Cane Self Defense, Learn Martial Arts Online
Success Theory
Help Me Send Kids To MDA Summer Camp!
Join us for this year’s Pushing For Change fundraiser! We will be sending children to MDA Summer Camp 10 push-ups at a time! Email me at pasquinilli@hotmail.com if you are interested in donating, pushing, or both!!
Philosophy, Attitude, and Action
“Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.” – Jim Rohn
You have to continuously develop and refine your philosophy of life from the youth through your last days. How you ought to think, act, and speak and how that fits into the rest of the world is your philosophy. This is a great starting point, but not nearly enough to find success in life.
While you are figuring out your philosophy, you must also take steps to create and maintain a positive and healthy attitude. A great attitude will keep you going through the most difficult times, and life is supposed to be hard at times! A great attitude backed by a highly refined philosophy is still not enough to move you onto the path you want to take in life though.
Success comes only from doing, or from taking action on your philosophy while maintaining a great attitude. Your daily habits should move you in the direction of your goals. Your goals should be aligned with your purpose and the vision you have for your life. Your philosophy and attitude define your daily habits, but they are also informed and strengthened by the results of these actions.
What are your daily habits? Focus on your strengths, and make sure that you are doing the right things every day to move you toward your goals, vision, and purpose!
Purpose, Vision, and Goals
I often say that life is short, so you better take action on your dreams now. Recently, I was corrected by a seven year old girl who is a student in my martial arts program. She said, “Life is short for you, because you are old. I am only seven, so my life is still really long.” Can’t argue with that! Whether or not you still have a lot of life ahead of you, or you are old like me, you have to define a purpose, create a vision, and set real goals that will engage your heart and mind, and enrich your life.
Purpose – Why are you here? What excites and inspires you? How can you live your life doing the things you love and being the kind of person you want to be? Defining how you want to live your life will help you set your purpose. It’s not about money, or things, or even experiences, your purpose is not your job or even who you are. It is how you are that ultimately matters, and really the only thing you have ultimate control over. So grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write out How you want to live. Do you want to be kind, happy, honest, healthy, attractive, respected, compassionate, etc..? It’s your life and so you have to make your list. Go big and make no compromises. Don’t live a small life and don’t settle for what you think you can do, you are going to have to stretch to live your life with purpose.
Vision – What will your life look like when you are living your purpose? Here you can dream of the kind of home you live in, the kind of work will you do, the car you drive, the vacations you take, the charity you spread, etc… You might not care about material things, and that is not really what your vision is about. Your vision must support your purpose, but don’t get stuck thinking that you have to live in poverty and lack in order to live a life of meaning. Money and material goods are just things. They are tools and only have an emotional value if you give one to it. Money is not the root of evil, the love of money can be though. So again, dream big and make no compromises with your vision either. Decide how you are going to live fully into your purpose. What will your life look like every day when you are fully engaged and abundant in your purpose? Make another list and don’t censor yourself.
Goals – How are you going to get from where you are, to where you will be living your vision fully empowered by your purpose? Setting short term, action oriented goals that are properly aligned to your vision, will help you to design a road map to your dreams. These goals should be big, but not so big that you can’t reach them in a reasonable amount of time. You should still set goals that will force you out of your comfort zone and force you to grow. I personally make three, six, and twelve month goals. I do have longer term, big whopper goals, but the small ones are the most important because they get me up and moving every day and are challenging enough that I have to live outside of my comfort zone. Start with just two or three goals for the next three months, write them down and get to work.
There is a lot more to living your life on your purpose, but you have to start with a direction first. Your purpose will lead you to your vision, your vision to your goals, and your goals will define daily actions that you should start taking now. The last thing I want to share is this; once you start taking actions that are aligned with your vision, you are already living your purpose. Get excited by this truth, and welcome it with gratitude. Life is not a treasure hunt. You are here now and you have arrived! Give thanks, grab a smile, and enjoy the process.
Matt Pasquinilli is the Executive Director of the non-profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School in Dayton, Ohio. www.aacdayton.com
Life is Interesting to Interesting People.
If you want friends, you have to be friendly. If you are bored, then do something in a focused and enthusiastic way. You get what you give, and when you give out energy, happiness, excitement, and fun, then you get all of it back in great abundance. When life is tough, get tough. Then pray and move your feet, or your hands…
Happy New Year!
2011 is all but over. 2012 is hours away. I spend this day writing thank you cards to all the people in my life, new and old, who have given me much to be thankful for. That’s a lot of ink and a lot of cards. Writing these thank you notes helps me to stay focused on who and what add value to my life and to seek more of it in the coming year.
I firmly believe that you get what you give, and more importantly, you get more of what you think about. If you are living in fear and anger, and you spend most of your time complaining or worrying, you don’t have to guess as to what your life will be filled with. Want something better, something more than moaning and groaning and self-pity? Then you are going to have to spend more time giving thanks for all that you have and let go of your limiting and self-defeating thoughts of lack and poverty. Seeing everything you have makes you very wealthy. Seeing all the things you don’t have, can only make you feel poor and needy. No one likes a needy whiner, so take a deep breath, look around, and acknowledge all the things you do have. Still can’t see anything to be thankful for? Try taking a visit to a homeless shelter or the cancer ward of a children’s hospital and then make your list.
Happy New Year!
Matt Pasquinilli is the Executive Director of the non-profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School, in Dayton, Ohio. Matt is also the author of “The Child Whisperer” and co-author of “Behavior Coaching” with Dr. Scott Hall.
Resilience
Pray and move your feet. This is one of the most inspirational sayings I have ever come across. The Quakers are credited with this great concept and I have become truly convinced that it is one of the key ideas that will lift you out of a funk faster than anything else.
Failing is not the problem. In fact, failure is a great opportunity to grow and learn. Failing often leads to great success and enlightenment. The problem that we sometimes have, is that we don’t get back up after we fall. I’m not really talking about grieving a loss here though, that is a natural process and requires its own timeline. But grieving too can turn into a negative thing when we get stuck and refuse to let go of negative emotion and live in fear and sorrow. Resilience becomes a way of thinking about loss and failure that accepts that we are designed to fall in order to learn how to get back up onto our feet and get going again.
Having a sense of purpose, a reason for being, allows you to fall and get up again over and over. Pray and move your feet means that you are in touch with your purpose and that you let go of your own ego and attitude and let a higher power to keep you moving in the direction of your meaningful life. What are you here to do? What excites and fulfills you? Are you following your dreams, or have you resigned to a safe, but boring life? Find your sense of purpose and commit to it. Don’t worry about how others feel about your dreams, it’s your life, not theirs. They won’t want to see you change, not because they don’t want to see you succeed, but because they don’t want to have to adjust to your change. That is not a good enough reason for you to settle for an unfulfilled life.
Focus on your purpose and define what your life will look like when you are living your purpose. Identify the daily actions that you have to take to live your purpose and then get to work. Start small but dream big. Don’t put a limit on your purpose, but be willing to start from where you are in move in the direction of your fulfilled life. Expect to fail and to fail often and sometimes in big ways. Your commitment to this purpose will be the first step in becoming resilient. Everything after is just plain work. Fall on your face, see your self living in purpose, pray for strength and wisdom, get up and move your feet!
One final thought, we all have an inner dialogue. It was put there before we were even born, and while some of it might be positive and supportive, some of it can be so negative that it will stop us in our tracks and convince us that we can never have the life we want. You need to hear that voice and accept that it is a part of who you are, and then turn the volume on it down. Replace it with positive affirmations that occur to you or that you pick up from reading and listening to empowering self-help books and programs. Control your thoughts because your thoughts control your words and actions. Emotions are energy and can’t be controlled. That emotional energy is just energy and you choose how to think about it. Allow yourself to feel and then choose how you think about it.
Pray and move your feet!
Matt Pasquinilli is the Executive Director of the non-profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School and author of “The Child Whisperer” and co-author of “Behavior Coaching” with Dr. Scott Hall.
