Finding your inner Xena: here's how to empower yourself to demolish the barriers blocking your road, to success - Richard Machowicz...
Think of the most important change you'd like to make in your life right now
Do you want to make a career move?
Buy a house?
Get out of debt?
Lose weight?
Enter a fitness competition?
Quit smoking?
How long has that been on your Big To-Do List? You want to do it, maybe you even know what it'U take to get it done, but for one reason or another you're just not doing it. Something is standing between desire and accomplishment.
From beginning a new exercise program to making a life-altering career move, just because we want to change doesn't necessarily mean we know how to make that shift. To gain insight into what needs to happen between desiring a goal and actually achieving it, we turned to former Navy SEAL Richard J. Machowicz, author of Unleashing the Warrior Within: Using the 7 Principles of Combat to Achieve Your Goals (Hyperion, 2000). Through the toughest imaginable training in the premier special operations unit in the U.S. military, Machowicz learned to complete a mission no matter what the circumstances, conditions or obstacles in his way--and discovered that his guiding principles apply not only to combat but to everyday life.
Machowicz' training led him to develop the Bukido Training System, which he defines as "a symbiosis of mental and physical disciplines that develop skills for use under extreme stress and in the accomplishment of goals." His philosophy of performance helps get you from A, where you are now, to Z, your target or goal. Here, Machowicz talks with staff writer Beth Sonnenburg about how his system can benefit the M&F HERS reader.
preparing for combat
How do you translate 'combat" for people who will never personally experience combat in their lives?
If you want to use another term for "combat," call it stress and pressure--you can call it pain, you can call it competition. Rarely if ever will most people be in combat, but the principles that make for effectiveness in battle are just as relevant to the daily challenges we face. Basically, this is all about learning how to focus.
How do you focus?
No one really ever teaches us how to focus except to say, "Focus." We're supposed to understand exactly what that means. For the most part we get the gist of what that means, but the problem is, focus is like a laser beam: Move a little to the left or right, add a little fog or distance, and the laser either misses the target or it diffuses to a worthless extent.
But if focus is where the mind, body and spirit converge, we can get through all the obstacles that threaten to diminish the quality of our laser: stress, pain, fear, the unknown. I teach you how to focus through this metaphor of combat.
