Daily Intent

Santa Barbara, CA
Week 2 of your November Resolution.

The second week is when your body begins to feel the true soreness and exhaustion from the first week of energized and inspired workouts.  Waking up early isn’t quite as easy.  One “snooze” is needed.  Last week you forgot about all the barriers to getting back in shape.  This week a subtle awareness of challenge begins to creep in.  A couple more holiday parties / events are in the fold.  Your workout buddy may have even bailed this morning.  This is all normal.

So what are your options?  Get rest and workout tomorrow?  Workout today, but not as hard?  Or workout as planned, according to your drawn up schedule that was written with truth and purpose?

If you are to hold integrity to yourself and your aspirations for greatness / fitness, you will choose the latter of the three.  But the challenges are still there.  An irrational self at 5:45am might just seem rational.  Sleep is more important than a workout.  A tired and aching body is going to labor your mind into stopping 4 short of your 10 x 100 meter sprints.  Stopping is surely better than passing out.

A couple week’s ago I met up with Bob Hopper, the last Ohio State swimmer to win an NCAA championship.  Hopper was crowned the 1965 NCAA champion in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 1:58.  He was recently inducted into the Ohio State University Hall of Fame.  He knows what it takes to succeed.

Mr. Hopper, a long time coach after his athletic achievements, shared with me a way to overcome such challenges.  He shared with me a mental game played by the greatest of athletes.  A game that gets these champions through the final, most difficult sprints in a practice.   The sprints that, if pushed, will make them a champion, but if dogged, will leave them looking up at the podium.

Champions learn to “con” themselves.

We all know what a con-artist is.  “Con” comes from confidence.  Someone that is a con-artist is someone that creates confidence in others, usually rather quickly, to only be discovered they are a crook long after they are gone.

Where is the connection?

Four 100 meter sprints left.  Your body is exhausted.  You want to call it quits.  However, when you wrote out your workout plan for the evening, you knew four more will take your body to the brink of collapse, but not over.  But even still you want to call it quits.  This is the perfect time to “con” yourself.

Okay, I’ll go this next one hard and then take it easy on the third to last one.

So you go hard.  You push it the entire sprint.  You are exhausted.  Now 1 minute of rest.

58, 59, 60…I’ll go hard this next one and take it easy on the second to last one.

All out.  Powering forward.  Breathing taxed.  Face stressed.  Ahh…1 minute rest.

58, 59, 60…I’ll go hard this next one, then I’ll really take the last one easy.

Legs pressing.  Heart pumping.  Eyes focused forward.  Determined to tough through the pain.  Whew…1 minute rest.

58, 59, 60…Last one, I can go hard on this one.  Rest is all I’ll do when I get home.

Do you see how you just “conned” yourself through the workout?  Do you see how this can apply to waking up in the morning?  I’ll wake up and go hard this morning, tough through the tiredness, then get rest tonight.  Or at work when you are exhausted, but need to make 10 tough phone calls?

You see, it is not as if the champion has necessarily a stronger mind than the other, he/she just knows how to use a little trickery to create positive results.
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PLAN
Catalyst for Thought.  Minds w/ Ken Saxon.  November 19th at 12pm.  University Club. Learn from a man that has an MBA from Stanford, built up a business and sold it for millions, and now gets to enjoy the life of helping others do the same via for-profit and non-profit ventures.  Humility and greatness can go hand and hand.  SOLD OUT.  Get logged into http://www. CatalystSB.org so you stay up-to-date on these executive lunches.
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LEARN
Buzzword: Salad Oil Scandal
“One of the worst corporate scandals of its time.  It occurred when Allied Crude Vegetable Oil Company discovered that banks would make loans secured by its salad oil inventory.  When ships full of salad oil would arrive in the docks, inspectors would test it and confirm that the ship was full of salad oil.  However, the company didn’t remind anyone that oil floats on water.  They had filled salad oil tanks with water and put a few feet of oil on top, fooling everyone.  The company would even transfer oil to different tanks while taking inspectors out to lunch.  In 1963, the scam was busted and over $175 million worth of salad oil was missing.

American Express took one of the biggest hits from the scandal, losing nearly $58 million experiencing a 50% drop in AMEX stock as a result.’”  -Investopedia.com

  Six Points to Ponder:

   1. Onward and Upward Market.  The Markets are up for the second week in a row.  - The Dow is trading  at 10,407, S&P 500 at 1107 and the Nasdaq stands at 2197.  Oil is level at $79/bbl.
   2. Bernanke Bellows.  Bernanke didn’t actually send out a deep roar in his recent statements, however the markets sensed powerful meaning in his more cautious words.  Rates are to stay low for some time.  “Significant economic challenges remain.”
   3. Mortgage Delinquency Maladies.  6.25% of home mortgages were 60 or more days past due in the 3rd Quarter, marking a new high for this recession.   Nevada, Florida, Arizona and California all have delinquency rates over 10%.
   4. Offshore Outcasts.  The IRS scared up 14,700 U.S. taxpayers in their recent efforts to crack down on offshore account holdings. 
   5. Unfriend Popularity Climbs.  Oxford Dictionary chose “Unfriend” as their word of the year, WOTY.  What a downer.  Unfriending people on Facebook…
   6. Luck or Smart?  Stanford needed nothing but luck, Andrew Luck, and a lot of heart, Toby Gerhard, to pound USC Saturday.  While the Indianapolis Colts needed luck in different form.  A questionable play call giving Peyton Manning the ball with 2 minutes left further promoted his legendary status.  …Will the PAC-10 Champions please stand up?

Positives:

    * Knowing that Bernanke is conscious of the challenges and willing to do whatever it takes to support the ailing economy, gives investors more solid ground from which to invest.  If we can feel confident interest rates are to remain low for at least the next six months, then we can make our investment / economic decisions with more certainty.  We know borrowing is going to be cheap.  We know that dollar will remain weak.   Couple this reality with low home prices and you might find it advantageous to buy a home.  Or you may choose to travel nationally instead of internationally.
    * With a couple big match-ups left, the Pac-10 Championship could end up in anyone’s trophy case.

Negatives:

    * A continued increase in mortgage delinquencies is the result of two major factors, lowering home prices and rising unemployment.  In the worst states, mentioned above, these rates have doubled in the last 6 months.  In the best state North Dakota, conditions have remained quite flat, hovering around 1.5%.  There is a glimmer of hope from the recent data.  The increase of delinquencies over the last couple quarters has begun to slow.  They rose by 7.6% quarter over quarter, while between the first and second quarter we saw a 11.3% rise.
    * I had a great discussion about offshore accounts last week.  I’m still not fully solidified in my stance on the topic.  However, I do believe Americans that make money outside the US, and keep their money outside the US, should be free to have their dollars in whichever tax haven they’d like.  I’d like to hear more of these stories and what the individuals were doing, how they earned their money, and where they earned their money before I conclude a positive or negative in the IRS’s actions.  I’m leaning toward the negative stance at the moment.  Any of your insights would be appreciated.
    * Unfriend means “to remove someone from your social network like Facebook or MySpace.”  The only time one would use this word is in a negative context.  “I unfriended John because his posts were far too frequent and obnoxious.”  Or “I can’t believe Julia unfriended me!  We are just taking a break!”  …you will also notice the “spell check” on your computer has yet to recognize “unfriend” as a word, which is rather annoying.
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GET INVOLVED
Local:

Inspire Santa Barbara - “Self Management.  Making Relationships Work”
Where: Yoga Soup.  http://www.yogasoup.com/events.php
When: Thursday. November 19th.  8pm - 10pm.
Cost: $15 Suggested Donation
Why:   Manage yourself rather than attempting to manage others.
For other fun ideas, go to www.lovemikana.com

Live and Be Well,

Jeff Bochsler