The MindStrong Project

What is risk?  How do you weigh the pros and cons of risk-taking?  Is it smart or just plain stupid?  What are the advantages of risk-taking and is it a risk if it's your life's purpose? As you can see this post could entirely be a series of questions. That's because risk-taking is essentially a subjective group of human behavior. Just simply walking out the door each day and entering the world is a risk in itself. So what quantifies positive risk-taking? How long do we enter the world of high-risk high-reward?  Better yet, what happens if you don't risk it all? I think that's where it stops and starts back up to the beginning. Taking a risk is inevitable and choosing the one worth pursuing becomes the power of human expression. Your system  is set  up very uniquely through the laws of nature. In one instance you as an organism need extreme stress to become adaptable. You must constantly seek out and find hard things to do if you want to reap the rew

Have you considered this simple yet profound line?  Think about what you allow to happen in life and you quickly come to find out you don't hate it. Whatever you don't hate, you will never change. Over the last decade spending time learning and also speaking in college classrooms across the country, noticing and dissecting the body language of the presenter or the quality of questions that came my way. I've experienced different teachers, coaches, and administrative philosophies. Along with the willingness of attention by those who filled the seats, mine included. The main desire or want that each one of those environments presented was most definitely expressed in the need to be happy. Every young face placing their focus on the message of the presentation or their personal daydreaming ultimately came down to the curiosity about what and how we could achieve happiness. My purpose to understand happiness and what drove it was directed in all the wrong ways. It wasn

The constant searching and sustaining of control becomes the root of confidence. Every performer wants control. And when things are outside of that every performer fights to get it back. The lack of control becomes the instability of choice. Study anyone in the midst of chaos who lacks control. Problems are magnified and stress is added. Irrationally takes over and the temptation of immediate results become the main source of decisions and behavioral actions. Someone who needs attention acts out in rage until noticed. Someone in transitions of uncertainty grab ahold of any comfort available. The concept of struggle or adversity peels the weak out of the race. It again falls back on control. Perception of this self-awareness lives in the way in which we view the world. There is not good or bad other than how we personally see it. However, the breath tells a deeper story.  Breathing is linked to the experience we’ve had and the meaning in which we identified with those memories. If ou

Collect data, track your experiences. Improve your reasoning. This becomes that internal locus of control we’re seeking.... Growth Mindset. But do it manually and with patience. In other words, make good art. At every checkpoint of growth in human evolution we leave behind deep rooted biological systems hardwired in our bodies from previous experiences. Technology, comfort, information. These are beautiful creations. All meant to solve an original problem. However, if we don’t keep developing and enhancing our own personal “nature” we lose strong internal connection. You become fixed.  It’s with every advancement we leave behind trust of “self”. Because we have externally filled a need for the time being. This can also be seen at mindless movement and lack of appreciation. You become trapped in a new comfort zone. This now puts us in a place of avoidance. The mental reframing and constant breaking of past experiences is an ongoing journey. The key here is recognizing we’re not only

Learning...  How do we know if we’re good learners? What quantifies our awareness? Is it innate? Through much experience learning or trying to..Ive found that the masters of knowledge ask more questions than answer them. They can unlearn in a moments time, adapt and switch gears. Could it be that the ability to learn lives in the unlearning? Everyone reading this has been breathing their whole life...seems like something that doesn’t need to be learned  Performance: 1.) Self-Awareness 2.) Choice 3.) Energy Become aware of what you’re learning right now, the environments you’re in. The information you allow yourself to be exposed to. Ask yourself and others questions. Then do the deep work to really see if that’s true.... Make the choice. Understand your value system. Set the standard. Fail often and connect the dots, solve the problems. But be careful here. There are many problems to solve. So choose the one worth solving. Energy...The feedback loop. Comes through our sen

Knowledge or wisdom...Information or experience...Metrics or intuition? Something I’ve deeply pondered for many years is this question...How do you learn how to learn? At its core what is learning? If you study any ecosystem on the planet it is a chain of teaching and learning. Sharing and receiving. Our value system is quickly pushed on us at early ages and hardwired into our choices as we navigate through life. But what is it that makes a great teacher? A great student?  How is being an expert in any field worth it if you’ve only acquired knowledge no experience? What is the point of a test if we only recall information without understanding? I’ve asked many questions to many Experts in there fields only to hear “I don’t remember, I haven’t studied that since college”. What is it that makes us smart or worthy of people’s attention? What value does our knowledge, wisdom, information, experience, metrics and intuition serve the world?  Read a book you read years ago and see if it

The probability that your idea is intelligent at the core of its recognition is very likely to be a stupid idea. But do you have the willpower to endure extended periods of time missing, failing, feeling embarrassed? Do you have the strength to see your idea through? Are you capable of learning what is working and what isn’t working? Can you let go of attachment? This will be deep settling questions as we already acknowledged that your initial idea tends to be cloudy. This lack of clarity is why the first line of feedback comes back through humiliation. It is our duty to first understand and articulate our thinking for ourselves. When we take that into the world we are met with a new layer of minds that now need to be changed. Do not feel overwhelmed or inadequate during these times. Allow yourself to listen, hear and digest.  Maybe an unorthodox way of improving this skill, but here is how ya do it.  Take a cold shower ... The cold teaches you many of these lessons. You will not

Ideally you look for a 50-60 degree cold tub and start exposing yourself. This is fuel for your system and calming your mind. The low 40’s high 30 degrees are great, but if you’re not experienced can be a bit of a struggle and ruin the experience. The cold has a unique way of teaching you about yourself. Through our experience of coaching and teaching these methods, you often see that moment before the plunge the tendency to freeze. This is the minds way of protecting against something that’s about to happen (future). Or we have a tendency to remember our experiences with cold and the pain/discomfort (past). The mind is always looking to keep us safe and not using energy unless it means surviving. This is what keeps us inside our comfort zones. The modern human doesn’t need to fight for shelter, hunt/gather or run away from lions. We created an ecosystem that no longer stresses the human organism. Environmental stressors will wake up the primal inside you to a level you didn’t know exi

Through all the advancement we’ve brought to our recovery methodologies and training it’s amazing what we’ve established to enhance our abilities to perform. It’s very valuable to understand regardless of what we think we're thinking, our body will do what it needs to optimize a homeostatic state (Balance). In many cases we tend to focus on speeding up recovery. This is not our call, it doesn’t exist inside of nature. So very often we take this desire and we reach for the nearest bandaid...Cryotherapy, Sauna, stimulants, massage etc... The intentions are there and the need for speed does seem to be leaving our human race anytime soon. And among all our great methodologies we’ve set up some great areas of advancement. Although the best areas of advancement still remain in nature...(The Immaculate Balance of the Universe) Simply taking a walk in the woods...This activity activates the vagus. This nerve is responsible for calm and regeneration. Responsible for relaxation and renewal

Chain of Command... To have a deeper understanding of the stranger within opens us up to mysterious, complex and interesting aspects of ourselves that we may not have known existed. Growth Mindset...I’ve envisioned the beauty of this perspective for some time and all signs point to “positive” compared to a fixed mind. Now, how do we get there? To think we don’t have control is a frightening feeling. Yet such clarity could change the course of our lives. At its core we’re mostly a subconscious mind that has adapted through millions of years of evolution. We’re not as conscious as we may think we are in our ability to make choices. So this could leave us up to the data collection of our subconscious to improve reasoning (choices). This power would catapult us into an internal locus of control. Giving us the perception of power, understanding our behavior is our consequence. The higher our internal state of control the calmer we feel in chaos. Peacefulness is a state of creativity. The ne

Before we could communicate it was energy that we felt. Could I trust you purely off the energy I observed? This deep innate quality in us humans still last today. It’s the reason why you change tone when asking questions, or greeting certain people. Example: Best friend walks into the room...You’re immediately recognizing their energy (body language, vision, breathing) and in that split moment off what you felt will be the tone in how you ask “What’s up?”... concerned: Your eyebrows squint voice lowers as you say what’s up. Excited: Eyebrows raise, voice louder pitch. This gets received on the other end and that person you acknowledged now feels your energy with how you’ve perceived them. Whether they knew it or not they saw it in your eyes. Felt it in your voice. This is energy.  (Eyes and mouth) Tell a story. It’s deep in our biology to use the eyes and breath for survival. It’s the circuit of trust to our self-awareness and decisions we make. The ability to manage and sustain e