Welcome to 2012!

Its been a while now since I've posted something new, and for the most part its because lately I haven't had much new to say. While there are a couple of pieces building up their time has yet to come, like the growth of a child in the womb, these things take time to develop properly. In other words, as Judge Reinhold would say.... I shall serve no fries before their time!

But its also the responsibility of anyone in my current position to pop out every once in a while to say hello, let the world know that you're still there, and so here I am.

Did anyone happen to catch the Golden Globes last night? There were a few things that really stood out to me beyond all of the big time celebrities filling the crowd. This is really an event for them, by them, so that they could celebrate each other. Or, as we like to put it in Queens, and excuse for actors to form gaggles and blow each other.

George Clooney must be loved everywhere by the people he works with, which I quess is as much a sign as any of a quality human being, so long as those qualities are the ones that people are looking for. Qualities that people are looking for and qualities that make one a good person aren't always the same, are they? Clooney has to be loved, how else could you possibly explain how a movie like "The Descendants" wins an award for Best Drama over a film like "War Horse".

Truth be told, I haven't seen either, but I don't have to. We all know the type of movies that win awards. It doesn't take much to see that just like Cronyism is Washington, Cronyism is all over Hollywood too. Truth be told.... all of society is inundated with cronyism. We're all full of shit pushing some sort of agenda or other.

As much as I loved the film version of "Moneyball", it too had no more dramatic presence than most popcorn, girly, romantic comedy nonsense, yet we all love Brad Pitt don't we? No surprise then that was up for the same considerations as Clooney.

Connecting to Brad Pitt.... tell me Angelina Jolie didn't look like a crack head last night? I'm not sure if it was the no muscle, skin stretched over bone thing going on with her arms that made her shoulder look HUGE, but someone needs to feed that woman. Its either that, or that cocaine is a hell of a drug.

Beyond that, there was one really big, really important idea that came out of the entire affair for me. Everyone of those people up there.... they are no longer in that place in life like most of us where they have to work anymore. Now the projects they choose have everything to do with what they want to pour themselves into in life, what they want to work on because they WANT to, and not because they have to.

To me, that's all money really is. Its the freedom to do the things you enjoy and pour your whole self into it without the fear or distractions that accompany the need for such ventures to be successful that the rest of us have to endure.

More and more it becomes apparent that, as all success guru's will all tell you, if you're not passionate about what you're doing there's no way you can ever be really successful at it.

If only we all could be given that cushion, that protective bubble, in order to work at our passions and nothing else. That's the Garden of Eden.

So much like those popcorn fliks I had mentioned before, today this is no more than a quick "Hi, how ya doing?", but its a new year, a new start, a new mindset.... lets see if we can't just find that Garden of Eden together.

Welcome to 2012!

Later People.

I can do all things....

By this time Friday the fiberglass tie that binds me should be off.... 4 more days.... I can't tell you how excited I am about that this week.

Last week I had finally gotten around to finishing two books that I'd been meaning to look at for some time now, the first being "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis, and the other "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Norman Vincent Peale.

Both are good quick reads depending upon whether or not you're into the subject matter.

Moneyball ends oddly, but for the most part I think its been largely misinterpreted by the detractors of what it proposes. If we could all afford to just shell out whatever it takes to have anything we want then life would be easy for all of us, we wouldn't have to struggle for answers or look into better ways of doing things. But what do you do when you can only have enough assets to get ONE thing that we need, which one thing is the most important? What will get you the most bang for your buck?

There are a lot of us that have to make this distinction, this decision, every single day in all the many aspects in our lives, especially over these last few years.... especially in this depression.

Moneyball takes this same approach to spending money in the game of baseball. Being someone who has always had to look for that one thing that will get me the most bang for my buck, someone constantly looking for that magic formula to win at life, this book fascinated the hell out of me. And it helps I love baseball.

What do you think gives you the most bang for your buck? If you had to get rid of everything but one, what's the one thing you would hold onto? If there were just one thing that you had to find that would get you from where you are to where you want to be, what would that be? The answer to that is going to be different for everybody.

The Power of Positive Thinking probably would have been required reading years ago for anyone that wanted to break into that same field that I want to break into, but these days there are hundreds of books preaching the same things. The Secret being one.

There is one thing that kept sticking with me... the saying "I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME". Peale was a Christian of course, so his viewpoint was skewed in that direction, and you could easily substitute Christ in that sentence for whatever it is in your life, your belief system, whether it be Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Grilled Cheesus, Crazy Larry or The Man.... but there's real power there.

I can do all things through Strippers who strengthen me!

And as if I needed another example of the power contained in these words, Tim Tebow worked his magic once again against the Chicago Bears, this one looking as much like divine intervention as anything I've ever seen. The Power of Christ compelled Marion Barber to completely blow it for his team..... TWICE!

That's a movie reference by the way. If you don't get it, you need to brush up on your classics. That right there is something that I'll touch on again sometime down the road.

Throw your arms out wide and say boldly "I'M THE MAN!" (or woman) and tell me it doesn't feel great!

It does.

Aside from the delusions of grandeur that have been rolling around my head since last week, and the very real vision of what these delusions will look like, these revelations finally made clear something that I've already long knew.

• What we do in life, success/failure, and how we feel, confident/low self-esteem, is completely based on how we see the world.
• How we see the world, glass is half empty/half full, is completely dictated by our subconscious mind
• Our subconscious mind is being programmed every second by the people around us and the circumstances and events that teach us what we can or can not do.
• This programming is what forms our belief systems, whether we believe that we're good or bad, whether we are winners or losers. Believe you're a winner and you'll find ways to win. Believe you're a loser and you'll find ways to lose.
• Humans are social creatures, so we NEED to fit in with the crowd, yet everything we gain in life is based on perceived social values, so we are always trying to set ourselves ABOVE everyone else, and most people do that by telling others what they CAN'T do, by putting their competition down.
• Most people are programmed to see what they CAN'T do, but successful people have programmed their mind to see how they always win.
• Anyone can reprogram themselves to right thinking, but you have to unlearn what you have learned. There are very specific, easy ways to do this, but you have to do it constantly. Affirmations such as "I can do all things through Captain Kirk who strengthens me" or simply "I'm the Man!" can do that.

Keeley Hazell Desnuda

For a good while now I've been struggling with how simple it really is, afterall, there HAS to be more. It can't really be that easy, can it?

But it is. And I can show you how. Are you with me?

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant

Coach LaSota

Hitting the Wall....

SO it appears that I've hit the wall, run out of things to talk about, and its such a fine morning for it too with the downpour washing over the city of New York. This was bound to happen eventually, that's the price when you're a one man gang, trying to bring something new and fresh every day even when nothing new or fresh is happening.

No, that's not the wall I've hit, though I HAVE been thinking a lot about baseball the past few days. This is one of the more disturbing sights that's come out of the game I love though. I just found this photo this morning, and I'm pretty positive that's Gary Sheffield pinning Bubba Crosby to the wall there.

I'm not sure which is more upsetting.... the fact that I can recognize that its Crosby smashed in there from the look on his face, or that it looks like Shef is doing this purposely.

Most of the time life feels like this right here, pushed up against a glass barrier that isn't going to move, yet forces and the places you want to go push you right up against it anyway. Right now I'm just glad I blew this picture up.... don't lie, it caught you too, I think its that eye of his staring at you that does it. This is what Poe was talking about, what drove ole boy to cut up that old man and stuff him under the floor boards.... its that eye....

Sometimes life takes it all out of you, or you give it all you've got until you're brought to your knees. I'd bet this woman here left it all out on the field, pushed until she had nothing left. Those are the ones I admire, not talent, not winning, it's that drive, the WILL to win....

I used to have that once. The real difference is passion.... that desire for something so deep that you can't live without it, that you put everything into getting it. For the first time I really saw what that meant this week.

When I die, all I want is to be able to look back and honestly tell myself that I gave it my all, life that is, that I left it all on the field. I haven't been doing that though, not really. That's going to have to change.

That sounds like some good advice, doesn't it? Some real inspirational stuff right there, the stuff that drives you, gets you going. My father came from that school of thought.... FIGHT THROUGH IT!!!

Except that its counterintuitive. Much of life is that way, our natural instincts tell us to do the exact opposite of what the situation actually requires. When you're about to get hit you naturally tense up, brace for impact, but its that tension that actually causes you to get hurt. Being loose and giving yourself the ability to absorb the blow is what gets you out of there in one piece. Again, that's the balance of the universe, the yin and yang of it.

This is what happens when you use raw power to try to smash through barriers.

I had just finished reading the 33 Strategies of War, another by Robert Greene. I've become a big fan of his. While it wasn't as good as the 48 Laws of Power, and that's possibly because much of it is based on The Art of War, which I know well already, its still a great read with a lot of lessons for everyday life.

These are the exact type of challenges that the book deals with, knowing WHEN to tear down walls and when those walls are keeping the bad men out. It deals with knowing when to use will power and brute force, and when to use speed and finese.

Speed and finese didn't work out so well for this guy now, did it?

Those last two shots were people trying to get passed that wall with the benefit of the best that money can buy, and they still didn't have what it took. When you're driving an old jelopy its an entirely different ballgame, you can't rely on pure performance... things have to fall your way...

Or this is what you get. Yeah... I've ended up here too many times. And you have too from what I've been hearing. Haven't we all?

This is the exact kind of treatment I try to avoid, and the more I try to avoid it, the more it seems to find me. Again, counterintuitive.

That's why it may be a good thing that I'm at the base of the wall. Maybe its time to focus on the important things in life....

That's Candice Swanepoel, now that I know she's a Yankee I think she may be the perfect woman.

With all this talk about Jose Reyes leaving the Mets for the Marlins its gotten back into looking into the game. I ended up buying Moneyball yesterday and started to read it finally, and its been great already.

If you're a baseball stat guy (and I am) you have to look at Slugging percentage. Last year the top 3 teams in Slugging in each league all made the playoffs. The other team that made it to the dance in both leagues led the pitching category in slugging against. OPS, or slugging plus on base percentage.... its the only stat that really counts. You can predict who will win based on that alone.

That there is Jose Reyes, formerly the Mets best player. I hate the Mets, but not because of the team itself, but their fans. They're the type of ignorant asses that are so obnoxious that they make you hate everything that they associate with.

I'm a huge Buffalo Bills fan, and they went to the Superbowl every year that I was in High School. At the time a Jet fan told me that the Jets were better because they had won a Superbowl in 1969, some 25 years before said statement was made. I bring this up because Jet fans.... Met fans.... they're the same people, and this sort of statement is the rule with them, not the exception. I kid you not.

For that reason I can't deal with them, because they are UN-reasonable.

This here is Sandy Alderson, who is a central figure in the book Moneyball, and now the Mets GM, so it all does tie together. I actually liked the moves that he made after the Reyes defection, which will turn out to be a blessing for the team, you'll see.

And now I really can't wait to delve deep into this book. I'm even excited enough to start that virtual baseball league I love so much back up.

Izabel Goulart has nothing to do with any of this. I just found so many hot pictures of her for the archives that I had to include her somewhere in here. Besides, it really lifts things up, doesn't it, makes the whole day more cheerful.

More things having nothing to do with anything, I caught Crazy, Stupid, Love and Our Idiot Brother this weekend for a buck each from the red box. You all know how much I love the red box. They were both great movies. Crazy, Stupid, Love was just real life, solid all around. Our Idiot Brother was on the dopier side, but a nice, uplifting tale. Then again, I like stories about people, and life.

That's all for today though.

Later People!

Join my fanpage John LaSota - Writer

Or our creative team's page The Mad Doser Presents

And if you need a healthy helping hand from a Personal Performance Consultant

Coach LaSota