Brendan Jack is at it…again!

check this out.

So good.

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1. What’s the last most exciting thing you saw/did/experienced/were a part of?
2. What’s the last thing you did to show someone complete and utter selfless love?
3. What’s the last thing you did that completely and totally embarrassed you?
4. Which superhero do you most relate to? Why?
5. What is one family tradition you intend to carry on in your own home (right now, when you have kids)?
6. When was the last time you were able to sit in an empty room in silence for an hour and be totally comfortable?
7. How much bearing do the opinions of the people around you have on your decisions?
8. Do you ever feel guilty for anything? (hint: solve this NOW)
9. If you had R10 000 to spend on anything you wanted today, what would it be?
10. Would you define yourself more as a artist, dreamer or realist?

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In their December issue, Runner’s World South Africa has awarded PUMA’s Complete Velosis its Editor’s Choice.

“The Velosis is the top end of PUMA’s latest range of running shoes and, together with the Vectana, has come on extremely effectively. PUMA is now right up there and you may well just surprise yourself at how competitive it has gotten at the top. Neutrally appointed shoe with a lot of cushioning.”

Congratulations to PUMA’s Product Team. This is only the beginning.

via Puma Running

I am currently running in the 2010 Ventis (find pics of the Ltd Edition Color here and here and here) for a few months now, and can see why the award is there, based on what I have felt with the Ventis

This is the best shoe Puma have ever developed for me and the style I run in. I simply can’t wait for my Ironman racing shoes to arrive. They are a lighter, more flexible version of this shoe, and my some chance, they are in my team colors this year.

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Our Story: After years spent building beauty brands in the oft-dysfunctional world of consumer packaged goods,
Brian Lau left to build his own.

His big idea:
To create products where nothing is put in, said or done that is without purpose
& To take a stand against an industry with a wayward moral code.

About our products:We created a worry-free skincare kit designed with men in mind. The products in the kit have unique formulas that are absent of irritating ingredients such as fragrance and grain alcohols. We’ve also created a seasonal product delivery experience that automatically sends you the essential products for the right season, without ever having to step into a cosmetics shopping aisle. It’s Everything a Man Needs and Nothing He Doesn’t.

Bread & Butter work off a simple formula. Order online, either once, or twice a year, save costs, and get delivery to your door, all inclusive. Only the stuff you need.

Here is the summer kit, to show you how they do it:

As a guy, not much more than that needed. Here are some more quick facts about why the kit rocks:

But why am I going on about this?

As one of the projects I am involved in this year, Bread & Butter is going to be spoken about a lot, not just here, but in the general media, as well as the social interwebs.

So look out for us in your inbox, in your magazines and support us where you can. Launch date is set for a few weeks. If you want more information, please drop me a mail via the contact page. In the meantime, check out their website for more information while ours gets finalized.

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let it load.

sit back….

and be amazed.

Brian Lopes railing it down A-line at Whistler… from GoPro on Vimeo.

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This weekend I was lucky enough to have a bike ride with a real pro again. Now that I have a bit more power on the bike, I took it upon myself to take the Rural Rasta out for a ride with Dan Hugo, all round great guy and full time Xterra Pro.

Riding with a pro is a special experience not for how fast they go (we were able to hang on most of the way) but with how much ease they do it. I think you will find some answers to the cause in my posts on 10 000 hours of work.

It’s no different to a great graphic designer, who belts out the most amazing design with what seems like zero effort.

Dan is the same. Watching him tick out a pedaling action so smooth it’s comparable to water flowing over marble makes you remember why he is pro, and you are amateur. He is just SO good at riding a bike, the other two of us can merely ride along and marvel at the effort that has gone into achieving this.

It was the same when I had the chance to train with Team CSC back in the day. The guys were in off season, and they were so smooth (the Schleck brothers in particular) all we did was ride and watch them, and try to emulate them.

Now apply this to your work life. Have you tried to follow someone who puts together deals daily with such an amazing ease that it makes you sick? You think it was always this easy for them? You have to practice to be great. You can’t just sell. I bet people who can sell at a relatively young age hustled on the playground when they were 4 years old. I bet they hustled their parents for food when they were 2.

Economy is the secret here. Pro’s in sport, business, relationships all have it. But it takes practice. It takes effort, it takes time. It means you need to HTFU and get out there and be prepared to make an ass out of yourself from time to time in the name of all things economy!

I don’t need to go into the photo, it’s courtesy of Dan’s web page and from a training camp they held for one of their sponsors recently. In the photo, you can just tell these two guys are flying along, at no effort (seemingly). The other kwagga in the photo is none other than Conrad Stoltz.

But they do make effort. In all spheres of life. In business, in relationships, in friendships, it’s about the effort, even if it looks easy. Value the effort that’s gone into making it look that easy, and don’t judge others for making it look easy. I guarantee you that it’s still quite a bit of effort for them, as much as for you, they just go faster/sell easier/manage better but its still requires their total effort.

If you have economy at something, I applaud you.

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read this today….

be honest. where are you?

LEVELS 1-4 OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY

Level One Maturity -Basic Emotional Responsibility- When a person reaches level one of emotional maturity, they realize that they can no longer view their emotional states as the responsibility of external forces such as people, places, things, forces, fate, and spirits. They learn to drop expressions from their speech that show disownership of feelings and a helpless or victim attitude towards their feelings. Expressions such as: “They made me feel . . . , ” “It made me feel . . . ,” “I made them feel. . . ,” and any others that denote external emotional responsibility are first changed into “I” statements as opposed to “You” or blaming statements. They are, for example, changed from, “You make me so mad when you do that,” to “I feel mad when you do that because . . . .” People learn at this level to regularly use the following expressions: “When you did . . . , I felt . . . , because . . . .” “When . . . happened, I felt . . . , because . . . .” As time and maturity advance, they begin to use even more accurate statements that inhibit the Blame Game such as: “I chose to feel . . . when I did . . . , because . . . .” “I choose to feel . . . whenever . . . happens, because . . . .” “I chose to feel . . . when he, she, it, did . . . , because . . . .” “I am in the habit of choosing to feel . . . whenever my/your . . . says anything to me, because . . . .”

Level Two Maturity -Emotional Honesty- Emotional honesty concerns the willingness of the person to know and own their own feelings. This is a necessary step to self-understanding and acceptance. The issues of resistance to self-discovery are dealt with at this level. They are related solely to the person’s conscious and unconscious fears of dealing directly with the critical voices they hear inside. In the past, they have typically lost all interactions with this internal adversary, so their fears are justified. Now, however, they know how to choose to feel so that they can keep from being destroyed, or they can choose not to interact with their accuser at all. The realization of the old maxim, “To thine own self be true,” is the primary goal at this level. This means that we are always true to what we feel: we do not hide, stuff, suppress, or repress what we feel, but honestly experience it at this level of maturity. Here, you are at least honest with yourself about how you really feel. As a secondary goal on this level, people learn to locate others with whom they can safely share their real feelings, their real selves. Such work to never again accept self as behavior.

Level Three Maturity -Emotional Openness- This level concerns the person’s willingness and skills in sharing their feelings in an appropriate manner and at appropriate times. Persons at this level experience and learn the value of ventilating feelings, and also the dangers involved in hiding feelings from self and others. Self-disclosure is the important issue at this level of work. Yet, it will never be as important as the willingness of the person to be open to experiencing all of their feelings as they arise without the critical voices they hear inside trying to change, control, or condemn them. The dangers of suppressing feelings, and the values inherent in exploring and allowing all feelings internal expression are investigated further. At this level, one has the openness, the freedom to experience any emotion without the need, the compulsion to suppress or repress it.

Level Four Maturity -Emotional Assertiveness- The person at this level of work enters a new era of positive self-expression. The primary goal here is to be able to ask for and to receive the nurturing that one needs and wants–first from self and then from others. As a secondary goal, persons should learn how to express any feeling appropriately in any situation, i.e., without aggressive overtones. This person makes time for their feelings–they prize and respect them. Such understand the connection between suppressed feelings, stress, and illness. Level Five Maturity, Emotional Understanding, and Level Six Maturity, Emotional Detachment, are both covered in another booklet entitled, Self-Concept: The Enemy Within. For ordering information, please look at the end of this booklet.

Reprinted from THE SECRET OF MATURITY: Or How Not to be Codependent, Second Edition, by Kevin Everett FitzMaurice. © 1990, 1989 Kevin Everett FitzMaurice. Reprinted by permission of PalmTree Publishers. Order “The Secret of Maturity” LEVELS

5-6 OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY

Level Five Maturity -Emotional Understanding- Persons on this level understand the actual cause and effect process of emotional responsibility and irresponsibility. Self-concepts are known as “the” problem. They realize that it is not possible to have a so-called good self-concept without a complimentary bad self-concept. Such experience firsthand, that because of the nature of knowledge and the formation of self-concepts, that all self-concepts contain their opposites. Knowing that though we may hide one half in darkness (unconsciousness) it is still active in us; they begin to regularly leap beyond the pitfalls of self-concepts, self-images, and self-constructs. This knowledge of the Unity of Opposites (of self-concepts, of knowledge) is applied to new situations daily. Other understandings at this level include the following: attempts to capture a moment of self can only kill the self as the self is a living process and not knowledge or memory; to reduce self to knowledge is literally to kill it; one either has their self and is alive and experiencing, or one has found their self as knowledge and lost it. Self-concepts are always externally referented by their very nature, and thus forever the perfect targets and hooks for the Blame Game. (For a description of the Blame Game see The Secret of Maturity.) Knowing that self-concepts are the only hooks that can be used in the Blame Game, people at this level remember to work on seeing their own self-concepts and finding release from their own. Self-knowledge is used to free the self from self-concepts on this level rather than to form them and imprison the self in them. The main work here is a total shift from identifying with any self-concepts to identifying only with the true self. II Corinthians 10:5 “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, . . .” Matthew 10:39 “He that findeth his life shall lose it: . . .”

Level Six Maturity -Emotional Detachment- At this level the person lives without the burden and snare of self-concepts, self-images, self-constructs, and all group-concepts and thing-concepts. They are only aware of self as process, as a sensing being, as an experiencing being, as a living vessel, as unknowable and untrappable–because it is alive and not static or fixed. They have died to the life of self as self-concepts. True detachment from all self-concepts has occurred. Thus true detachment from others has also occurred, which means that absolute emotional responsibility has been achieved (actually discovered). Not having self-concepts to defend or promote, this person can remain unaffected by the Blame Game, and even experiences unconditional love for their enemies. I Thessalonians 4:4 “That every one of you should know how to posses his vessel in sanctification and honor;”

source

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Just some awesome footage of the man. I personally don’t care what you think about him. The guy changed the world. On a bicycle. Because he is a hardass, and doesn’t care what you think of him either.

Was given a 5% chance of living, got up and won 7 Tour de France races, raised close on a $1 000 000 000 for cancer, and fathered a mega family with one testicle. What have you done with your life….

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There is this simple thing that most girls miss out on in the world, that they don’t always respect, or comprehend the effects of. I don’t always blame them, as some boys have a tendency to ruin the whole experience by behaving like idiots at these gatherings. Especially when there is alcohol involved.

Your boy needs adventure girls. He needs it like he needs air.

The reasons for this are quite simple:

1. Boys bond on adventure. The vibe that anything could go down brings us close together, which gives us a confidence that stretches beyond the extent of the adventure. In business, in love, in life, its important to know there are boys out there who have your back, when the poop hits the proverbial.

2. Boys need to rough it. Not shaving for 10 days, sleeping in the sand with killer mosquitoes, with lions roaring in the background grounds us to the ground. We need to rough it from time to time. It bonds us to mother earth, and you know what they say about boys and their mothers…

3. Boys need to push their limits. No-one was ever a personal success by playing it safe. As boys, we need practice in pushing limits, it’s not something inherent in us. Just like in nature, boys need to be tested, time and time again, to gain the skill to be effective “hunters”.

4. Boys need to talk smack. We need to mouth off about stuff only other boys should ever hear about. Our way on gathering knowledge often involves putting something ridiculous out there (that may, or may not have happened) and seeing how our peer group responds to this “knowledge”.

5. Boys are boys. We don’t play with dolls, we create wars and entire universes in our sandpits when we are kids. We need to go “all in” with games, playtime, etc throughout our lives. That’s why sports exist, and why business is driven by men (don’t get all feminist on my ass here please) – we are just playing on bigger scales.

5 compelling reasons to let him go away on that boys weekend, camping. I am not advocating weekends of debauchery. I use the word Adventure with real meaning because that is what boys need.

So now that that is concluded, why don’t you girls leave a comment below here and tell me what girls/women need like we boys need adventure.

thanks in advance…

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On Friday, I was puttering around and came across a cool competition that had launched just minutes earlier. It was a prize to stay in one of the trailers, on top of the roof of the Grand Daddy Hotel. I googlefied my keyboard until it smoked and my fingers were in cramp but I managed to get the first correct entry in, and voila!

I am staying here tomorrow night, just for a night, for a bit of R&R.

Very swanky indeed. Earthy tones with texture and roughage. I laaaik it man. Should be fun.

This prompted a bit of a get together, and I have invited some peeps down to the Daddy Cool bar (say it again, with oomph this time… Daddy Cool) at 8pm for a drink and a catch up, and quite an eclectic crowd is gathering so far. If you want to join, drop me a mail on the contact page here as I need to RSVP numbers to the amazing staff who have been nothing short of fantastic in making sure all is ready for me. Here is the bar, by the way…

Quite mad eh… (and please note the Jack Black Draught Tap)

So drop me a note to say you are coming. Thank you to the Grand Daddy Hotel for the evenings accommodation, I am very much looking forward to my trailer. Hope to see you there.

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