Ethos, Ethics and Enjoyment

Hello Feel Gooders! 

Please to be reading the next line in your best monster truck rally voice, yall know what I mean.

It’s Friday, Friday Friday!! It’s a basketball sportsmanship EXTRAVAGANZA!!! It’s ten dollars a seat but you’ll only need the EDddggGE!!!!

"True sportsmanship is…Knowing that you need your opponent because without him or her, there is no game." -Lorii Myers

So, since starting this blog and distro email I've been exposed to a healthy amount of feel good stories, some that are shared with me (which is very much welcomed so keep them coming!!) and others I take note of because I’m in that mindset. This Friday I have two unique stories that are somewhat similar but each with their own remarkable outcomes, the first of which was shared with me.

WiKi defines sportsmanship as follows:

Sportsmanship (or sometimes sports-personship) is an aspiration or ethos that a sport or activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors.

Now those of you that know me are aware that I don’t really care for sports, especially pro sports. I watch a bit of baseball here and there but for the most part I find them to be… well, negative comments aside I will say, that I love sportsmanship.  The definition above is great, right?

Two videos, the first is about Jason McElway. He’s a special needs autistic kid who’s his high schools basketballs team captain. The video explains it best.  Some of you will have seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdmdtNJNC2I

 Tell me that didn’t get at you just a little? McElways coach, Jim Johnson embraced a true level of positivity in sportsmanship by taking on the “Enjoyed for its own sake” He just wanted to play the game and make sure everyone enjoyed it. Amazing.

I came across a second story that was similar, but this one isn’t the ending they were expecting, this story’s heroes are different.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTaB-hPg0P4

Again, a powerful display of sportsmanship by the coach, but the unexpected hero here is on the opposing team,  Jonathon Montanez. Jonathon embraced the positivity by showing “proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors.”

I think that when you examine these and a myriad of examples of sportsmanship we know that there is a strong community, sharing and overall sense of joy shared by all… perhaps it’s time to examine where this disappears as competition becomes more severe and monetary based.  This week, I’m going to focus on the positivity of true sportsmanship in the things I do.

Happy Friday

“After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.”
― Mickey Mantle

“Our bodies change our minds, and our minds change our behavior, and our behavior changes our outcomes”

Hello Friday Feel Gooders!!!

Friday is here again and man, is it a pretty one. (Depending on where you are. the PAC NW is delivering today!!)  Todays post is a bit long, so if you’re like me and have the attention span of a gnat for online reading, I apologize… but read it anyway, you make me happy!

Last week I wrote about self-talk and about how the message you’re approaching life with can dictate who you become. This message resonates really deeply with what I am trying to do with this blog as I mentioned. There was something missing though, the idea is/was there but I needed one more component. I knew I had already heard this message and I just needed to get to that nook n cranny in my brain to remember just where I saw it, and replay it.

So I just finished my last term for my AA and graduated with honors, (Shameless self-promotion) where one of my last classes was Speech Communications. The Professor, Heather, had shown us this video which I thought was cute at the time but mostly it washed over me. I had already been writing this blog and doing my thing etc.  I am realizing that video, the message in that video is the quintessential message for me and my TFFG project.  

The Jist:

Amy Cuddy is an American social psychologist known for her research on stereotyping and discrimination, emotions, power, nonverbal behavior, and the effects of social stimuli on hormone levels. What does this have to do with me, my blog and my new outlook? Everything:  My whole need for this blog is about forced perspective and a manipulated persona. This video is about 20 minutes but it’s great, I hope you can find the time to hear it through; my thoughts afterword will make more sense.  

Here’s why this video was bouncing around in my head unbeknownst to me, because the reality of me, this blog and my new mission is that it IS fake… on a level.  All this positivity, up-beat and forward thinking, get er done life is great attitude?? That’s not me by definition, so what I am doing IS, in fact, faking it until I become it. Those of you who know me well, know that I can be cynical, mean and negative; I’m not saying all the time, but it’s in me and was certainly a bigger part of my world view,  so that’s what I was becoming… more and more every day especially with the huge waves of heartache I had been facing. That being said, (and I’m slopping tears on my face as I type this) some of you have come to me and made it a point to tell me how you see the change, that I am positive and giving off light. WHAT COULD BE MORE AWESOME THAN THAT??? It’s working goddammit, I am becoming it.

Closing thoughts, this quote from her during the video…

“Having your core identity taken from you, nothing makes you feel more powerless than that”

I don’t know about you but this resonated with me so much and on so many levels. What is it in your life that you want to become? How do you get there, and when you finally do and the world takes it away from you what are you LEFT with?

So… how do I go out there and start to... FEEL BIGGER. BE BIGGER

How do I stop being my sickness? How do I not become my losses?

How do I not let the pain in my HEART take EVERYTHING AWAY from me?

How do I get up, TODAY, and be MORE than I was YESTERDAY?

I’M GONNA Stand UP, Stretch out, and DECIDE 

that today I AM THE HEAVY WEIGHT CHAMPION

of my own existence and person

AND NOBODY

Is gonna. Knock. Me. Down.

AGAIN

The basic to the complex: Self talk becomes who we are.

Happy Friday, Feel-Gooders!  I took last Friday off for the fourth even though there are more new comers and you were promised some sunshine, back on track kids! Big Hugs, Big apologies! 

Each Friday I have this “terrible” problem of deciding what to write about. There has been so much (good) going on and I've got enough content in the positivity reserves for months to come. Ever since starting this distro which turned blog I get a healthy kickback of ideas, not to mention the general outlook and choices I am making brings me to like-minded content, which brings me to my subject for today.

Part of the reason I started this blog was for my personal mission in character manipulation, making choices to be a better person. I truly believe that we’re a product of our environment, and with that the subsequent choices we make and the people we are come from this.  Being more positive is a choice I am making to enrich my environment so that the outcomes I produce for myself and others enrich theirs.  (Cyclical, yes?)

Two stories today, both taken from observations in the last few days of posts my friends have made on various social media sites. I hope they see my blog and know that the cycle of positivity and their message grows as we all take it on. Both stories encompass the idea about positive self-talk, and how we change our lives in the basic to complex decisions we make about who we want to be.

The Basic:

Small changes can have a huge impact; Mauricio Estrella tells the following story on how a choice he made to embrace positivity in a small message made dynamic impacts to his life, by simply using a daily task to change his mindset. The story is best told through his own words

HERE https://medium.com/@manicho/how-a-password-changed-my-life-7af5d5f28038

This is a huge inspiration for me; he took something mundane, and on the surface relatively useless, and changed it into a mission of change.  As I look now at the smaller things in my life I am thinking about where those opportunities might be.

The Complex:

Not everything is as simple as a password, so when big life changes come we’re forced with choices that most of us may have the proclivity to fall under, life is heavy sometimes and it may seem it’s never getting off your back. What would you do if you were faced with the inevitable outcome that you were going to lose your left foot? I would probably have some extreme emotional problems with it. This following young man, Joe, made the choice to have it impact his life in a dramatically different way.

Joe made the choice to amputate his left foot after suffering with pigmented villonodular synovitis, or PVNS. Joe however made some amazing subsequent choices about who he was going to be, how it was going to impact him and what to do with it. Everything from getting a dotted tattoo on the leg for the surgeon to cut along, to dreaming up future Halloween costumes in which he’s a surfer and his girlfriend a shark.

Images HERE http://imgur.com/a/TOEKR#uLWsZEW

And HERE http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/10/amputee-makes-heartwarming-farewell-foot-photo-album-4793199/

More from him on Reddit where he did an AMA HERE 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a3vzb/im_the_brother_who_chose_to_get_a_belowtheknee/

 We’re all faced with basic and complex choices, it’s cliché to say things about how a positive attitude, this and that, but really, REALLY. It works. I caught myself the other day getting all grumpy and piss faced about the way a web site worked, I literally let some stupid shit ruin 10 minutes of my life? It’s my choice, pure and simple. I’d love to hear from you on your examples of positive self-talk and how it’s improved your life. Till next Friday! FEEL GOOD!!!!!