Happy Wednesday to You!
Yesterday was very busy for me. I saw a client for most of the day. After that, I had to catch up on a mountain of paperwork!which is still like a dog on my heels to day!
By the time I got to free myself for some exercise, it was about time for me to go home, but I wanted to spend some time with my big stones.
This is a big, beautiful stone I found down the hill in the brush. It weighs about 350 pounds and I had to roll and flip it over the course of two separate days (workouts) to get it from the brush up to my special “Big Stone” lifting area, which is where you see me above.
In the photo, you can see me doing a set of stone rolling. I mix stone rolling with stone flipping to balance the flexor and extensor muscle groups of my body.
You’d be amazed at how fatigued you get flipping this Bad Boy end to end four times in a row! Rolling it up hill, over rocks, small trees, and changing terrain was do light duty task.
There’s nothing you can do in a gym that approaches the athletic demands of stonework; that I assure you!
This beautiful piece of Great Spirit weighs in at around 250. I carried that beauty up from down the hill in the brush as well.
I was doing some stone carries for conditioning last week and when I went to get a massage on the weekend, my thighs felt like one giant bruise as the massage therapist ran her hands over them. I didn’t realize I was that sore inside until she touched me.
My arms and legs get quite bruised and cut up from all the sharp projections on the stones. I don’t mind though. I’ve found that if I don’t rush and am fully present, I can take the extra time to do my best to make the process more comfortable with better positioning.
The area you see in the photo is still too dangerous to go without shoes because all the wood chips are very sharp and can give nasty splinters in your feet. I’ll clean it out and cover it with nice dirt and this will be my Bull Pit. This is the place I’ll do my intense heavy lifting because I can do it much more safely than I can in rough terrain where I have to watch constantly for Poison Oak, sharp objects, and very soon!snakes.
If you feel ready for experiencing both a deep work-in, and work-out experience with me and the Stone Spirits, feel free to join me for my upcoming zen In The Garden workshop, a week from Saturday, March 9. It might just change your life for good!
SOME THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION
Recently, when Elliott and Eric Hulse were visiting me, Eric shot this clip of Elliott and I talking. In this clip, I share a little about my experiences educating myself and others. I hope you enjoy it. There’s some essential wisdom in there for young people, particularly my final comment.
For more information about Elliott Hulse, feel free to visit his web site at: https://www.youtube.com/user/elliottsaidwhat
TIPS FOR DEVELOPING YOUR DREAM TEAM (Pt.3)
Alignment of interests is the key when choosing members for your dream team.
When we start building a dream, we often think of what we will need, costs, and a lot of little details, which are often quite important. In that process, we often see support from people because of their specific specialty or skillset.
And that can certainly work. But there is a more optimal way to build a dream team.
Seeking out people that have alignment of interests with you personally, and/or your dream project is a much better way to go when developing your dream team.
When we find people with similar interests, and particularly some common bond with our dream project, there is more in it for them than just performing another fee-for-service task.
For example, if I decided to build a new home out of stone, I’d be likely to need a stonemason. There may be 20 of them in the phone book that have the skills to do the job.
If in this case, I wanted to do the whole job of the stonework by hand, without modern saws and other machines, I’d be likely to get all sorts of commentary from the potential stonemasons as I interviewed them.
Some may tell me I’m nuts to do it all by hand and that it would cost too much, or take forever, or that they don’t know if they could do it without tools.
Yet, with awareness of the principle of alignment of interests in mind, you could easily attract a stonemason who loves the natural approach and wishes he had more clients that wanted to work that way.
In a few minutes, you may find that his/her personal hobby is rock art and building stone structures naturally. This means that he won’t just be working for you. You will have a skilled, artistic, creative, experienced, motivated dream team member who actually loves your project and the underlying ethics or motives.
When there is alignment of interests, the Mastermind Principle begins to work in your favor; the Mastermind Principle expresses that when more than one person get together for a common interest, a new mind is created as the whole of the individual parts, yet is greater than the sum of the individual parts.
Imagine how fun and exciting it would be to have alignment of interests with each dream team member, and know that you are creating a Mastermind group in the process! That’s living folks!
Now’s a good time to take a moment and evaluate who are the people you want to invite to your Dream Team.
I hope you all have a beautiful day.
And remember, as I shared with Elliott in the video clip above, avoid creating yourself out of fear and seek your dreams out of L0Ve.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
