Posts Tagged "love"
Suffer In Silence Or Speak Up And Speak Out?
Do you have something to say? Do you want to be heard? The world wants to hear you, the world wants you to use your voice.
I don’t mean your writing ‘voice’ (though the world wants that too).
I mean use your real voice, the physical one you born with. It’s one of the most powerful tools for expressing yourself and moving others, and unless you’re a musician, chances are you haven’t paid much attention to it.
Way too many talented, passionate people are scared to speak up. If you can’t speak up to the people closest to you – your friends and family, you won’t be able to speak up anywhere else. Start now, speak up.
Read MoreHow To Turn Your Strengths Into Super-Powers
Do you think you have strengths and weaknesses? You might. Do you think you need to fix or improve your ‘weak’ areas? You might. Before you do, let me offer you an alternative solution.
Turn your strengths into super-strengths.
Imagine all your strengths and weaknesses are like candles. Each one burns brighter the stronger it is.
For example, if you’re really good at dance, then that would be a very bright flame. If you’re not-so-hot at accounting, that would be a very dim flame.
You could go through your life trying to find every dim flame and brighten it to a decent level through hard work and discipline, until you’re "pretty good at most things". Be aware though, that this is a recipe for mediocrity.
Read MoreThe Most Difficult Thing to Do In Life
I was having a conversation with an Uncle this morning. The day before, he was training me in the art of dismantling opponents from what he had learned over 20 years of training in a free-style brawling Kung Fu gym.
He had a friend with an interesting situation in life. The doctors said that in 2 years, due to a disease, he would go blind, and the friend had seemingly run out of resources and opportunities, as he had trusted and given everything he had to his separated wife and baby girl, whom supposedly squandered the money he worked for in his government job, who had just recently stopped his pension.
With another close family member of mine, he proceeded to escalate and share in a misguided attempt at finding a solution for his friend, and after blasting his friend with various amounts of “loving thoughts” such as “he has no more hope”, “whatever shall we do for him” and “my friend is truly stupid”, a rampage of judging and finger-pointing went on and on… and on… until I sat down, having finished boiling water for the lemon tea I was making.
I said a few “kind words” about how much I appreciated people, anybody really, being labeled and judged behind their backs, without even the smallest amount of appreciation for who they are, what they’ve done and what they will do and shortly after, interestingly enough, it was only me and my uncle having the conversation.
We had a talk, which I won’t go over in too much detail, but in one particular instance, I asked him, can you, at this point of your friend’s life, say something good about him?
If there were crickets in my house, I knew they would be chirping right about then.
I then asked him, wouldn’t you be saying all sorts of wonderful things about the man, if he actually died?
“So on the day of his funeral, you would be talking about all his great deeds, about his love for his family, about his vision for a better Hong Kong and so on and so forth, on his deathbed. But before then, you absolutely refuse to say one good thing about the man.”
He simply agreed.
My Uncle loves my company. During his stay in Canada, he has canceled and changed several plans in order to take a walk with me and chat about various things, and I listened intently as he shared his vast experience as an owner of a Taxi company and a man with really, a very colorful history behind himself. So, he loves being around me.
I knew this, and I told him why he loved being around me:
I always thought good things about him. And I listed a few of these things to him, such as Uncle, you are a wonderful husband and father to your family, a fantastic Kung Fu master with awesome loyal students, I trust your natural genius and abundance, I know you to be at this very moment a world influencer at inspiring people around you to be more daring and more loving.
He simply accepted this, and was happy about this. And then I asked him, your friend is the same. Please start saying these kinds of good things about him. At least one good thing, I feel it would help.
{Insert long, awkward silence}
You can say it after me… if it helps. My friend is a…
He refused, very passionately! He missed an opportunity, to turn what he called a friend, into an actual friend. If you can’t even say one good thing about someone, can you really call yourself their friend?
I realized then, that to be a good friend to others, is to think good things about other people, and mean it.
This may be the easiest thing to do in the world for me, and I see everybody else as being able to easily do this in their lives, because everybody is truly, truly awesome.
Read MoreA Good Teacher
I started breakdancing around half a year ago. When I started, being way more reckless and trying to show off with very limited technical ability, I was the student that nearly fell on my face many times, asked maybe one too many stupid questions and overall brought elements of mucho-randomness into the class.
The teacher was a high energy, high powered guy who plowed through us students, technique after technique after technique, always giving us the best he had, the methods he used to teach was just crazy… basically a non-stop hour and a half lesson, maybe 20 seconds on the basics (six-step, Brooklyn style top rock) straight to ass-whooping knee-twisting, elbow-bending madness that usually led to increased awesomeness in everybody involved.
I had a great time, attended every class until… the teacher retired. Now, it was a funny time when he left, because I strongly felt that it was just when I was at my peak of learning, just when I was getting good. There was another teacher that subbed sometimes and he took over. It wasn’t the same, he focused way more on the basics, which was awesome because I had none, but he didn’t really “LOVE” breakdancing, his preference was more about locking, tutting and waving.
When someone who LOVES what they do, and is so grateful about getting to teach you, it shows. It changes things. And when that person is obviously all about encouraging you to be unique, to follow him, but only to a certain point because he knows you need to do your own thing to shine, that’s something else. Now that’s not to take away from the basics teacher, but sometimes in your life you meet someone who just blows you away with their awesomeness, and that’s the guy I’m talking about today.
After one particularly disappointing class with the replacement teacher, where I basically was not taught anything at all, I didn’t come to any more breakdancing classes. Granted, every other class aside from that one class the teacher was technically awesome, so I really should let it slide. But for me, I feel like for some things, for massive improvement (which is what I’m often all about), I have to feel that connection with my teacher in order to learn amazingly.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. This is basically how a super good teacher who encourages the heck out of you to be the most unique and best you can be brings everything out of you and then some, and can even inspire you to get into the flow. A “good” teacher only teaches you what’s necessary to get the job done. That’s the energy you get from them. You have to go with their flow, you have to go with their preference. You get the vibe from them that they feel that “their time is valuable”, they only have so much time for you… that everybody’s got a role to play, that everybody’s got an agenda. You hear vague excuses from these “teachers” of how “it obviously takes longer to grow in area x or y, or that something can’t be done or they don’t have the energy…”.
Today that amazing teacher came again. The class was phenomenal, it was so good, I took my dance not only in breakdance to a new level but felt that every single movement of my body improved just about 10, 000 x higher. As I breakdanced today, I was completely in the flow, I had many compliments from the man himself about how I improved massively since he last saw me. Well, that’s definitely true, but what he didn’t realize was my massive improvement came to shine through on that day, heavily inspired by him. Everything else before was just a set-up.
So I guess if you want to get amazing at anything, simply do what’s obvious. Get an amazing teacher. Simple enuff 
The Art Of Yin And Yang In Life
The east has long known about yin and yang. These concepts factor into a lot of their culture. In the West, there is not as much appreciation or understanding of the two polarities. The basics of Yin and Yang are that each is an essential polarity or aspect of the universe, each balances the other and each somehow contains a hint of the other. Yin for example, is understood to be feminine or dark or shadow or energy. Yang is understood to be masculine, light and direction. Yin is like an energy of being or existing, like a still kind of passive energy. And yang is an energy of movement and action and doing..
The polarities of life; they go on forever. They cascade. Some people only focus on tiny detail polarity, like, an artist putting a finishing touch on his painting. Or, a girl choosing a specific word to get their point across or connect.
They might choose just a tiny subtle and soft yin finish. Or they might choose a harsh, yang slash of colour, but, whatever they choose, there still is a greater polarity above. That of their own nature. Like, are they a soft gentle creative type or are they a harsh aggressive dominating type? And even that is subjective. Whichever they are, they can still use certain words of a different polarity or paint in a different way. And then, we can look at the company they work for or the career they’ve chosen. Are they a perfect complement to their employer? Perhaps they worked for a big mover and shaker company. And they consider themselves aggressive and yang but are they actually compared to the real spirit of the company they work for? Everything is relative. What seems harsh to one person is completely normal to another. What seems yin, soft or feminine to one might in another situation or relationship seem the exact opposite. It all depends, on what we are comparing. Knowing this, if a person feels their nature is more feminine, when placed in a quiet village of feminine women,
they might actually seem directed, ambitious and masculine.
And so we can see the polarities stack or cascade or grow. And then, we can look at the company they’re working for, and it’s place in the city it’s located in. First, we looked at individual creations in regards to yin and yang; then we looked at the individual them-self, then we looked at the company that individual works for. Even bigger than that we can look at the city the company is located in. Maybe, it’s a massive dominating company in hawaii, which is a pretty chilled out place. But if you were to transplant that business to New York, where everyone has a huge dominating company in a very driven and ambitious and go-go-go environment, it might appear as a subtle smaller toned down enterprise. The polarity of the city alters all the polarity energies of the people and things in the city. If the city is Yang, things inside look different, if a thing is Yin, it will feel different (in how it’s perceived, again,everything is subjective).
So really it’s all play. It’s fun sometimes to talk about when the polarity of one’s words or actions or one’s nature but in the end it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is what’s right at the present moment. I think i’m going to end this in a subtle yin way. We’re done.
Read More
"For the first time, I can honestly say I am truly living. Thank you Jay for empowering me to live the life I have imagined." - Tori Mongrain, Artist
"Jason, an hour with you is easily worth $700.00, thank you. I asked everything and you answered me brilliantly." - Arthur Hung, Dancer
"Being around [Jason] is being around happiness and goodness, and everyone would do well to be where he's going." - Kheiran Khan, Gamer
"Jason is truly a visionary. He is what I would call a 'Master Motivator'." - Darryl Cole, Real Estate Agent
More at RyzeOnline.com.
