler knows the reward is always correlated to the exact degree of difficulty of the task.
And that choosing the harder option will separate you from the crowd in any endeavor.
That is why wrestlers always choose the harder option.
Life is the same way.
Most people in life will choose the option that requires the least amount of effort for a smaller short-term result.
Choosing the harder option, which sacrifices obtaining a small short-term result for a more enduring long term reward will require more time and effort.
Hard work works.
In a weird perverse way, wrestlers have been trained to understand that in the long run, the harder option is always the better option.
I’ve never heard a wrestler say,
“Let’s go easy in practice today.”
Wrestlers always choose the harder option.
And in the long run, they are rewarded for doing so.
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September 24, 2021
112 Ways to Overcome a Life-Changing Event
Life is hard.And unpredictable.
Sometimes, life will throw you a curve.
When it does, the solution is easy; you just learn to hit a curve.
But what do you do when life throws you a grenade instead?
One that goes off and disrupts or destroys nearly every aspect of your life.
A Death, a divorce, a diagnosis, an addiction, a random act of violence.
You wake up one day, and your current life is no reflection of the life you once knew.
If this happens, I’m not going to tell you everything is going to be alright – that is going to be up to you.
The term ‘alright’ is going to take on a whole new meaning to you.
What I will tell you is to buckle up – because it is going to hurt like hell – for that I do know.
It is going to hurt more intensely than you can ever imagine.
Enough to paralyze you.
And when you do learn how to move again, you will be moved to your breaking point.
Many times over.
The pain will be enough to fill your every thought with quitting and throwing in the towel.
Don’t.
When you get pushed to the edge, to your breaking point, instead of using a period in your life, use a semi-colon.
Pause, then go on.
There is more story to write.
More life to live.
More love to feel.
Hang in there.
Tread water for as long as you can.
And even longer if you have to.
I promise you kindness will find you.
The best day in your life hasn’t been lived as of yet.
You must believe that.
As you sit there, looking around at the destruction in your life, what you do not yet realize is the adversity you have experienced, although devastating, has secretly given you a gift.
A gift so valuable, you will never want to relinquish it.
Although this gift is available to everyone, nearly everyone is too busy to recognize it.
They say “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
You are now ready.
Look around you, at first, you may not see anything at all.
But I can assure you the teacher is present.
Buckle up, because you are going to go on the ride of your life.
From the depths of despair to the heights of euphoria.
Right now you can only see the ways your life has changed for the worse.
Those changes are quite obvious.
The good news, and yes there is good news, is your life has the possibility to change for the better.
Significantly.
It is a universal law when the Universe takes something of value from you, it must give you the gift of the seed of something greater in return.
One day, I don’t know when probably sometime after all your human emotions have run their course, you will come face to face with ‘your gift of the seed of something greater.’
What you do with that seed will be totally up to you.
You could plant and nourish the seed and experience the miracle of its growth, or you could pay it no attention and allow it’s fruit to die even before they get to the vine.
Make your choice wisely.The quality of your life depends upon it.
The seed is the greatest gift you will ever be given in your life.
You don’t know that as of yet.But you will in time.
If there is anything you ever trust again – trust in the fact that the seed, if planted, will produce boundless fruit in your life.
The fruit you never knew existed.
The fruit that will nurture you back to health.
You have paid the full price for the gift.
You might as well open it.
I will not insult you and say the gift is in any way a fair exchange for what you lost.
Or even that you should be grateful for the exchange.
And I know it is not an exchange you sought, and one if given the choice, you would undue.
But when all is said and done, you have two choices.
You can open the gift.
Or not.
That is up to you.
The exchange may not be what you want in your life right now.
But it is what you have.
And it is much more valuable than you know.
I have never met a person who experienced a life-changing event who ever wanted to give back their new found perspective of life.
I know you do not believe that to be true, in time you will.
Inside the gift lives the spirit of what you lost.
Opening the gift is the only way to keep that spirit alive.
Rebuilding your life makes the spirit flourish.
I know right now you want to lie down amongst the rubble in your life, to just blend into the destruction.
They say the greatest mistake is in giving up.
Don’t.
It is your duty to build again.
The normal reaction will be to try to rebuild a life exactly as the one you had before the grenade went off.
That will prove futile.
As you rebuild, if you attempt to replicate your past life you will realize if you rely on the pieces the grenade destroyed, you will come up short in comparison, as gaps and holes will emerge in your new structure, and the result will look nothing like your life before the grenade hit.
The key is to rebuild, not to replicate.
Obviously, there are pieces of your life that are missing.
You are going to need to be resourceful; to do more, with less.As you rebuild, you will need to get more from your new found perspective of life.
When you do, the rubble will miraculously transform into a foundation on which you will build a new life.
No, it will not be the same.
It can’t be.
There are pieces missing.
But it will make this moment matter.
And it does.
Do not attempt to make answers to your unanswerable questions the prerequisite for your happiness.
Believe, what you do not currently understand, one day you will.
Rather, concentrate your focus on your new-found perspective and live and be alive.
Here are 112 ways to start to recover from a life-changing event.
1. Dream.
2. Believe more.
3. Doubt less.
4. Trust more.
5. Fear less.
6. Live more.
7. Exist less.
8. Find gratitude.
9. Care.
10. Don’t compare.
11. Always be in the moment.
12. Find compassion.
13. Have empathy.
14. Smile.
15. Laugh.
16. Seek understanding.
17. Pay attention.
18. Allow yourself to heal, to grieve, to cry, to feel.
19. Love again.
20. Love deeper.
21. Fight like hell.
22. Have confidence.
23. Exude enthusiasm.
24. Be amazed.
25. Live in awe.
26. Be an asset to everyone you know.
27. Have passion.
28. Forgive.
29. Be thankful.
30. Say thank you.
31. Simplify.
32. Organize.
33. Optimize.
34. Be resourceful.
35. Earn your keep.
36. Have a vision.
37. Passionately pursue your purpose in life.
38. Find your life’s passion and diligently pursue it.
39. Do something good for someone who has no chance of ever being able to repay you.
40. Be happy when others find happiness.
41. Appreciate the miracle of a new day.
42. Find extraordinary in the ordinary.
43. Listen to your inner self.
44. Be still and allow the answers you seek to find you.
45. Touch someone’s soul at every given opportunity.
46. Recognize the divine in everything.
47. Reacquaint with an old friend.
48. Allow family and friends to help you.
49. Be a good friend yourself.
50. Be an integral part of your family.
51. Enjoy every aspect of your life – even failure.
52. Embrace your age.
53. Be intimate with your loved one.
54. Feel.
55. Touch
56. Be held
57. Hug someone an extra second longer than you usually would.
58. Seek to understand others plight.
59.Learn your parent’s life’s story – you will understand and appreciate it more now.
60. Learn a strangers life story.
61. Make a new friend.
62. Listen to your inner self.
63. Trust your soul.
64. Tap into a Universal higher power.
65. Follow your life’s inner compass
66. Trust yourself – especially when it doesn’t make sense to do so.
67. Compliment others.
68. Improve the quality of other people’s lives.
69. Help a lost soul find their way.
70. Mentor a child.
71. Keep a person who is down on their luck company.
72. Become one with nature.
73. Garden
74. Care for animals
75. Value each increment of time.
76. Communicate more with everyone who matters to you.
77. Reacquaint with old friends.
78. Pick up the phone.
79. Send the email.
80. Mail the letter.
81. Send the thank you note.
82. Run into the person in the grocery isle instead of dodging them.
83. Be the difference.
84. Seek solutions.
85. Leave time in your life – to be kind.
86. Pass along a positive outlook on life to your children.
87. Keep your marriage sacred.
88. Be fun to be around.
89. See the miracle in everything.
90. Help others without their asking.
91. Detect fake smiles in others and decipher what pain they are hiding – then do something to make the fake smile turn real again.
92. Hear those who are silently crying out for help and share in and absorb some of their pain.
93. Surprise someone – For no other reason other than because you can.
94. Do more than what is expected from you no matter how much is expected from you.
95. Strive to be the “best you,” you have ever been.
96. Challenge yourself.
97. If there is one more thing that you can do – do it.
98. Be there for someone.
99. Eliminate distance in your relationships.
100. Show up unexpectedly.
101. Say hello.
102. Say goodbye.
103. Say I’m sorry.
104. Say I don’t know.
105. Say I love you.
106. Solve problems with love.
107. Add love to everything you do, with everyone you see.
108. Give love freely.
109. Give love first.
110. Look forward to tomorrow.
111. Open all of your gifts
112. LIVE & LOVE LIFE
Check out all published writing by John Passaro HERE
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September 11, 2021
I Have Combined My Passions
I have combined two of my passions in life – Wrestling and Sports Cards.
This is a 2008 Dan Gable Upper Deck Goudey #284 HOF – Mini Black Back #11/34
It is graded an SGC 9
It has a Population of 1
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