40 Days...

I am 40 days in and approaching the halfway point. I reached two milestones over the past 10 days. The first was completing phase 1 of my Jump Attack training program and the other was turning 31 years of age. It's funny, as I am getting older I am actually heading towards being in the best shape of my life. Things are starting to become habit more, and as John Dryden says, "We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." I'm trying to turn back the clock and build something I can be proud of and feel great while I'm doing it. And of course I'd love to be an inspiration to anyone else wanting to do the same.

Here is the rundown of the past 10 days by section.

1. PhilosophersNotes: I missed a couple days of notes and had to do multiple ones in a single day to catch up. I was really busy this past week and needed to get rest, so I had to postpone a few. I didn't like the feeling of straying away from my daily practice of listening, meditating, and journaling on an amazing, life-changing book summary every day. Nonetheless, I am caught up and back on track and have some awesome quotes to share.

Here are the books I covered this week:

The Gifted Adult - Mary Elaine Jacobsen
Happier - Tal Ben-Shahar
Happy for No Reason - Marci Shimoff
Harmonic Wealth - James Arthur Ray
The How of Happiness - Sonja Lyubomirsky
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living - Dale Carnegie
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci - Michael Gelb
Integrative Nutrition - Joshua Rosenthal
It's Not ABout the Money - Brent Kessel
A Joseph Campbell Companion - Joseph Campbell

Here is the list of quotes that stood out, to me, the most.

"Your current level of results, your appearances, are nothing more than the residual outcome of your past thoughts, feelings, and actions." - James Arthur Ray

"Integrity, from the same root as the word integrated, comes when a persons words and behaviors match up. True integrity, the true test of character, is to live what you say is important to you, even when you don't feel like it. To live your values above and beyond your moods." - James Arthur Ray

"It's easier to have courage and trust the process when you feel you are making headway. Mastery is not persistence when you see a light at the end of the tunnel. True mastery is persistence when you don't yet see the light." - James Arthur Ray

"Energy goes where attention flows." - James Arthur Ray

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life he's imagined, he will be met with a success unexpected in common hours." - Henry David Thoreau

"Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other." - Maxwell Maltz

"There's surely no point in being a person of vision unless we have the will to act. Daydreams and inklings about taking our personal mission statement seriously must be translated into action or be lost in the dust of, could have, but didn't." - Mary Elaine Jacobsen

"The difference between a creative person and a creative producer is hard work." - Mary Elaine Jacobsen

"50% of our happiness set point (level) comes from genetics, 10% from circumstances, and 40% from our habitual thoughts, feelings, words, and actions." - Sonja Lyubomirsky

"Becoming lastingly happier demands making some permanent changes that require effort and commitment every day of your life. Pursuing happiness takes work, but consider that this happiness work may be the most rewarding work you'll ever do." - Sonja Lyubomirsky

"We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other peoples success and show concern in the face of others failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typically unhappy person. Namely as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers accomplishments and triumphs, and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers failures and undoings." - Sonja Lyubomirsky

"People who strive for something personally significant, whether it's learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children are far happier than those who don't have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person and you will find a project." - Sonja Lyubomirsky

"When you come to a roadblock, take a detour." - Mary Elaine Jacobsen

"In the end, the only people who fail are those who don't try." - David Viscott

"Life shrinks and expands in proportion to ones courage." - Anais Nin

"Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. Success feeds on itself." - Tony Schwartz

"Helping ones self and helping others are inextricably intertwined. The more we help others, the happier we become, and the happier we become, the more inclined we are to help others." - Tal Ben-Shahar

"Our brains are Velcro for negativity and Teflon for positivity." - Rich Hanson

"You can either bend with the inevitable sleet storms of life or you can resist them and break." - Dale Carnegie

"Balance is not a noun, it is a verb. Balancing." - Osho

"Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind. Yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately." - Plato

"You do not get stomach ulcers from what you eat, you get stomach ulcers from what's eating you." - Joseph Montague

"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." - Thomas Carlyle

"Knowledge isn't power until it is applied." - Dale Carnegie

"The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not." - George Bernard Shaw

"Get busy, keep busy. It's the cheapest kind of medicine on this earth, and one of the best." - Dale Carnegie

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

"Every man is damn fool for at least 5 minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding that limit." - Albert Hubbard

"Great minds ask great questions." - Michael Gelb

"This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room or a certain hour or so a day where you don't know what was in the newspapers this morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you might find that nothing happens there, but if you have a sacerd place and use it, something eventually will happen." - Joseph Campbell

"Neuroscientists estimate that your unconscious database outweighs the conscious on an order of 10,000,000 to 1. This database is the source of your creative potential. In other words, a part of you is much smarter that you are. The wisest people regularly consult that smartest part. You can too, by making space for incubation." - Michael Gelb

"I never tire of being useful." - Leonardo da Vinci

"Just as iron rusts from disuse, and stagnant water putrefies, or when cold turns to ice, so our intellect wastes unless it is kept in use.” - Leonardo da Vinci

"Genius is made, not born." - Michael Gelb

"The very best are those who balance analysis and intuition, seriousness and play, planning and improvisation, arte (art) and scienzia (science)." - Michael Gelb

"We are free when we move from a focus on getting love, abundance, peace and freedom to being love, abundance, peace and freedom." - Brent Kessel

"Though outer wealth rarely leads to inner wealth, inner wealth often leads to outer wealth." - Brent Kessel

"Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we first seek the kingdom of God, the rest will be given." - Mother Theresa

"We get what we think we deserve." - Brent Kessel

"Now that all your worry has proven such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job?" - Hafez

"60% of Americans are overweight. Overweight people now outnumber undernourished people. Americans consume, on average, 100 pounds of sugar each year and only 8 pounds of Broccoli." - Joshua Rosenthal

"Health is a vehicle, not a destination." - Joshua Rosenthal

Here are the 12 keys to Joshua Rosenthal's "Integrative Nutrition"

1. Drink more water
2. Practice Cooking
3. Increase Whole Grains
4. Increase Sweet Vegetables
5. Increase dark leafy Greens
6. Experiment with Protein
7. Eat less meat, dairy, sugar, artificials, toxins, tobacco and alcohol.
8. Develop easy and reliable habits to nurture the body
9. Have healthy relathionships that support you.
10. Find physical activity you enjoy and do it regualry.
11. Find work you love or a way to love the work you have.
12. Develop a Spiritual practice.

"Primary food is more than what is on your plate. Healthy relathionships, regular physical activity, a fulfilling career, and a spiritual practice can fill your soul and satisfy your hunger for life. When primary foo is balanced and satiating your life feeds you, making what you eat secondary." - Joshua Rosenthal

Joshua Rosenthal's 90-10 Diet: "90% of the time you eat what is healthy for you, and 10% of the time you eat whatever you feel like eating."

"Add years to your life and life to your years." - Dan Millman on exercise

"So that's what destiny is, simply the fulfillment of the potentialities of the energies in our own system." - Joseph Campbell

"Follow your Bliss." - Joseph Campbell

"Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be." - Joseph Campbell

"The old skin has to be shed before the new one will come." - Joseph Campbell

"What you don't experience positively, you will experience negatively." - Joseph Campbell

"If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you don't' bring forth will destroy you." - Jesus

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." - Joseph Campbell

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." - Joseph Campbell


2. Jump Attack: Completing the first phase of Jump Attack brings me to a well needed week off from training, as prescribed by the program. I've been working really hard and feel accomplished to have established a good base and rhythm to my workouts through the first phase. I'm getting stronger for sure. I'm looking forward to playing basketball with 'fresh' legs for the first time in a while, and also a chance to gauge any gains in strength, quickness and jumping ability. Next week the program intensifies further so I will enjoy giving my body (legs) the rest and recuperation they will need for the next phase.


3. Nutrition: I've been staying strong on the plant based diet and feeling great. I came up with a couple new recipes to add to my collection by the end of the 100 days. The latest was a Hickory Smoked Tofu Stir Fry that is awesome. As for any results of my diet, my weight has stayed the same, surprisingly, having eliminated sugars, lots of fats and many calories daily. I'm pretty sure I am turning that old fat into new muscle from the workouts. But I've also been getting less aerobic cardio as I am not able to play basketball as much due to my legs needing more rest. This could be why I am not dropping weight like I thought might happen. Losing weight was never really my goal but I did think it could happen pretty fast on a strictly plant based diet. We'll find out what the results are at the end of the 100 days when I re-test my body fat.


4. Yoga: Yoga, Yoga, Yoga I am still having a hard time making a regular practice of you. I get it in, in small increments, usually post workout to get a good stretch. I have still not made it a daily routine practice but will keep it front and center until I can make it happen. I think I need to go non-negotiable with it, so there is not a choice. Just do it, right? No ifs, ands, or buts...


5. Sweets and Refined Foods: I have stayed strong keeping it pure and nutritional. I did, however, have a piece of Muddy Paw's Vegan Cheesecake that was unbelievable. My family got it for my 31st Birthday as I had mentioned I loved it, having it once at Galactic Pizza in Uptown. It is made out of Tofu so I guess it's not quite an empty dessert but dang it is good nonetheless. My family who usually would gag at the sound of the word 'Tofu' even loved it. My sweetheart Natalie, who is one of those not so suited for Tofu, said it is the best Cheesecake she has ever eaten. I'd have to agree.


Thanks for taking the time to read this, it says a lot about who you are, and is a confirmation that you, indeed, are on the path of positive progress as well. Either that or you are thinking what the hell is this guy up to, what an idiot. ;-) Either way, best regards.

See you again in 10 more days...