At the TED Conference (a gathering of movers and shakers in Monterrey, CA every spring) Al Gore apparently gave a very impressive delivery of his global warming presentation. For anyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth, you can see how Al Gore really has passion for this topic. Tony Robbins was also a speaker at the conference.

There was a funny interchange during Tony’s talk. The thesis was that our success is not driven by resources, but resourcefullness. Emotion is the key. He actually confronts Al Gore (who was sitting in the front row) and states flat out that if he had displayed the emotion he poures out in his environmental talks during the presidential debate, there is no doubt that he would have won!

He goes on to touch on many other important topics, including the Core Human Needs and the Keys to Fulfillment.

Check out the entire video of the talk here.

My face is clearer than it has been since I was literally 12 years old. I have a few annoying blemishes, but they are slowly clearing away. A few months ago, I had quite a lot of acne. After upping my raw food intake, I’ve lost my cravings for coffee, and alchohol. I think the combination of less caffeine, less alchohol and much more fresh foods had been the trick.

I’ve never had serious acne, but have always (well, since I was 13) have many more pimples than I would have liked. Over the past two years, I’ve also noticed it getting much worse. I tried a bunch of “old school” remedies (turmeric powder, apple cider vinegar, off the shelf OXY and the like) but nothing really worked.

This massive diet change seems to be doing the trick.

I was jettin outta work early to hit a 5:30pm yoga class. I’ve been getting in at crazy early hours so I can disregard the sly glances from my hallway-mates with good faith. I left at 4pm which would give me plenty of time to make the commute across the 520 bridge to Ballard for my class. The commute at that time of day would normally take an hour at most.

Within seconds of getting on 520 from Microsoft campus I was in gridlock. I rarely have seen traffic this bad. Normally the bridge (which is one of two main arteries people use to get from the suburbs to the city) doesn’t back up until you get much closer to Lake Washington. It was looking to be a 2hr commute. One for the record books.

After 1 hour I had gone all of 5 miles. I could run faster than that! Looked like I wasn’t going to make this class. I was really getting pissed off. I left work early. The 5:30pm class was also a tougher than normal class, so I couldn’t drop into a later class and get the same workout.

After a little moping around, I then resolved to make it no matter what (without getting into the carpool lane illegally). I actually started to assume in my head that I was gonna make it there, that there was no doubt it would happen. I actually started to think about how I would feel after class finished. I thought about the poses we would do, and what I would eat when I got home.

Amazingly, once I hit the bridge, it was pretty cleared up. Also, traffic into ballard was pretty light, which was odd given how nice a day it was and the fact that it was rush hour. Also, I scored a great parking spot pretty close to the yoga studio. Turns out, I was late for the class by 15 minutes. They have a rule thay they don’t usually let you in after 10 minutes. The lady at the desk, however, let me in anyway (score!).

So I snuck in the back and had a totally awesome class. I ran into a good friend there as well; an added bonus. I can’t tell how many times I just though “oh well, I’ll just skip class today, I will never make it” after that first hour of traffic. It was really not until I resolved to make it that things cleared up.

I’ve heard over and over that the subconscous portion of the brain (the reticular formation) is over a thousand times more powerful than the conscious mind. That it’s sole purpose is to seek out and create things in the world to further our benefit. That it doesn’t care about how tired, lazy, shy, gilty or boastful you may be.
It looks after your best interests. I’ve also heard that you can direct it subtly by committing to a specific goal 100%. I am not saying that my mind somehow parted traffic mysteriously, but I do believe that my focus on the goal made me aware of opportunites I might have otherwise not noticed: like the sweet parking spot, or my eye contact with the desk attendant that said “ya better let me in here!” without actually saying a word.

some people call this “grace,” I call it commitment and focus.

heading to the company picnic. it is ninety degrees and not a cloud in the sky so looking forward to gettin a nice case of heatstroke! I go to this picnic every year. most of my buddies think I’m lame for goin (its more of a family thing, and I aint even got a puppy let alone a wife or kid). regardless, there is something intriguing about it….i mean, when Microsoft spends well over a million bucks to throw a picnic….the least you can do is show up and eat as many gardenburgers as humanly possible (which would 7 with no bun, 4 fully loaded).

For the past month and a half, I’ve been experimenting with a raw food diet. I went 17 days on an 80% raw food diet, fell off the bandwagon for 2 weeks (travelling home and such) and for the past 10 days have managed to jump back on that wagon full-on. I’ve kept a goals of 50% of my daily food intake from raw sources.

Today, I was about to go to breakfast with my friends, where I would surely have ordered some completely non-raw and non-vegan meal. The friends ended up bailing on breakfast. I couldnt bring myself to make another salad and was totally starving after my yoga practice, so, I searched for a local raw food restaurant. I found Chaco Canyon Cafe in U District and decided to hit it up.

I ended up having an absultely delicious and filling 100% raw food meal. I had a Spicy Thai Grinder and a glass of fresh squeezed carrot juice. I was pretty amazed that they could make these things out of totally raw food. The grinder was basically a patty of ground seed and veggies on a bed of cabbage and spinach, with some peanut sauce. Amazingly, I ate the thing and was actually full. It was not very big, and I was starving. It is pretty clear to me that if you consume high quality food sources, you need to eat much less than you normally would.
This little place is located on 50th and Brooklyn (on the corner across from the big Safeway) and is right kitty korner to the weekend market in the U District. For those that aren’t looking for a totally raw meal, they also have some awesome Vegan desserts and a full vegan menu.

As a bonus, I ran into 4 other raw foodists, one of whom has been at it for 6 years! I have no intention to go 100% raw, but the changes I have seen over the past 6 weeks have me convinced that getting a large percentage of food 100% as nature intended has benefits (physcial and emotional) that you cannot get in any other way.

After getting thrashed in the hilly stage 16 of the Tour de France on Wednesday, losing almost 10 minutes on the stage, Floyd Landis returned wearing his “cape” on Thursday’s mountain stage. He broke way early in the race and managed to gain and keep a nearly 8 minute lead on the pelton! After stage 16, everyone had written him off. Even a podium place seemed out of reach. Floyd proved everyone wrong (including me). His breakaway effort moved him into third place, and within striking distance, leading into today’s individual time trial.

Today, he sealed the deal, placing third overall on the stage and putting a few minutes into the top two riders. Floyd now sits in the yellow jersey, with an insurmountable 1 minute lead seperating him from second place.

This dood doesn’t let anyone else dicate what he can and can’t do. In fact, after winning the breakthrough stage on Thursday, he responded to reporters with indifference about the feat…and that winning the tour was his only goal. With all the hoopla and drug scandals at the beginning of the Tour, it is good to see someone that actually has their head screwed on straight.

It is far to common for us to think of things from a dualistic point of view. Situations are either good or bad, people are kind or mean, food is tasty or terrible, we are either rich or poor, we’re either having fun or bored, our ‘inner circle’ of friends seem to either love us or show indiference.

It actually makes sense that this is the way we classify the experiences in our lives. Our lives are driven by our pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain. Physically….our bodies are built with near perfect symmetry. In sports, you either win or lose. Throughout our daily experience this is reinforced.

Whether we like it or not our minds are constantly judging and classifying things as ‘black and white’. I think we owe it to ourselves to not fall into this trap. When we file away experienceslike this we cut ourselves off learning or salvaging positivity from the ‘bad’ things and also falsely attribute pleasure only to experiences  that either directly meet or exceed our expectations or those of popular culture.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to catch myself during these moments, and forcing a more neutral point of view. I’ve focused on the situations where my brain has tried to log things as ‘bad’ (after all…I don’t have a problem with feeling good!). What I’ve noticed is that when I’ve made a conscious decision to change my point of view….either the situation changes (in ways I could never have predicted)….or the experience just becomes less significant in my mind after the fact. Most of the time the former occurs, with a potentially negative experience transforming into something much more positive. In the past week that I’ve been paying attention this the number of these random coincidences has increased like crazy. It is like the moment I stop judging a situation, it actually changes to my benefit!

I wrote in another post about the importance of not stickin too close to your own expectations…..in the same vein….I think we need to change the way we file things away in our minds to really be emotionally strong and live an outstanding life. Try it for a week and you will see what I mean.

I wrote last week about the body transformation competition.

While I was at the Tony Robbins seminar last week and this weekend I made sure to workout every morning. The typical workout included 10-20minutes on an exercise bike, and then either weight training or a yoga routine, and some ab work.

The seminar would go all-day, so I packed snacks with me. I would typically eat a piece of fruit in the morning, a “green-drink” (like supergreen mixed with water) in mid-morning, and a big salad (lettuce, olives, some feta cheese, grape-leave dolmas, carrots, etc) when we broke for lunch (typically around 2-3pm). I’d snack on some raw nuts or dried fruit if I got really hungry. Dinner was typically a big salad or some pizza or something (whatever I could find at Hard Rock Cafe, Cheesecake Factory or California Pizza Kitchen). Generally speaking, my diet was very very good. Mostly raw and lots of fruits and veggies.

So after getting home today from the airport, I decided to check my bodyfat. On July 1st I was 15% bodyfat and 152 lbs. Last Monday, I was 150lbs and 14% bodyfat. Today, I step on the scale and I am 152 lbs and 10% bodyfat! Only about 3% more to drop to hit my goal of 7%. I think that eating much more raw food is what did it. I have a feeling that gaining the muscle mass is going to be the really hard part to this challenge. My goal is to get up to 158 lbs by the end of September.

Yesterday we finished up the Tony Robbins Wealth Mastery seminar. The theme of the day was “integration.” We learned a few more investing strategies, heard from Real Estate guru Dorf De Roos and had a crash course in how to eliminate all personal debt in 3-5 years. The meaty part of the day was the final 2-3 hour session on recapping and integrating all that we had learned and documenting goals for our financial future. As with each of the previous days, we finished with an hour long visualization session, where the lead trainer led everyone through a very powerful exercise to help us really feel the emotions and outcomes from achieving our goals.
We wrapped things up around 9pm and then went into “party mode,” with a dinner buffet and some fun dancing.  The past 4 days were incredibly fun, challenging, emotional, and well worth the time and money spent. Life will really never be the same.

this was strategy day. we focused on investment strategies (covered calls, short selling and stock screens), tax strategy and a talk on global markets and curreny trading.

having a finance background, the investment portion was a bit boring, but the other two sections were absolutely great. The speaker for the tax session used to be the trainer for the IRS audit lawyers! this guy knows everything there is to slash taxes legally. the avererage American overpays taxes by about $5k. I hope to save double that using his strategies next year.

the global investing talk also opened my eyes to what is really happening to my money, which is denominated in US currency. Did you know the dollar has devalued against the Euro by 44 percent over the past two years? US dollar purchasing power is dropping and we need to protect ourselves. I’ll talk more about these topics in later posts.

of course, day 3 also had plenty of ra-ra-ra Tony Robbins motivational talks and some team activites. perhaps the most powerful session was a video we watched on the big screen of Tony telling a story to his Mastery University students many years ago. The story (about 30 minutes long) was absolutely captivating and focused on the importance of pushing through fear and not being paralyzed by it.

day three was long…starting at 8am and going until 10:30pm. I got home at 1am. day4 will be even more intense.

today we learned a few strategies to help us invest better and an in depth discussion on the success factors and psychology of successful businesspeople.

the investment strategies included momentum investing and short selling. both of these were not new to me but is was good to hear about how to apply these techniques again. it is amazing how we sometimes kid ourselves into thinking that since we know something we have nothing more to learn on the subject. personally…i have spent a lot of time studying charting, options trading, momentum investing and the like but have never consistenly applied the techniques. this course has given me more motivation to try again with more diligence.

the second part of the day on success psychology was outstanding! I feel like I really understand the rationale for why even those people that don’t seem super smart….can be so successful in business: it is all about their model of the world and psychology. thinking about this a little more, I think that many of the same qualities an apply to building lasting and successful relationships as well.

we covered soo much material today I won’t even try to do it justice. the session was 13 hours long with a short lunch break! it is really just starting to synch in.

time for me to go do my homework (welre tasked with figuring out how much money it would take annually to live a totally fun and financially free life). more tomorrow.

p.s. these posts are from my smartphone….typos at no xtra charge!

The day ended early…at 9pm :). The second part of the day included a long talk by Jack Mellon, who architected and taught the Wealth Mastery course with Tony over 10 years ago. Jack cued up some of the concepts he will dive into over the next few days…include a new take on asset allocation and momentum investing. The most value, however focused on his discussion on the psychology behind creating wealth.

The high impact part of the course was towards the end, when our host and MC, Joe Williams, led us through a process to identify and eradicate limiting beliefs that have been undermining our ability to succeed. We then reinforced empowering beliefs that reprogrammed our brains to consciously and subonsciously drive us in a positive directions.

There is really no way to fully convey the impact that this exercise has. It is very powerful. I won’t give too much away…but I will say that almost everyone was in tears by the end. Emotion is a very powerful agent of change

and yes….we’re only done with day1!

we finally broke for lunch at 1:30 after 4 intense hours. the size of the audience is smaller than my previous seminar, with about 900 people. most of the folks are also Mastery University sudents and seem to be very committed.

today’s focus is on setting the psychological foundations for financial success. this morning was a essentially a super charged goal setting session. now…back to my lunch..a REALLY big salad.

checked into my hotel last night and met my roommate, Amir, who is just finishing up his Mastery University course. Funny enough, I was late booking my hotel and my attempts to find a roommate were not looking good. Most hotels were booked. I decided to just pony up the money and book my own place. yesterday morning, however, I got a call out of the blue from someone who had a spot available.

unfortunately….i had already booked a nonrefundable room! Amir actually went out of his to cancel his hotel (which was at the seminar venue…mine was a mile away) and room with me.

getting a roommate for these types of events is important. you go through a LOT and having someone else around helps to keep you sane!

ok….i am sending this post from the airport using the web browser on my smartphone. I didn’t actually think my blog editor (which is web based) would be usable on this tiny device….but I am pleasantly surprised! assuming I have cell data access I will try to post updates from the Tony Robbins seminar.

I’m leaving for Baltimore tomorrow to attend my first course in the Tony Robbins Mastery University program. I attended his 4-day Unleash the Power Within (UPW) seminar in March and after going through several of his audio programs, and excited to get back to live instruction. This specific seminar is 5 days and focuses on Wealth Mastery.

I’m gone through Sunday and will not be taking my laptop. Chances are I won’t post anything until next week.

I’ve entered a body transformation competition. The contest goes from July 1st through September 24th and entrants are all members of the Vegan Bodybuilding website and message board. I look up to a lot of these guys and gals because they manage to get really strong and live with an insanely high energy level on a plant-based diet. They are really breaking the “weakling” sterotype that most people associate to vegans/vegetarians.

I sent in my “before” pictures a few weeks ago and it is clear that I have a lot of work to do. Since I think public humiliation (or fear of it) is one of the best motivators for change….I’m making my goals for this competition open to the public…or at least the three people that read this blog:

• Win the competition! (what are the point of goals if they aren’t big? :))
• Gain 1.5 pounds of lean muscle per week [+18 lbs]
• Lose 8% bodyfat, from 15% on July 1st to 7% [-12 lbs] my previous low was 4% back in 2003
• Finally get the six pack (…not the Miller Light variety)
• Perform 25 pull ups nonstop (current personal best is 12)
• Perform 75 push ups nonstop (current personal best is 54)
• Master Yoga inversions (headstands, handstands)

Went sailing for the first time ever today with Melanie, Adrian and Sofia. Got to pilot for a little while. We just went for about 4 hours around Puget Sound from Seattle to Bainbridge island and back. Lot of fun. I had been on motorboats several times before, but there is something more relaxing about moving through the water without a loud motor in your ear.

This morning I did another impromptu 1 set max test for push ups. I’ve been feeling a little sick lately, and had pretty low expectations. My training for the past 2 weeks has consisted of:

• 4-5 days of push-ups, pull ups and situps (2-3 sets of each to failure)
• a couple days of push up holds
• 3 days of yoga
• 3 days of lifting (1 day normal, 2 days using the static contraction technique with Kris)

I was surpised with Today’s outcome:

• May 7th: 30
• May 14th: 37
• May 16th: 38
• May 29th: 41
• June 6th: 44
• July 9th (Today): 54!!!!!

I am now right around my all-time personal best. I have a goal of crossing 60 by the end of August.

I’ve noticed a lot of people getting sick recently. Sore throat, cough and body aches mostly. I have 6 close friends who have this bad (missing work or just staying in on the weekends to recover). Last night I felt a little tingle in my throad and this morning it hurt pretty bad. I decided to go to morning yoga anyway. I figured the heat would be good for me (I didn’t go to a Bikram Hot Yoga studio, but the room was still about 85 degrees). I was, however, pretty sure that my practice would totally stink. I was up until 3am the night before and this class was at 8am.

As I wrote about in my previous post, these false expectations were exactly that, FALSE. While it wasn’t the best class I’ve ever had, it was not nearly as terrible as I was expecting. It also did (I think) help my throat condition. I hope to have this thing kicked by the time I leave for Baltimore on Tuesday for a Tony Robbins lass. More on that trip later.