Life tips: How to Fit Three Lives Worth of Stuff in a Single One, Part I
I’ve finally filled out my About page!
To celebrate this event of utmost importance (cough), I found it à propos to give a bit of insight on how I manage to live through so many interests and activities.
To clarify first, here is what I don’t do:
- Bend time and space (OK maybe sometimes)
Book Review: Atlas Shrugged
Welp, it looks like it was the ultimate horror post after all. Behold the horrors of capitalism! (Or rather, lack thereof)
My good pal Josh Hanagarne was kind enough to host this piece for me. Nicknamed as the World’s Strongest Librarian, which I have no doubt he actually is, Josh is a Librarian, book fanatic and author, who can also twist horseshoes and deadlift more than you, myself and the the dude back there combined. If I’m not mistaken, he’s also the first person afflicted of Tourette’s Syndrome to actually cure himself.
In other words, if you don’t know about him, make sure you do.
Peace out!
Weekly Progress Report: 2011-09-21
Making progress on the challenges has proven to be ah… challenge, in the last few weeks, as school has begun again and I needed to adjust to my new schedule, fitting in work, and yadda yadda. Moreover, the Dragonboat season was ending and much work and practice was done for the last competition, which occurred in the past weekend. Not one to completely fall for such petty changes, I have still have some progress to show and new elements I’ve been working on. As I mentioned in a previous post, I find that keeping my focus on no more than two or three challenges at one time will prove the most efficient to handle.
Challenge #6: The Straddle Press to Handstand
5 Reasons to Start Traveling (or to do it again)
Tonight, my brother Raphaël is leaving for Spain. His first and main destination: the journey to Santiago de Compostela.
Raph’s blog (French): http://muybiencompostelle.blogspot.com/
The Pilgrimage of Compostela has been famous for centuries, and for many reasons. In our era, it’s been made even more so through Paulo Coelho‘s The Pilgrimage, a novel which I highly recommend you to treat yourself with.
I will leave it to Raph to describe his trip in more detail, hence the link to his blog. If you don’t speak French, here’s a great chance to learn it! As for myself, I will grab this opportunity to describe what, in my view, makes it the most worthwhile to partake in traveling.
Reason #1: To glance at how amazing the world is,
and to learn how all things amazing come at a price.
A Paragraph Worth Sharing
I am approaching the end of a book I’ve been reading for many months now – and savoring every word of it. I just came upon a paragraph I thought I would share with you.
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy – a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.
– Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Read it, then re-read it. Again.
Think, reflect, comment. 
Optimism is Overrated
Souce: duelinganalogs.com
In life, shit happens.
Optimism won’t solve all your problems, unlike many buoyant, rosy top-of-the-world happy-talky would like to convince you of (Note the clever abuse of synonyms here).
OK, I’m also a happy-talky. Not rosy though, unless I’m wearing my ambiguous shirt (I thought it was red).
Are you fully appreciating your life?
As humans, it is impressively easy to take things for granted. Just look at these few examples:
- Food: Go to the store, buy, eat. Repeat. No questioning where it comes from, what’s in there, how is it fueling your body, will there still be more of it next week. Nah. It’s food, tastes good. Ever heard of that question asked to a kid, “Where do eggs come from”? He answered “the grocery store”. Yep, they magically appear there.
4 Tips for Iron-Hard Relentlessness
So um, let’s call this little hiatus of posting an Olympic break, shall we?
Talking about Olympics, it was a pretty amazing event. Even more so, I think, from a Canadian perspective! (Yea I’m biased, so what?) – 14 Gold Medals, are you kidding me?! And 26 medals total! Congratulations to ALL the canadian Olympic athletes.
One special mention, of course, to Joannie Rochette and her hard-earned Bronze Medal in Figure Skating. In case you’ve been living under a rock or gone at a trip to Mars, you probably heard about her tragic loss and how she overcame it, STILL going out there and giving her best. TWICE.
She was an inspiration to all of us, and a brilliant example of relentlessness. (I like that word, “relentlessness”. Sounds smart, doesn’t it?)
So, how can we use this inspiration and become just as relentless? Here are a few tips:
Of Strikes and Belts
– Note: This clever title pattern is directly copied from the classic “Of Mice and Men”, for absolutely no reason –
Last week, I passed a belt test to get my brand new green sash in Fang Shen Do Kung-Fu. I am proud to say that it went very well and I can see the progress I made from the last time.
Progress is an amazing feeling, and testing your abilities and skills is one of the best ways I know of to measure personal progress. In this regard, Martial Arts have been of tremendous help and have ever been my guide.
Taking life one challenge at a time (or maybe many)
(Sorry about the video’s quality; most Apple products just work, but iMovie DOESN’T. So I kept it simple. I need to find a better solution.)
Look at this, i’m getting better! So far my record is 7-8 reps when allowed to move, and 6 reps when restraining movement (I find it’s rather hard to keep the balls from going forward, so I’m focusing to keep control of the throws).
I think it would make sense to give some thoughts regarding challenges. It’s what this blog is about, after all. First, let’s take a look at the definition of Challenge, as given by Wikitionary :
1. An instigation or antagonization intended to convince a person to perform an action they otherwise would not.
2. A difficult task, especially one that the person making the attempt finds more enjoyable because of that difficulty.
This is interesting. The first definition refers to the act of daring one to do something. You see, humans by nature (or by condition, that would be for philosophers to decide… or not) are proud. While Pride itself could be a subject for an entire ticket (or book), let’s just summarize by saying that many levels and varieties of pride can be found through just as many people.
