Steven Barnes shares how a short morning ritual of movement and affirmations helped him through a recent move. He recommends daily Tai Chi, walking, or dancing paired with emotionally-charged affirmations to build focus and resilience.
Hi, this is Steve Barnes here. You can see boxes moving boxes in the back. We've just moved to a new house. Oh, boy. I mean, this is just grueling. But you know something? That's what life is. My. My wife Tananarive is in New York doing an event for amc, I believe it is. And I'm here working on projects and trying to stay sane, trying to stay healthy. So much moving, so many boxes up and down stairs, driving back and forth, you know, that's life. That's what actually happens. So I wasn't able to do my ordinary schedule. So what I depend upon is my morning ritual, just the most basic thing. So I'll use Tai chi for that. But what I'm hoping is that you'll use some movement system that you like, that you love, and that it will work for you. So it could be the five Tibetans, or it could be yoga. It could be walking. I wouldn't suggest swimming because you're going to be chanting affirmations at the same time, but you're also focusing on your role models and flooding yourself with gratitude. It's just a perfect way to start your day. This is. Has evolved a lot over the last 10 years. When I learned this. When I learned this technique, I was in deep psychological grief and pain. There was deaths in the family, and we had to move from Los Angeles to Atlanta. And the taking care of things, dealing with marriage, dealing with life, dealing with trying to support your family in the best way possible demands that every day you bring forth the very best from yourself. So the question, how do you do that? How do you get up day after day and do the writing? You know, I need to do, be there for my wife and my. My son to maintain my business, to take care of my body. You don't have a lot of time necessarily. You don't have a lot of energy. So you have to have something that you can do quickly and brief. So what I would suggest is that to get started with, the idea is that as you are walking or running or doing Tai Chi or doing the five Tibetans, you chant an affirmation. This is just kind of the basic level of you chant an affirmation. You could start with something as common as every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. That has worked for a lot of people for a long time. And if you will say it with emotion, while you are moving, while you are moving, while you are walking or whatever, it will start sinking into your nervous system. I remember back when I was Training with the Black Karate Federation and Steve Muhammad. Steve Sanders said, while we're doing jumping jacks and doing sit ups and doing push ups, he would be saying to us, if you can do this, you can do anything. If you can do this, you can master math. If you can do this, you can master history. And you know, what we're thinking at that time is, will you shut up and let me suffer? But. But it was true. And it sank in. It sank in deep. The idea that effort is effort. Learning how to focus is learning how to focus. And if you can learn how to focus in any one arena of your life, you've learned how to focus in other arenas. And to a huge degree, all that mastery is, is finding a path that is valid, a teacher who is valid, doing what they say. And you stick with it until you got some gray hair. I mean, and you become a master. I mean, it's not that complicated, but you have to find the right people, you have to find the right path, and you have to put in the daily effort. So I strongly suggest to you that you start thinking about starting your day by moving your body in some way that is good for you. Dancing or like I said, walking a hill, working on a rebounder. Anything will work. But at the same time, you then say an affirmation that is about who it is, is that you need to be to be healthy in body, mind and relationships, physical health, career, and your love life. We're going to work on this. We're going to work on this a lot. If you'd like to learn Tai chi, you could go. You could not Google. But on, on YouTube, look up Fire Dance Tai Chi. 3. Three different words, fire dance, Tai chi. And you'll find a video that I did about 30 years ago that is pretty nice. It's a little blurry, but you can see the movements. If you'd like more help than that, then join my fire dance Tai Chi class. You go to www.firedancetaichi.com and get in there and we're going to be teaching you everything about creating a morning ritual while you're also doing joint mobility and working your back and working basic endurance, your legs and your whole body in a very short period of time. It doesn't take a lot of time to create fitness, but it does take commitment and it takes regularity and it takes belief in yourself. So you take care and I'll talk to you later. Bye bye.
