Life at the speed of caffeine --- When it gets too good to turn down

Man, just when I thought things were calming down for a little bit, life gets too good to tune it down.

All of the sudden, I've got a bunch of students who are highly skilled and extremely motivated and are gunning for the September 2008 RKC kettlebell instructor certification workshop in St. Paul. The KBLA crew is spreading its wings! So needless to say, now I'm looking at the possibility of heading out there for moral support.

Add to that, this weekend is a CEU seminar that I need to renew my acupuncture licensure, next weekend is the Functional Training Summit that Gray Cook and Lee Burton, as well as Dr. Stuart McGill, will all be presenting at, and the following weekend is supposedly some down time in Vegas. So there goes the month of June.

Next month, another required CEU seminar, a weekend of "rest", one of my best friend's wedding, then August starts with the UCLA RKC instructor certification workshop and continues with the CK-FMS workshop (where Gray Cook and Brett Jones will be presenting the Functional Movement Screen and kettlebell-based corrective movement strategies) the following weekend.

If you told me even 5 years ago that my life would turn into a series of opportunities that are exactly what I've been looking forward to and I'd be in a position where I have to look at how to prioritize and turn down opportunities that give me the chance to interact with guys who are my heroes (and all while getting PAID), I'd have told you to ease up on the crack pipe. Life is REALLY that good!

On the other hand, life is rough in a way I never anticipated. Having to prioritize with opportunities like that presents me with a challenge I NEVER anticipated. In some ways, it's MORE dangerous than having too few options, since now prioritizing is even more important. Choosing to spend time in an unbalanced way can jeopardize all that I've worked so hard to achieve. If I spend too little time with my family because I'm trying to make the most of these opportunities, I risk losing the real jewels are in my life. Similarly, if I spend too much time on work and not enough time training (as I have been more guilty of lately), I risk losing the sharpness of the edge I've worked hard to hone.

In all situations, good & bad, there's one factor that keeps you from making poor decisions - INSPIRATION. When you look at what truly inspires you (whether God, family, country, teachers, or whatever else) and you make careful decisions based on your sources of inspiration, you will find yourself committing your efforts to what builds a strong life for yourself and for those around you.

As my friend, Boris Bachmann, RKC, told me, sometimes I make these blog posts just as much to remind myself how to choose and how to act as to light the path for others. And sometimes, it's the guidance from my own blogposts that I hear from my students' mouths when I veer off course.

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ADDENDUM - 2130 hrs

Life has a great way of putting the brakes on when you drive yourself a little too hard, too fast. Teaching a full load of clients, treating a full load of patients, driving all over SoCal, and not listening to the occasional whimperings of my body may not have been the smartest thing to do. But I was having fun doing what I was doing. Wanna know how much fun I'm getting into? Three letters say it all.... FMS. Suffice it to say that the Chinaman's got somethin' big cookin'!

Back to the reality of the present... Down with a little flu, it looks like I won't be heading to Cerritos tomorrow to work on editing the CSC book. After a day and a half of questionable GI activity and an evening of swelling glands, I'm going into hibernation again. G'nite, folks.