Yin vs YangThe Battle for Success in Life

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Article by Peter J. Normandia. Follow me on Twitter.

“The whole world is nuts. The only difference is the kind of shell we wear to protect us.” – Pj

Maybe it’s me, but lately I think everyone is a little on edge. I would imagine it has a lot to do with the economy. ‘Everyone is hurting out there, it’s just a matter to what degree’, a client recently told me. When money gets tight, emotions run high, and people can take out their rage in the strangest of places.

A perfect example of this is the other day. I was walking my dog through my development as I normally do. I live in a condo community, where you own everything on the inside, and they take care of the outside. You know, the basic definition of a condo. I stopped to talk to a neighbor about a stray cat everyone knows that animal control scooped up. I got the info I was looking for and continued walking. I stepped on the corner of grass in front of one of the condos when I heard a yell.

‘Hey, WTF are you doing? That’s the 2nd time I’ve seen you step on my grass.’

From out of their garage, this neighbor rapidly proceeded to get in my face with no shirt on. It was almost laughable. I explained to the dude that, first of all, it was not his grass. Second of all, you don’t have to be rude about it. If you would like me not to walk on someone elses’s grass, just ask politely. The dude acted as if he had snapped, and then regained control. He apologized briefly and just asked me to watch the grass he maintains.

Now, imagine being so angry in life that you are laying in your garage, waiting for someone to step on the corner of grass in front of a condo that you are renting. That’s right, not only does he not own the grass, he does not own the house either, yet he is worried about the grass.

I have noticed a rise in incidents like this ever since the economy started to decline. There seems to be more angry drivers, shoppers, customers, clients, and even business owners roaming about the world today. It is very tough out there right now, and the stress can weigh heavily on our minds throughout the day. Then, all of a sudden, one little incident can trigger a nuclear reaction. However, be careful out there. You never know when you might be messing with a blog writer who will tell your story to the whole world.

Even if you aren’t messing with a blog writer, it is important to not let the stress and emotions get the best of you. Currently, as I write this, I can think of many of my friends who would love to have their biggest challenge be navigating the current economy:

• My great friend, and ex-MMA fighter, who is now paralyzed after a motorcycle accident.
• My good friend growing up, who let drugs ruin his life, and now lives 50,000 miles away in Hawaii, unable to reconnect with his past out of fear of relapsing. He can’t even see his mother anymore.
• My sister’s friend who lost her sister in an automobile accident.
• A Cop in a town near me who’s 2 year old daughter just died from a rare sickness.

These are the kind of things that make us sit back and think that money problems are really no big deal. One way or another, we will get through them, and move on. Life is too big to stop for money issues, and so should we be. Why let some bills and debt ruin the days we are blessed to be above ground? So times are bad, economically. That does not mean they have to be bad overall.

I hope this post is a reminder to everyone of the important things in life. It sure is for me. It’s important to focus on your family, health, and happiness, not on the bills you can’t pay, or the job you hate. All of these things are changeable. None of them are life threatening, and in a few years, you may even sit back and laugh about it.

Until then, let’s all try to smile a little more during these trying times. Whether we are doing real good, or having the worst day, the fact that we are able to do one or the other, is really what we should be smiling about. I learned this first hand when I was hospitalized at 18 with Crohn’s disease. At the time, they did not know if I would get better. I remember all the little things I used to be concerned with kind of dissipated into thin air. They just seemed so trivial now that my quality of life was in danger.

Hopefully, it does not take a serious disease to teach you this valuable lesson. However bad things may seem, just remember, they could always be worse, just like they could always be better. At the end of the day, what’s really the difference? A good day is great, and a bad day makes you appreciate the good ones. Either way, we always win, no matter what our mind tries to tell us.

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America is a giant competitive country built on a dream.  Any person has a chance to make a fortune and everyone is chasing it, especially where I live in the Northeast.  While being financially sound is a necessary goal, the path to getting there may not be as clear.  As a matter of fact, I believe it is hidden for good reason.  But instead of chasing the dollar, what if you could make the money find you?  Sounds crazy?  Maybe not.

Let’s break it down to basics.  You grow up, leave your nest (some earlier than others), and are forced to sink or swim.  Each of us have many options and ways of making money.  What happens is, we tend to focus on the short term.  I need $2000 for expenses this month, therefore where can i get a job making $2000 or more.  Though this seems logical, and it may very well be, but it is extremely short sighted.

The only way to excel in this world is to do what you love.

Whatever that is, you do it to the best of your ability and I guarantee money will attract to you like a magnet.  It will come out of the woodwork and feel like it is falling off trees.  When we do what we love, it no longer becomes work.  It becomes a challenge, a game, and it is fun every time.  Success, money, and opportunity all come knocking eventually.   It just takes time.

For me, this love is film making.  Whether a commercial, short film, or a dance recital, I love to create something from a puzzle of moving images.  Since I was little, all I did was watch movies.  Not that I sat on the couch all day, but if I was watching TV, it was not a show, it was a movie.  Any movie.  I have seen movies made in Africa, Australia, France, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, China, India, Iran, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, South America, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, and countless other places.

I have also seen thousands of American movies before my time including silent films, early talkies, musicals, film noir, and anything else I could get my hands on.  I went to film school with a voracious appetite for film and I ate up everything I could. I soaked up as much knowledge as possible.  I even worked on countless other people’s films multiple times for free who never returned the favor.  However, I never got mad.  Not even once.

Now, the reason I saw all these films and dove head first into the world of film making, was because I love it.  I was gravitating around it my whole life.  I didn’t have to force myself to watch all those films or go to all those shoots on my own dime.  I did it for myself, because I wanted to.

Yet, when I graduated film school, I was torn.  I wanted money to live the life I was used to and film making was not bringing me any money anytime soon.  So instead of sticking with my dream, I went on a two year chase after the almighty dollar only to wind up in more debt than I ever have. I was chasing the dollar in my head, but in reality it was getting further and further away.

It was only when I was pulled back into film making by a friend that things started to turn around.  Since then, I have been asked numerous times at Jiu Jitsu if I have been working out extra.  They ask if I have started going to the gym because I feel stronger to them.  I laugh because it is not physical strength.  It is mental strength.  My head is at a better place now, therefore my body is much more in tune with it’s desires.

Doing what you love is one of the hardest things to accomplish in life.  It is a struggle up a mountain filled with people yelling at you to turn back.  It is only those with the resolve not to listen that wind up in a place those detractors will never see.

Doing what you love will make you rich, not just financially, but spiritually as well.  And the best thing of all, is it comes to you.  Just keep on grinding.  The apex of the mountain is just over the bend.

When I went to college in the mid 90s, I had a very good friend I met in my freshman dorm.  He was an Armenian young man, strong as an ox with an unmatched resolve.  He was also incredibly smart at anything he put his mind to.  However, the one thing I learned from him more than anything else is how to read people.

My friend had a gift for it.  He seemed to know things before they happened.  He was like Vito Corleone telling his Consigliore Tom exactly what every gangster would do before they did it.  He opened up my mind to a whole other world of communication I had no idea existed.  It consisted of reading others body language, responses, and actions. It was honestly the single most important thing I learned in my two years at the University of Maryland.  It is a skill I have been developing ever since.

All it requires is that you pay attention more to what people do and what they say.  Then you simply remove all your expectations, judgments, and innate feelings.  If you are able to do this, you will observe all of the expectations, judgments, and innate feelings in others.  You will begin to see who acts the part and who is the part.

Over my experience, I have come up with a few lessons to help you better read people.  I can’t say it is a fact with proven results.  I can only say, that they are lessons I believe with every ounce of my mind to be true.

People always make the most ‘noise’ about what they fear the most.

For example, picture a guy with cut off sleeves, jacked biceps, tattoos, & a goat tee walking around with tight clothes, clenched fists, & an angry look on his face.  This guy’s entire demeanor reads ‘don’t mess with me!‘  To me, if his demeanor is screaming ‘don’t mess with me,’  than that is what he fears the most.  He does not like to be messed with, simple as that.

He has learned, that if he walks and acts like this, he will avoid the average person messing with him.  This is his defense to the world.  He also gets the ‘tough guy’ attention he loves.  He probably promotes himself to girls as a guy ‘no one should mess with.’  Chances are that is not the case.  This guy simply wants nobody to mess with him.  He likes to play the ‘tough guy’, cause chances are, he is not tough at all.

In Jiu Jitsu and MMA, we get a lot of guys like this. They come into the gym with their new ‘Tapout’ gear on, goat tees, tatoos, and dirty looks for everyone.  Some have even fought before.  It is these guys that usually get wrecked.  They have a problem with their ego they have not worked out yet, therefore they need to look the part, in order to feel the part.  It stunts their training growth, because they believe they are tougher than everyone else, and not that they have more to learn.

However, we also get some people who are exactly the opposite.  They come in, are friendly, knowledgeable, and completely humble.  It is these people that are the scariest.

A great example of this is the last pro fight I cornered in Atlantic City, NJ.  My friend and training partner Ricardo, who is 5-0 in pro MMA and the light heavyweight champ of Louis Neglia’s Ring of Combat, was 4-0 at the time.  He had walked through every opponent.  None had made it past the first round.  None had even challenged Ricardo.  He is that good.

Fighters always arrive at the fights a day early for medical stuff and the weigh ins.  You always run into the guy you are going to fight because you are all eating and staying at the same hotel.  It is very common to have the elevator door open, and have to get in next to your opponent and his entourage.  Every fighter deals with this differently.  Many try to look tough, and stay silent.

Ricardo’s opponent was named Constantinos.  He was a pro boxer from Greece.  He had never fought in an MMA fight before, but had been training with a top school for awhile.  Each time Ricardo ran into him, he was nice, smiling, and genuinely kind.  He was not the slight bit nervous at all.  In fact, he was almost as calm as Ricardo.

I said to my fellow cornerman that I thought this was going to be a tough fight.  He looked at me like I was crazy.  And for good reason.  Ricardo is almost inhuman.  He destroyed some of the top fighters in the Northeast in under a round.  He was a division 1 wrestler who was ranked 10th in the country at one time.  He is one of the calmest people I have ever been around.  You would never know he was fighting if you hung out with him that day.  He is so mentally strong, that he is completely relaxed.

I noticed this trait about the other fighter though, too.  My fellow corner man, Chris, thought logically that this was Constantinos’s first fight and it was against a champ.  I thought differently.  This guy was too calm to be scared.  And if he is not scared of facing the champ in his first fight, than he must be tough.  Chris and I made a gentleman’s bet on it.

In the first round, Constantinos knocked down Ricardo, but then Ricardo took him down, mounted and controlled him for the majority of the round.  In the 2nd round, Constantinos nearly knocked out Ricardo.  The ref was a half step away from jumping in, when again, Ricardo took him down and controlled him.  In the 3rd round, Ricardo took him down and maintained control the rest of the fight.  It was, by far, the toughest fight Ricardo has ever had, and he was a second away from losing in the 2nd round.  I didn’t even have to tell Chris “I told you so.’  His body language said it all.

The bottom line is, it is important to read people’s body language, and not just use logic.  Logic said Ricardo would dominate, but logic only goes so far.  By reading this fighter’s body language, I was able to tell he was mentally ready.   And anyone mentally prepared for a pro fight is going to be a tough match for anyone.

Reading people’s body language, their statements, and their traits, is a great way to get an edge in life.  Sometimes logic is not enough because every situation is unique in some way.  The best way to prepare is to learn to pay attention to how other people work. It opens up the door to a whole new world of communication you may have never realized existed.  It is a language much more truthful than any language we speak.

I guess my early college days were good for something.  Tune in tomorrow for part two.

For those that check in in the morning, sorry for the late post. I was at a Kindergarten graduation this morning. My mother has owned a nursery school for 14 years. For the last 6 or 7, I have done the end of year video for the Kindergarten graduating class. Today, her latest bundle of joys donned the stage in front of all the immediate family: grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, etc. They sang their hearts out with the help of their teacher’s guidance. The parents applauded again and again.

Then it was time for the video. Let me explain a little about this end of year video. It is a collection of video from 3 days during the year (the first day, mother’s day, father’s day), plus a slideshow of still images from the beginning of the year all the way to the end. It is just like watching the entire year happen right before your eyes. Cue in the heart wrenching music and it is a hit every time with the parents. It makes me teary and I barely know the kids.

However, every year, the video for me is pretty unexciting. It not that I don’t like doing it. It’s just I have done it so many times, it is like an old routine. There is very little to satisfy my creative urges. I am doing much bigger work now, and this is like kid’s work. I have to do the same shots, year after year, with the same music, and the same format for the most part. I film it, put it together, cut up the video parts real nice, add the music, and voila, the video is done. Big deal.

But then I went to the graduation today for the first time in awhile. Once again, just like every year, half the people in the room were crying. The kids were laughing, reliving their kindergarten experience. The teachers were crying too. It is such a touching moment to see people moved like that by something you created.

Afterwards, there were many compliments on the video. I know it is good, but during the routine I always forget about this. I forget that I created a video structure that routinely is a success. I forget what the end moment feels like when the parents wipe the tears of joy from their eyes and hug their kids. I forget because I am stuck in the monotony of the routine. I have done it all before.

Each year this video puts a smile on my mothers face, the kid’s faces, their family’s faces, and the teachers faces. The parents relive their child’s kindergarten experience. The kids giggle their way down memory lane. The teachers remember why they love to teach. And today, I remember why I still love to do this ‘old routine’. I just have to remember the routine smiles, joy, and tears during the ‘old routine’. I have to visualize the success during the grind.

This is just an example, but it works for all goals. I try to think of it like climbing a mountain. During the climb, it may be so rough that you think about quitting, giving up. Is it worth it? However, when you reach the summit, and bask in the glory of your accomplishment, you will thank God that you did it. You will remember it forever. The moment on top of the mountain may be short, but it is definitely worth it all.

I think we need to ‘bask in the glory of our accomplishments’ before we accomplish them. We can use it as motivation. Think about what it will feel like at your greatest moment of success to help you get through your toughest moment of work. Really feel the feeling of how it would be if you succeeded. Let it run through your body. Visualize yourself in that ultimate moment of triumph.

Then take a deep breath, exhale, and remember that in order to get up the mountain it takes one step at a time. Try to let each step be a little easier by remembering the success that their path leads to.

This may not be the normal inspirational video, but it is if you follow this blog. I started this blog right at the crux of a huge change in my life and this video is a major stepping stone in the right direction. Below is the commercial I have been working on for the last month. It is for my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, and good friend, Brian Katz.

It may only be a start, but it is a pure example of what happens when you ignore everything else and focus your mind on a goal. Do what you love, and love what you do. Money, time, stress, etc. are all just obstacles in the way of living the life you dream. But if you never try, you will never get there.

Have a great weekend.

Being heavily involved in the sport, I watch a lot of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights. For those that do not know, it is like the UFC fights. There just happens to be a lot of different organizations many people don’t know besides the UFC. MMA is probably the fastest growing sport in the world. This past weekend, for the first time ever, an MMA fight was on national TV. CBS broadcast Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson on Saturday night.

MMA is one of my favorite sports because it is extremely symbolic of life in general. It takes great endurance, dedication, intelligence, and patience to succeed. The other great thing about MMA is there are no excuses. When two guys fight it out, one wins & one loses. Simple as that. Life tends to not define winners as quickly.

A great MMA fighter, though, has to have one trait. They have to have a killer instinct. When you are fighting a tough opponent, having success has a problem. You are going to bring out the best in someone. When someone starts to get beat up, they usually make an all out effort to survive. Their best naturally comes out when you start to succeed, and when they are good, that means one tough fight.

A lot of fighters hold back during a tough fight, because they have a fear of losing. They have a fear of not winning the fight. So their number one priority is not losing. Their second priority is winning. These fighters rarely come out on top in these fights. When they do, you would think they had lost by the crowd’s reaction. The crowd respects a killer instinct, as does life.

Life is all about hurdling over your fears. One thing I have realized, is that success can be scary for many reasons. One, it is a big change with more responsibility. Two, just like the MMA fight, if you start to succeed, your work intensity is bound to pick up. Things will always get more challenging as you climb up the ladder. I think for these reasons, a lot of us hold back in life. Not blatantly, but just a bit.

We may start to have success, and then freeze up out of the fear of what that success means. The best example of this I can remember in my life was on the Jiu Jitsu mat. I was rolling with my instructor a few years ago. Please understand that he is heads & shoulders above me in every aspect of Jiu Jitsu, MMA, and Muay Thai, plus he has taught me everything I know.

We were training together, and I just so happened to set him up for a choke. He was helping me train, so his aggression was low, but a teacher never wants to get ‘tapped’ by a student. Getting tapped means they have been submitted and lost. The set up was pretty good, and as I reached my hand across to apply the choke, I realized he never saw it coming.

I could not believe it. No one had tapped the instructor in the whole school. Here I was, his face turning beat red, and gurgling sounds coming out of his mouth. The choke was sunk in real deep and he was struggling to work the escape. Then all of a sudden, like lightening, another wave of thoughts poured in.

‘If I tap the instructor, he will probably kill me. If I tell people I tapped him, I will have to live up to that level. Am I ready for that level yet? I don’t think I am ready for that.’

As these thoughts poured in, my hands stopped applying pressure. My killer instinct was gone. It had evaporated because of my fears. My instructor, during this momentary pause of pressure, managed to wedge his hand in and break my grip. Finally free from danger, he smiled and said ‘That was pretty close.’ I smiled back, not sure if I was relieved or mad I missed my chance. Two seconds later, he tapped me.

I am not saying without those thoughts I would have tapped my instructor. He may have very well gotten out of the choke anyway. Who’s to know? The point is, though, I will never know if I could have. I froze during my big opportunity because I was not sure if I wanted it.

In life, we have to be ready for the same thing. We have to know what we want. We have to not be afraid of going after it. If it’s something we really want, then we have to develop a killer instinct for it. We have to want it so bad, that nothing, no one, or no thing will stop of us from attaining it. If we don’t know what we are going for, then when it is in our face, we will have to make the choice then. That is a recipe for failure.

I was not sure if I really wanted to tap the instructor and incur the wrath for it. Now I know I would love it, but then I was just trying to be competitive. I was not trying to win. It is a different mentality. Successful people are not trying to be competitive. They are trying to dominate you. They think of nothing else, but winning. They don’t want to be on your level. They want to be above it. They will do anything they can to get to that point.

We could all learn from that. When one person wins, another loses. For some of us, that can be a catch 22. We feel bad for the losers instead of good for winning. For others, being a winner puts pressure on them to win again and again, or not ever be a winner again. It’s like winning the championship belt. It is a great achievement. It is also a great burden, as everyone else wants a chance at getting it.

Make sure you are prepared for your success. Make sure that success, and everything it brings with it, is truly what you want. And if it is, then you better just go for it. Go for it like no other person ever has. Bring a new level of determination to it. Bring that killer instinct. Understand that you are going to reach that goal. There is no one or no excuse why you can’t. Nothing can stop you. Nothing.

The minute these thoughts sink in is the minute you have already achieved these goals. Now you just have to go out and do it. Simple as that, and you should never settle for less.