Stress and Success

Foreign. Hi, this is Steve Barnes here. You'll see behind me I have a whiteboard up there. Let me adjust this camera just a little bit because there's something on that whiteboard I wanted to be able to show you. Gosh, I hope. Is it backwards? Okay. We'll have to figure out how to keep it from being backwards. It's also tilted a little bit. Like I said, I'm still putting my new home office together, but I wanted to talk to you about. Well, first of all, I'm Stephen Barnes. I am martial arts instructor, New York Times best selling writer, creator of the Life writing system and the fire dance system of integrating Tai Chi with a morning ritual that allows you to, in the first 15 minutes of the day to do everything basic that you need to take care of yourself all day long. Now this is really important because we all know that the first hour of the day is critical in terms of adjusting your mood, focusing your intent, setting yourself out to have the most successful day possible. What you do in that first 60 minutes is critical. And what we've done is we've squeezed that down. So a 15 minute, 10 to 20 minute segment, depending on how fast you do it, can take care of all your basic health needs, all your basic needs to center yourself, meditate, deal with stress, focus for your day, everything all at one time. How do we do this? By combining the world's most popular exercise and stress coping mechanism, the Tai Chi Chuan form, with the morning ritual, which has been talked about by virtually every great success coach. Whether you're talking about people like Tony Robbins and Brenda Burchard or down to Napoleon Hill, it's, you know, what do you do first thing in the morning? By combining movement and thought and emotion, you take care of quite a bit. So I just want to give you a little piece of what you're doing there. Once again, over on the this side of the board is the word magic. M A G, I C. Unfortunately, like I said, it's flipped. So we're going to have to work on that to, to figure out how to do that, how to, how to get that so that you're able to see things the way I see them. So magic is an acronym. It means map or model, Action, gratitude, intentions and courage or conviction. Now these are the component pieces that you need in order to succeed doing pretty much anything. You need to have a map of how you're going to get there. You need to be able to take action continuously every day, partially just to take a step forward, partially to explore the environment, you do something and you see how the world responds to you, you make an adjust. Gratitude is a matter of the positive emotions that you feel. Okay, Intention, the I is the same as goal. You know, what is, what exactly is it that you're trying to accomplish? Where are you trying to go? What are you trying to do? And then courage or conviction is what do you believe about your ability to do this? The appropriateness of you're doing this? If you have a zero in any one category, the entire thing zeros out. If you don't, in other words, if you don't have a map or model of what you're trying to accomplish, if you're not taking action, if you're not feeling positive emotions, if you don't have a clear picture of what you want to do in the first place, and if you don't have confidence that you can and should do it, you need to have at least a one in each category out of, let's say, zero to nine. The ideally, we'd be nines in all categories, but as long as you don't have a zero in any category, you're okay. Get yourself do everything you can to pry yourself into having at least a one in each category, at least a vague notion of the direction you have to go in, at least taking small actions during each day, at least feeling enough gratitude that you're not in a negative emotional sink for at least a few minutes a day. Because if you can just generate positive emotions for a few minutes a day, you understand during the rest of the day what's different. If you can't do that, you might get the feeling that this is all that there is, this negativity, this negative place that I'm in, this feeling of despair, depression. If you can ease it for just a moment, it shows you that you can. Okay? And then of course, the courage or conviction, if you don't believe that you can and should accomplish something, you won't do it. You won't. Not only will you not do it, you will not take the effort, you will not take the actions necessary to move you in that direction. So if you, if you organize your life according to the magic formula, you have a map or model, you're taking action, you're feeling positive emotions, you have your really clear intent and goals, and you believe in yourself. Now what do you do with it? All right, so. And this is where the fire dance comes in, where the stress coping mechanism comes in. Because what I have up here as a cycle, if you have a goal or intention you then model to find out what kind of people can do the thing that you're trying to do. And what would you need to do to be on the same path that they're on? You start taking actions, but before you take actions, you adjust your emotions. Before you take actions. I mean, most people will accomplish in order to be happy. What I'm suggesting to you is be happy and then accomplish. Just find the way to feel good about yourself. And the way to do that is by looking back over your past to things that have been good in the past, things that have been positive in the past, you know, and just, just allow yourself to, to wash yourself with that. I mean, I have memories from elementary school that are still embarrassing. If I were to fully associate with those memories, I'd be like, ah, God, I can'. If I did that. But the same thing is true with positive memories. It's exactly the same thing. You can have a positive memory from your past. Associate with that positive memory and you will feel better. Okay, so once you're feeling good, you have a clear intent. You know what it is that you're going to do today that'll move you one inch towards your goal. You fill yourself with positive emotions, you will get results. The world will start reacting to you. Now, there are points on here where you're going to feel stress. You're going to feel stress when it comes to maybe even just modeling feel stress when it comes to clearly defining your goal. God, it's embarrassing. What if I say I want this thing and I can't have it? You're going to feel stress when you decide to take an action. You're overcoming the inertia and you're going to feel stress when you take an action and the world responds to you. Let's say you write a short story, you send it out, you get a rejection. Now, if you feel totally positive and you believe in yourself, then you believe. Oh, okay, let me see whether or not they like the next story. Let me see if I can figure out why this story didn't work. Let me read 10 more stories that appear in their magazine. Let me model the writers who have been successful there. And you start changing, doing different things. But if the stress throws you into the place and you're thinking, oh, God, I can't do this. You know, it's, it's wrong for me to do this or even I'll be mocked if I do this. I'll lose friends if I do this. Any feeling like that, that's the stress that it comes from declaring that you wanted to do something, finding the people who could do it, taking the action. So the stress will is fear. The stress is fear. So you can interrupt that stress at a couple different places. You can interrupt it at gratitude. So when you're doing, you know, in the fire d although it uses Tai chi, you could do it while you're walking. You just imagine the person who could do the things that will get you where you're going. How does that person think? How does that person feel? How does that person walk? How do they hold their body? You walk with confidence. You prowl as if you have, you know, it's. You have not just the strength, the power, the wisdom, the intelligence. You're. You've got your mojo. You're going to do this. If you can do that for just 10 to 20 minutes a day, you are going to start transforming yourself so that you can, one day at a time, do the things that you need to do. I mean, today I got. Somebody tried to scam me, you know, on Facebook, and, you know, I got run around, you know, with a scam call. And it was very upsetting, or it could have been upsetting, but what I had to do was have confidence that I can do the things I need to do in my life to get where it is. I need to go to take care to get the results. I need to take care of my family, to take care of the people that I love, to serve you. Now, how do I do that? I keep in mind the person I'm committed to being. Not only that, I keep in mind the people who would not be thrown by a scam like that. The people who are the people who would just kind of smile at it, laugh at it, say, okay, there's something to learn here. You know, the next time I reach out to a supposed expert and I get a call back that says, scam, possible scam, I'm going to pay attention. Or if I get an email from something that is not the official email address, I'm going to pay attention. What can you learn from the emotions so you can let it go? All of that is related to keeping the stress within the zone where you can grow and adapt to it. It is not that that which does not kill me makes me stronger. It is that which does not kill me and is a low enough level of stress that my body and mind can adapt to it healthfully. Makes me stronger. What you do is by controlling your breathing, controlling the way you move, you're controlling the physiological response to stress, which keeps Stress in the bottle keeps it in that place where it becomes motivation rather than acid burning up your dreams. And there are many ways you can do this. You can do sun salutations while you're doing your chanting and visualization. We suggest Tai Chi if you want to find out more about how to use Tai Chi for this, you go to firedance tai chi.com www.firedancetaichi.com if you will do these things, then you will take actions. You will get results. You will have stress from those results. You'll either get something positive, negative. If you need to change. If you're getting positive results, double down. If you're getting negative results, try something different. And the only way you can do that is on some level you have absolute confidence that you can and should do this. You can and should be happy. And if you have goals in all three major areas of your life, a goal for your physical body, a goal for your relationships, and a goal for your career, then the things you learn will advance you as a human being. This is profound stuff. I'm trying to boil down about a dozen different world traditions into a practice that doesn't take you more than 10 to 20 minutes a day to take care of all your basic physical needs, all your basic emotional needs, all your basic mental needs for your career. You take care. Www.firedancetaichi.com I'll talk to you again later. And just make today a masterpiece. Just turn another page in the story of your life. You are the hero in the adventure of your lifetime. Take care.