OK, lets go already :)

Ran into my parents as I was leaving the climbing gym.

Racing Slicks :) Not so good for Seattle rain

Thank you!

Morning

Start your day right with a surge of energy:

• Literally jump out of bed as soon as you wake up … don’t hit snooze button and allow yourself to be lazy :)
• As you finish showering, gradually turn the water to coldest and try to stay there for about 3 minutes.
  Cold shower will clear your mind. It also trains “Fudoshin” (willpower, determination) and has amazing health benefits, such as flushing toxins and improving circulation.

Do a quick workout: push-ups till failure, 100 bicycle crunches, stretch for 20 min, do another 100 crunches.

Eat a full breakfast. If you had a hard workout a day before, eat lots of protein (eggs, meat). Otherwise have fruit, oatmeal, and yogurt but never skip breakfast. This will also help stabilize your energy levels and reduce stress throughout the day.

Eat snack: water, nuts (organic, raw, unsalted, non-roasted) or fruit (fresh, organic, preferably locally grown).

Afternoon

Go for a run before lunch. This will boost your metabolism, and help reduce stress at work. It will also pump oxygen into your brain and your thinking will greatly improve :)

Complex Carbs Lunch: For lunch you want to eat good carbs (complex), and salad (for digestion of it). Unless you’ve had a super hard training session a night before (sore muscles) you should skip on eating meat for lunch, as it is not the most efficient energy source. Good complex carbs examples are brown rice, any whole grain (quinoa, barley, oat, rye). Don’t eat bread (and never ever eat white bread). Drink water.

A little secret: take a 5 minute walk after lunch — the vibration from walking/jogging helps to settle and digest food.

Have a snack: water, freshly squeezed juice, fruit, and nuts.

Evening

Workout: I usually train 2+ hours every day, 6/7 days a week. Most of the time I am just climbing: I gradually warm up, then give 4 attempts at 4 really hard problems (”4×4s”), then work my way down easier climbs. Every training session is completed with 200 crunches, handstands and stretches. On my “off days” (when I am resting from climbing) I am doing one of the following: Gymnastic Rings, Free Weights, Capoeira/Yoga, Running or Rope Skipping.

Dinner: the only time your body really needs protein is after a workout — to repair damaged tissue. Eat a really big, green salad about 30 min before eating protein. This will coat the stomach for protein digesting and boost metabolism. Avoid all grocery store dressings. Instead, add a little virgin olive oil, vinegar (balsamic), or freshly squeezed lemon juice.

• Meat: organic grass fed beef, lamb, chicken, or pork (I don’t really eat pork).
• Fish: All fish is good. Buy non-farm raised fish. Never eat canned fish (or any other canned food, imitation crab).

Night

Get good sleep: get 8+ hours of sleep. Remember that you don’t actually get stronger through resistance training (which tears tissue). You only get stronger when you’re sleeping, when your body is repairing itself. If you had a super hard workout and you’re doing some sort of cross-training (climbing + anything else) you probably need more like 10 hours of sleep. Also, don’t drink alcohol right before bed as it will keep you up and also dehydrate you.

Part 2: Some “Common Sense” Notes

Really basic stuff
Never eat fast food, don’t drink soda, buy chips, or anything deep fried (french fries).

Food is not all “nutrition”
Food also stores KI! Never cook when you’re in a bad mood. Never eat something that was prepared by a person in a bad mood, as it will transfer “minus Ki”. (This is another reason why fast food is bad for you. Most people work there out of necessity, and they’re channeling negative energy into food.)

Plan Ahead
Think ahead and prepare your meals in advance, especially if you have sporadic schedule, random meetings.

Focus on quality

• Local organic grass fed free range beef is literally not the same animal as mass-produced, antibiotics/bst-injected crap beef you can buy at Safeway. Most restaurants also use the lowest quality meet they can buy. You get what you pay for … quality cost time and money.
• Farm raised fish vs wild fish are also very different in nutritional content.
• Organic free range grass fed eggs and regular mass-produced eggs are very different. One has many more times nutritional value (Omega 3, etc).
• Sunday Markets, Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Ballard Market and great choices of quality food for Seattle.

Simplest Ingredients
Buy food with simplest ingredients: look at the package contents …the fewer the ingredients, the better. Most stuff at grocery stores is inedible, as it has all kinds of additives and preservatives. For example, if you’re buying cheese, it should really only have 3 ingredients: Milk, Salt, and Rennet.

Everything else is only there to extend its “shelf life” in order to make more money at the cost of your health. Most of the cheese you’ll get at restaurants will almost certainly be of lowest quality.

On Mixing

• Do not mix 2 types of proteins (for example cheese and red meat in a hamburger).
• Do not eat bread, especially white bread, sweets, pastries.

Do not eat anything “processed”
If it’s made by someone else and packaged for shelf life, do not eat it. Things like canned food, smoked lunch meats, packaged tuna. Try to buy raw food that naturally lives and grows in your area and cook it yourself. Think about this: if you were a “cave man”, and there were no stores and food factories, what would you be hunting, gathering, cooking and eating? That’s what you want.

Avoid Big Portions

Don’t eating big portions. Eat smaller portions but more frequently (like every 3 hours):

• Buffer Overflow: your body can only digest around 25 grams of protein per hour.
• Eating a big portion also stretches stomach size (so you’ll feel hungry unless you eat huge portions). Stomach will also shrink if you eat smaller portions. If your stomach is expanded, its really hard to have super strong “body tension” (in climbing) as it messes with your abdominal muscles.
• Personally I eat 7 times a day: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, pre-workout snack, dinner and before bed snack.

Steady Energy
You want to maintain steady energy levels throughout the day (with no spikes):

Not all food gives you the same amount of energy:

• 1 gram of fat == 9 calories
• 1 gram of protein == 4 calories
• 1 gram of carbs == 4 calories
• 1 gram of alcohol == 7 calories

It also takes energy to digest food. Food also breaks down at varying rates. Protein is harder for the body to process, that’s why it makes some people groggy (”food coma”). Carbs is the most efficient form of energy you can get from food. Runners and climbers do “carb loading” (big bowl of pasta a night before the race or competition).

You want to sequence the type of food you eat throughout the day:

• Breakfast: Fruit
• Snack: Nuts
• Lunch: Complex Carbs
• Snack: Nuts
• Dinner: Protein

You only really need protein at night, so when you sleep your body will repair itself with the right building blocks (amino acids).

Not all carbs are created equal
Carbs break down and change blood sugar levels at different rates. You want to eat carbs that do not cause spikes in blood glucose and insulin levels:

• What’s good: apples, oatmeal, brown rice, nuts, and yogurt … basically “low GI” foods. Glucemic Index (GI) measures the effect of carbs on blood sugar levels.
• What’s bad: straight glucose, sugar, white bread, baked potatoes, white rice, pastries, candy, milk chocolate, cheap pasta.

Best way to stay in shape is to never get out of it!
Keep training and pushing past your comfort zone … keep elevating to new levels!

Strike out all multiples of 2’s:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Strike out all multiples of 3’s:

2 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19

And so on. Here is a C# code that does exactly that:

private static void PrintPrimesTo(int num) {
            var primes = new bool[num + 1];

            // init candidates
            for (int i = 2; i <= num; i++) { primes[i] = true; }

            // cross-out 2's:
            //   2, 4, 6, 8, 10...
            // cross-out 3's:
            //   9, 12, 15...
            for (int i = 2; (i * i) <= num; i++ ) {
                Console.WriteLine("Crossing out {0}'s to {1}:", i, num);

                for (int j = i * i; j <= num; j = j + i) {
                    Console.WriteLine(" * crossing-out: {0}", j);
                    primes[j] = false;
                }
            }

            Console.WriteLine("Results: prime numbers between 2 and {0}:", num);
            for (int i = 2; i <= num; i++) {
                if (primes[i]) Console.WriteLine(" * {0} ", i);
            }
        }

Sample output from calling PrintPrimesTo(100):

Crossing out 2's to 20:
 * crossing-out: 4
 * crossing-out: 6
 * crossing-out: 8
 * crossing-out: 10
 * crossing-out: 12
 * crossing-out: 14
 * crossing-out: 16
 * crossing-out: 18
 * crossing-out: 20
Crossing out 3's to 20:
 * crossing-out: 9
 * crossing-out: 12
 * crossing-out: 15
 * crossing-out: 18
Crossing out 4's to 20:
 * crossing-out: 16
 * crossing-out: 20
Results: prime numbers between 2 and 20:
 * 2
 * 3
 * 5
 * 7
 * 11
 * 13
 * 17
 * 19

1. “TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
2. “SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
3. “ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
4. “RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
5. “FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
6. “INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
7. “SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
8. “JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
9. “MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
10. “CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.”
11. “TRANQUILITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
12. “CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
13. “HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

Franklin wrote: “… [it is a ] bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection”.

Adding lyrics to your songs

You just need to make sure your mp3 files have “lyrics property” populated.

On your computer, open iTunes, right click on a song and choose “Get Info”. You should see this dialog:

Now click on “Lyrics” tab and add your text.

You can copy and paste lyrics text from websites, such as:

• http://lyrics.wikia.com/Main_Page
  

(Also, if you look around you’ll find software that will automatically add lyrics to all of your songs)

How to view lyrics on iPhone:

Once you’ve added lyrics to your songs and synced your phone, here is how you view it: when the song is playing, simply tab the screen once and it will overlay lyrics over album art!

People are patiently waiting to watch the open finals…

My best friend Johnny Goicoechea on the first finals problem … killing it!

waiting to go after it …

Sean McCall sends the 3rd finals problem, the crowd goes crazy.

Johnny and Jamie on the last problems

By the way, to rename all of these picture files, I used the following command in windows powershell:

ls | % {$x=1} {Rename-Item $_ -NewName “stone_gardens_sbc2009_$x.jpg”; $x++ }

(if you have windows 7 it comes with powershell, otherwise you can download it for free)

The desire for significance can be manifested in so many different ways:

• You’re trying to switch lanes in traffic, but another person speeds up (by being in front of you, they forced you to acknowledge their presence).
• It is the fuel behind any career. (Ambition, desire to be great fulfills this need for significance).
• It is also why people become pastors, missionaries and other types of religious workers. (they get this feeling of significance through serving God and people).
• It is also why we bother to document human history! (Historians were typically employed by wealthy people that wanted to be remembered).
• It’s the reason for crime. (By taking something valuable away from you by force, I make you acknowledge my significance in your life).

The desire to feel significant, important, to be connected to others, to be a part of something … is the drive behind reason.

People can channel this desire in a positive or negative way … but they will certainly channel it!

For example, you’re at the DMV.

You get agitated by how long the process is taking. You get to a clerks window and you’re seeing her as insignificant pawn in a government machine, instead of a fellow human being. Surely she feels it though your body language and vocal tonality. After finding that you missed some paper work, she makes you go back to the end of the line to fill it out.

Now imagine you walked up to the same clerk, smiled and asked her about an interesting necklace she is wearing (because you were sincerely interested :) … not manipulative by trying to invoke a particular reaction/outcome). After dealing all day with impatient and rude people, she finds it refreshing. She smiles back and tells you an interesting story behind it. You learn something new. She feels better. Whatever you didn’t fill out in your form, she helps you with.

Two very different approaches. Two very different outcomes. However, in both cases the clerk is telling you (between the lines) that “she is significant to your life”! In the first case she retaliates with whatever little power she has over you because you have hurt her sense of self-worth, her significance. In the second case, she expresses her significance by being helpful because you’ve provided her with an opportunity to do so. Instead of being impatient, you acknowledged her hard work and her involvement in your life without saying much. You said it all (between the lines) by expressing genuine concern. Because you’re sincere, your body language and tone of voice delivered it.

You can’t fake sincerity! Lots of people use charm and flattery to manipulate an event toward a particular result, but a discerning person will always catch on to it. Forget the outcome. Sincerely focus on expressing your genuine love to your neighbor (in how you say things, and what you say). When you’re communicating with people, even if you’re presenting cut and dry scientific facts … speak to the heart first!

Forget about arguing with people at the “mind” level, reasoning with logic and facts. Always go for the heart. If you genuinely make a friend, disagreements will vanish. Often time people continue to argue about something only because they have already stated their positions. Now the pride is involved. If they acknowledge that you’re right it means they are backing down (which hurts their pride/feeling of importance).

Most people are like zombies, they go throughout their day trapped in their world of thoughts, without really paying attention, and connecting with others. Those that can connect heart to heart are very few.

So, as you go about your day, pay attention to how many things are driven by a raw desire for significance…

Super light, tons of torque, handles like a mountain bike!

It has a much lower seat height compared to my Triumph:

Nice and crisp, love the color scheme:

I’ll show you guys a couple of bikes it is highly inspired by…

Here a bigger picture:

Here is a side view of it. It’s just raw! (Not sure about the purple and pink).

I like a touch of copper – goes well with distressed brown leather seat.

black lip, polished pipes, cafe seat:

There are no bad answers … there are only bad questions

The Quality of your questions literally creates your World. It determines the state of all areas of your life: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Intellectual, Physical, Relationships, Work, Fun and so on.

We experience the World with our thoughts. Our perception of Reality it skewed by many things. We never see things as they really are. I’ll go so far as to say nothing in the World even comes into existence until you observe it.

Thinking is nothing more than a process of asking a question and coming up with an answer. Questions are interesting because they impose a frame within which you attempt to answer them. Questions are like railroads tracks — they have presuppositions. Questions guide our awareness and thinking process.

It’s important to remember that your current state is the result of some questions you asked before. If you’re not feeling well (emotionally, physically, spiritually … etc) it means you’re asking poor quality questions. Thinking is made of questions and answers. Questions box-in your answers. Answers only give birth to more questions. It’s a recursive process. In the very beginning of your life as far back as you can remember … what were you interested in? What did you want to know?

Asking better questions

You don’t have to answer them within the question framework, a presupposition. Reconsider answering a question. The most intelligent, the happiest, most athletic, most inspired, most giving, most <whatever> people in the world differ from common because of only one thing: they ask higher quality questions because they realize it will guide the answers. By asking higher quality questions you get higher quality answers, higher quality thinking, better decisions and actions, faster emotional, spiritual, intellectual development, increased health and emotional control.

Example: Which question is healthier? Which question will produce the desired outcome? Which question would your Spirit ask?

Before giving answers, see your presuppositions. See the railroad. See where this train is heading. See if you need to get out of it and go in a whole new direction.

Cheers,
-Dmitry

Let me backtrack a bit a give you an overview of what this post is all about. My whole life I’ve been asking myself questions like:

• what is success?
  
• what makes people successful?
• what is my purpose here?
• how can I go after things I desire and at the same time bring good to others?
• what is the very best thing I can do with my life and my time?
• and so forth.

I realized that questions themselves define the frame. By frame I mean your mindstate, the frame of mind through which you look at the word. Just by asking questions you essentially placing your mind in a box, a “framework” within which you’re attempting to answer them. Most important questions are outside of reason and logic. I’ll type this really fast, in one shot, so bare with me if you find typos :).

Ghost in a shell and the flashlight

It is much like walking into a dark room with a flash light. The flashlight has some interesting properties. It has a limited capacity of how much light it can emit (measured in lumens). If you concentrate light, you’ll get a very bright but small surface area. If you keep focusing it, you’ll get a laser beam. If you disperse it you won’t be able to see as clearly but you’ll kind of get an idea of what’s in the room. I think Reality is like that. You literally create it by choosing where to look and how intensely you’re looking in any particular spot.

Reality

No one sees the Creation as it really is. Everything we see is distorted by lenses of memories, emotions, senses and its interpretation. Where you look … is what you choose to see! You create your World by your attention and your language.

“Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)

Words

With words God created the Universe. With mere words men can also create, heal, kill and influence the world. With words I create computer software and transmit logic to electromagnetic machinery. The string theory in theoretical physics is based on the idea that everything in Creation is made of vibrating loops (strings) of sound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory).

But … as you know, most of human communication is non-verbal: its made of body language (posture, gestures, breathing patterns, eye movements), vocal tonality, speed, pitch and so forth. The actual word content in communication is a very small portion of it.

However, your “inner dialog” and thinking is 100% words (and related symbols/imagery). Words are connected to each other with associations. Some words have a lot of associations and strong connections, some are not. The word “Love” has amazingly strong connections and associations, while
“kiwi” might have very few. This brings me to this point:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8)

Our language has everything to do with our happiness and how we perceive the world. I came to realize (in a very new light) that I should rephrase everything in the positive form because of the way it profoundly directs my attention. The words I use to talk to myself and others pull all kinds of associations and emotions related to them. By speaking and thinking of things that are noble, beautiful, right, true, honest, pure I dramatically affect my perception of the world. And since my perception of the world is my world, I literally change it and how it reacts to me!

Emotions link mind and body. Your thoughts and language also have a profound effect on your body chemistry … and therefore your health.

Balance

To me, the key to staying happy is staying in balance. Mind, Body and Spirit are one. Vital focus areas of Life are one.

Because I am so visual, I prefer mind-mapping to written word to help me “see” and focus. It’s kind of like an outline. The above are (dynamically changing) vital areas of life. If I click on Environment, it expands to the following:

The environment is composed of many “forces” that assert themselves on your decision-making. (I purposely removed some of these forces for this blog J) Some forces are very strong, some are weaker … but how you live is always up to you. No one can force you to think a certain way. Freedom of thought is the freedom you always have!
If I click on Health, I get this:

Body is a temple of Spirit. Mind and body are inseparable. Every day is an opportunity to grow and develop in all of these areas. If I click on physical training, I get something like this:

Nourishment (I do not like the word “diet”):

And so forth…

Each item on this map expands to multitude of sub-screens. The “leafs” (end points of these screens) contain text (in paragraph form). If I was to print it out it would probably be a 50-page book.

At this point I’d like to hear back from you guys, if this stuff is interesting I’ll post more. I might even post the map from which I generated these pictures, the “source code”. Any feedback is appreciated :)

Thanks,

-Dmitry

Getting ready for autocross event.

Safety first

Kevin’s white Carrera 4, and my Evolution MR.

It started to rain! AWD is so much fun on a slippery road.

They brought a water truck and sprayed the course for the “skidpad”. The right side of the circle was very slick. This exercise teaches you that you can turn and control your car just by adjusting acceleration. When you let off the gas, the weight of the car transfers forward, AWD catches on and the rear end gets whipped around. Sometimes you get into an understear (car keeps going forward even though the wheel is cranked to the side). If you smoothly turn the wheel get straight to get the tires rolling again and bring it back to the side, it will catch on immediately.

It’s amazing just how much everything I’ve learned from Aikido applicable to racing. It is the purest application of “Stillness in movement”. You’re keeping your mind calm and fluid while things around you are moving incredibly fast and chaotic.

The instructors also kept talking about “looking ahead” and being smooth, the same way in Budo you do not let your mind get fixated on opponents blade (or any particular thing).

This is where we attended ground school in the morning with driving instructors.

We saw a Mercedes-Benz SLR McClaren supercar at the track. What a beautiful car!

Kevin made a video of the entire event. Check it out: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=606632132181&ref=nf

Agatsu, “Self-Victory”.

Katsuhayabi “Victory right here, right now”.

“If your thoughts are antagonistic toward the cosmos, those thoughts will destroy you and wreck havoc on the environment. I know not how to defeat others I only know how to win over myself!” (Morihei Ueshiba, Creator of Aikido)

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8).

Morihei maintained that the real and most dangerous opponents we face are fear, anger, confusion, doubt, and despair. If we overcome those enemies that attack us from within we can attain a “True Victory”.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31)

 You only live once. Keep yourself in the present. The past is gone, and the future is unknown.

 Do not try to cut off all your passions. Passions give birth to heroic activity. Fulfill your passion and that will bring bliss.

 Do not think of work — any work — as duty. If it is a duty, it will become a burden. How do you turn a burden into a pleasure? Live respectfully, correctly, positively, and boldly.

 When you rise in the morning, greet the day with vigor. During the day, refrain from thinking or saying “I am confused”, “I’m weak”, “I’m sad”, “I need help”. At night before you sleep, release all thoughts of sadness, anger or irritation. Think of pleasant things.

Do not overwork yourself.

Reflect constantly on your state of mind.

Approach others in a positive bright manner.

Always be grateful, honest, kind, and pleasant.

Speak truly and honestly.

Body and mind form a single entity; life follows basic natural laws that should not be violated.

Your attitude towards life determines its outcome.

The best attitude is based on respect, boldness, truthfulness, and purity.

Foster the life force by being healthy, courageous, decisive, resolute, and vigorous.”

-Tempu Nakamura

Microsoft Online Services -- we shipped!

This is a great book on some of the basic principles, such as mind and body coordination, strong will, and power of “positive thinking” (this phrase doesn’t translate well).

Here are some interesting quotes from this book: “The brain is always working while you are alive, you cannot eliminate the waves of the mind. It is impossible not to think anything. The waves of the brain, however, can be calmed down by half infinitely.

When the waves are calmed down infinitely toward zero, it is called concentration. “Think nothing” means concentration or calmness. It is a state of mind like a clear water surface which reflects, clearly and without error, everything and every phenomenon of the world.

In this complicated modern age, it must be valuable to learn how to acquire calmness of the mind which can distinguish right from wrong clearly.” -Koichi Tohei

This is the womens finals route … I decided to play on it and see how many holds I can :)

Melissa won and gave me her Prana hat:

Its pretty sweet, very *very* limited edition :) It was made for the 2005 US National Climbing team to compete in Beijing, China (World Cup).

Orbitron is freestyling on the second half of the video.

Listen to 4:23

“… great to see release – my man goes
Dmitry is in the circle — he spins and let goes
with the palm on a hand over jacket
grant stand I can grand slam when I got here
Tip the beat, rock and nod, spot the block, till I get off to my forehead
Ya’ll know where its at, ya’ll spin on a hat …”

My ankle is feeling much better! I can finally start dancing again!!!

As you might know, I am in the process of making a movie with my friend Johnny Goicoechea.

Climbing is a great passion in our lives! We are fortunate to be able to climb during a week and to escape from the city outside on weekends. There is a very strong local crew of boulderers and a great climbing community. It’s a beautiful thing. I want to capture it all on camera … our everyday life, climbing, training and other things that we do. It’s a movie about bouldering in the North West and it is also a movie about our lives.

Training on gymnastic rings at Stone Gardens (Seattle):

Here is some unedited footage:

And some more (random) footage:

Video from Tumtum (Spokane, WA):

Dancing with friends (at club LO_FI, Seattle):

Much respect to Orbitron and Free (Circle Of Fire / Soul Shifters) … for the Music and dancing clips used in these sample footage videos
(we didn’t shoot this video):

Music from the first two clips: Orbitron, “BBoy Universal” album.

Stay tuned for more clips and actual trailers :)

Any kind of excitement and anticipation make it feel like time is sloooowing down. Think about it. Lets say you’re so excited to do something with your friends on Friday. You have these huge plans. The whole week is going to feel like a month, because you just can’t wait for it to be that day!

I think as people get older, they get less and less excited about Life in general, with an attitude “been there, done that”. Nothing surprises them. Nothing really takes their breath away, or disappoints them. They’ve been through many ups and downs etc. Its all about the same…

Don’t do that! Get excited :)

I think the key to enjoying life is always to be “in the mystery” like its your first day on this planet, to be excited to see what’s around the corner. I think its somewhere right in between of whats called “The beginner’s mind” in Zen, and “becoming a child again” in Matthew 18:1 .

Hope, desire, and passion make Life worth living!

Is there something you always wanted to do but gave up on? Get really inspired and time will fell normal again, just like when you were a little kid.

Stock Wing

So, here is a picture of my car (first pic). I think the stock wing is kinda big and silly, but it is functional … if I am taking 90-degree corners at 160 mph.

This car isn’t meant to be “pretty” — its all purely functional. But I think taking a wing off might make it look more subtle.

Without the Wing

More “grown-up” look :) Less flashy and less attention from cops. Real subtle and clean. The only problem is when you take the wing off, it leaves 4 small holes in the trunk.

No Wing, but with a little carbon fiber lip

I am leaning towards this look, it completes the car lines and also covers up those holes in the trunk that keep the wing on. (BTW, its made by Rexpeed and its called “Type-C” lip).

OK, please take a second and vote or leave a comment below if you like:

Campusing is a climbing exercise or “move” depending on your style :-) where you climb up the wall without using your feet. You don’t have to be able to do this in order to climb — There are plenty of climbers who can climb very hard but can’t even come close to doing what you’re about to see in these videos.

Climbing is not all about power and strength, but it is sure nice to have endless supplies of it!

Todd Meyers’ Campusing Workout: We recorded these videos at Wild Walls (Climbing Gym in Spokane) a few years ago. I just found these videos, so I am sharing them.

Warmup Set: Doing one-arms on a campus board, while skipping every other rung

Set 2: Doing one arms on very small (Metolius) rungs, skipping ever other one!

Set 3: One-arm pullups with with 10 pound ankle weights on each leg. Skipping every other rung!

Set 4: More one-arms with ankle weights!

Set 5: Last but not least…

1. Empty your concerns so you have room to think clearly!

I am starting to think GTD stole all of my ideas :) Anyway, you can’t be productive if your mind is cluttered with to-do lists, pressing events, unsolved problems and projects. There is a really simple solution for this – just write it down, get it out of your head and realize that you’ll come back to it later, on your own terms so for now it won’t bother you. I’ve always thought the mind is similar to computer RAM – it has a limited “operational capacity”. Even though you can increase it, your “effective memory” is the thought space not preoccupied by background processes, or loops such as unresolved concerns and to-do lists. These things interrupt you from focusing. They make you constantly context-switch. A Zen-like approach is much more effective.

Maintain an All-Day “Journal” Event:
I carry a PDA and a paper notepad (in case the former fails). On my PDA (iPhone) I create an all-day (calendar) event called “journal”. Inside it, I make notes of anything important that happened during a day. I like to track it in software, because later I can search it for keywords. I’ve been meticulously journaling my life this way for the past 6 years and it has worked well for me.

Write down your concerns in a Daily Recurring Event
It is very convenient to have a daily recurring event (I renamed mine to “bucket”, credits to GTD). As you go through your day, open this “Bucket” event, and write down any kind of concerns, ideas, to-dos, etc in the notes section. I also carry a voice recorder (so if I am driving I can record things I need to remember and put them into my calendar later (plus its not a bad idea to become aware of what you sound like to people)).

If you do these 2 things you’ll have the ability to (1) search through your Life journal, and (2) copy and paste your items from bucket to other software. Make sure to make monthly backups of your calendar by burning them to a CD.

2. Process your daily “bucket of concerns”

At night, I sit down and go through each item in my daily bucket list. I empty it completely every day. You can only do one of the following things with the items in your bucket:

1. If it’s something small (less than 2 minutes) – do it immediately!
2. Can someone else help you do it? Delegate it and create an event in your calendar to follow up on it later.
3. If it requires you to be in some place and time, schedule it to be done as soon as possible.
4. If it’s some kind of information that will really be useful to remember at a later time, on some specific day … put it in your calendar (and describe it in the notes section of the event).
5. If it’s not feasible at the moment, file it to review later, under “maybe/someday” folder.
6. If it’s a huge task, create a project for it. Break it down to specific “action items” and figure out what is blocking you from moving forward with it!
7. Don’t do it at all.

3. Get inspired: Reflect and Review

1. Refocus on your priorities and values. What do you want to do with your short and fleeting Life? What is important? If you don’t have a good answer for this question, schedule aside a personal time to pray, reflect, meditate etc.
2. How about the next year? What specific goals do you have?
3. How about this week? What specifically are you going to accomplish this week? Take a look at your maybe/someday list. Can you do any of it this week?
4. What specific things you’re not doing right now that would have amazing positive effect on your life only if you would do them every day?
5. Look over your schedule for tomorrow and go to sleep. When you wake up, glance over your schedule after breakfast.

I look at every day as an opportunity to grow in all of Life. If I am not learning and growing, I am as good as dead. This is how I break it down in my mind:

Personal Areas (Inner):

• Spiritual: Prayer, meditation, reflection etc. Keep yourself from being polluted by this world. Run towards the light.
• Emotional: Emotional Intelligence, Power under control (over your emotions, thoughts, desires, speech, etc). Guard your heart. Don’t be reactive.
• Intellectual: Use it or loose it! Progressing and learning something difficult, highly technical. Using your memory so your capacity increases.
• Physical: Training your body (your temple) to be in the best physical shape you can possibly be. Watching your diet. Getting enough sleep. I learned (from Aikido) on a very deep level that mind and body are inseparable. Healthy body is healthy mind, healthy emotions.

People Areas (Outer):

• Family: spending time with family
• Friends: connecting with friends and making new ones.
• Love Life: dating, etc.

To simplify all of these things above and to understand how they all work together, you can just think of them as 3 things:

• Love: Love for Your Family, Friends, Colleagues, Acquaintances, Complete Strangers. (Agapē).
• Health: Your Spiritual, Emotional, Intellectual and Physical well-being.
• Wealth: Your ability to make money (for the sole purpose of keeping Love and Health in balance. Think about it!)

Now watch how they’re connected:

Let’s say “Love” gets out of balance: you’re not in good relationships with your girlfriend – well, it will immediately take a toll on Health and Wealth. You might be stressing out, you won’t get enough sleep (Health), and you won’t be productive at your work (Wealth).

Let’s say you’re having financial problems (Wealth) – you’re not going to have any time to spend with your family, friends and loved ones. Your relationships will start to deteriorate (Love). Because of stress, your Health will be affected as well (Health)!

If you’re sick and in pain (Health), you won’t be able to work well (Wealth), or spend quality time with family, friends, etc (Love). You need to take care of your body so it takes care of you later.

All these 3 things are connected very strongly. Keeping them balanced will make you feel great!