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!

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The 48 Laws of Power? What the... I have the Power!

I just finished The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers. The book is really a prerequisite for many of the the things that I do, but I've been putting it off for a long while now because its basically a sociopath's handbook and I have no desire to turn myself into a serial killer.

Learning how to manipulate people like this is just pure evil on many levels, and much like Arthur and Camelot, my dream is to inspire the best in men, and contribute to the reformation of a society built closer to the heart. Even the way that its written is meant to manipulate you and twist your mind into thinking that this is the way that everyone should be.

The scary thing about this though is that every bit of it is dead on balls accurate. People do every one of these things ever day, and it doesn't take much for you to associate the laws with examples taken from your own life over and over again.

Not every piece of information in here is twisted though, and a good portion of it are truisms that have been around since the beginning of time, and are just plain good advice!

For instance, Law 48 is to "Assume Formlessness". Bruce Lee based Jeet Kune Do on using formlessness as form. "Be like water" he said. In NLP one of our major presuppositions is that the element with the most flexibility is usually the controlling element within the system. Basically, the person that gives themselves the best chance to adjust on the fly to any of the possible things that can happen has the best chance of coming out ahead of that situation best.

Beyond that, it's brilliantly written, and gives you great insight into a lot of history that you may not have ever known before. It forced me to look at things that I thought I knew from a completely different perspective. It's both a history lesson and blueprint for life rolled into one, done in a tone that sounds like a Vincent Price horror movie.

If nothing else, as Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, know your enemy. There are people out there using these tricks and tactics against you every single day whether you want to believe it or not. Knowledge is only power if you're able to apply it. In a lot of ways this can be used as mental self defense. I just pray to God that more people use it for good than evil, though experience and history books warn otherwise.

For myself, however, the best thing that I've taken from all of this is the idea of our own personal power. If you look on my website, Coachlasota.com, I tell people that what I teach is empowerment. Last week, in Attraction is NOT a choice, Jello Wrastlin and controlling the frame...., I went on in detail about Tom Cruise and how he always controls his frame, he always decides what the reality around him is, how its his world and we just live in it. With the way that things tend to work with the energy floating across the universe all in connection and all of that, it makes perfect sense that this would hit me this way now.

We all have our own personal power. Its our center, that place where you feel good, you feel in control, clear of mind, no worries and in that moment everything is how we want it. We control the frame, and it's all in balance.

But any time we let any other person affect us, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, the one you want but can't have, your boss, the ass that just cut you off in traffic.... anytime you let someone change your emotional state, whether good or bad, you're giving them your power. Let someone make you happy or sad and you're allowing them to control you and how you feel in that moment. How much power is that, the power to dictate how you feel about yourself? Too much to trust with anyone but yourself, that's how much.

And the same goes for situations. Whatever is going on in your life either you can do something about it or you can't. If you can do something about it you're in control, you have power over whatever it is, until you choose to do nothing. If you can't do anything about it, well, that happened, and no amount of worry is going to change things anyway. But you still have total control over how you feel about it. You're the only one who does. That is, until you let these situations dictate how you feel, to change your emotional state.

I believe, in my limited knowledge, that this is the exact essence of Eastern Philosophy. Things like "The 48 Laws of Power" and all of the ways of Master Pick Up Artists that I've discussed before, and will again, certainly work to allow you control of this power, or to take it from others. But they all boil down to simple tricks and manipulation. You don't need them.

In my opinion, that is exactly what true enlightenment is, to finally feel that balance, that center in yourself, and to always know how to stay within that, how to keep that, how to maintain it in the face of any circumstance or influence of any other person without needing any of that other bullshit to do so.

Only now do I begin to understand.

I HAVE THE POWER!!!

And so do you.

And if you know what I mean, if you see it, if you feel it.....

Congratulations, you've just taken your first step into a larger world!

P.S. - Spike TV is Great!

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