Don's Health Fitness Wellbeing

A Challenge!

Saturday 30th June 2007

I feel like I haven't made a proper blog entry for more than a month now. I've been very busy, but honestly so much has happened that I haven't put an entry in, cause I wanted to get it all right. I realised if I don't just bloody say what needs to be said, that I am never going to do it.

In June I did the advanced landmark course and I also did the Anthony Robbins, "Unleash the Power Within" weekend seminar. So yes I have been a real course guru and doing lots of work on myself. Honestly, its really hard work to have to work through all your shit! Its would be so easy to just say, "you know what!!... thats all such crap! Who needs this rubbish anyway? Its just bloody brainwashing by a bunch of happy clappy idiots who think they are going to find the meaning of life! That these idiots have to get together in groups because they are not good or strong enough to do it by themselves. That I am better than this, I don't need all this rubbish in my head and deal with problems my own way!

Well, all I can say is, if thats what you want to believe, then good for you! But I challenge you to challenge yourself. I challenge you to take the time, strength and courage to face yourself, to REALLY look deep within yourself and see what there is to see! If at the end you feel no different, then I applaud you for at least having the courage to face yourself and your deepest, darkest fears. If you can truly do that being 100% honest within yourself, no lies, and face up to who you try and hide inside then I would love to shake your hand and talk like old friends how amazing it is to be so complete.

I am not saying that I faced everything I need to face, but I have started and have tried not to worry about looking bad or the fool. For all I know there are things buried deep that I have yet to uncover, and they may be shocking truths or little seemingly inconsequential things, but they will all have an immense effect on who I am and my life.

Nena O'Neil
"If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security: we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us."

Transforming reality

Wednesday 20th June 2007

The story of Won Hyo

There was a monk called Won Hyo, who lived around 600AD.
The story of his enlightenment is still famous today and marked a watershed in Korean Buddhism.

As was the way at that time, Won Hyo decided to travel to China for enlightenment. The journey was long and arduous. Along the way he took a nap; early in the morning he awoke with an incredible thirst. It was dark, but blindly feeling around his body he found a cup with water. He drank the water and drifted back to sleep feeling much relieved.

In the morning he awoke to find that the cup which he drank from was actually a human skull. And the water that he drank was stagnant.

He immediately felt nauseous and vomited.

At that point he had a realization. Won Hyo exclaimed, “Last night I thought this was water and it quenched my thirst. This morning I see that it is something else, so I am relating to it quite differently and am sick to my stomach. Therefore, mind makes everything, and without mind everything is empty.”

With this great insight Wonhyo realized he did not have to travel to China. Instead, he remained in Korea, resigning from the priesthood to teach as a layman.

Wonhyo’s astonishment at his unknowing actions and the power of the human mind to transform reality continue to be relevant even today.

SA Times Newspaper article

Wednesday 26th June

SA Times News Article

Martial arts teaches life’s lessons      
Written by Francois van Heerden    

Wednesday, 20 June 2007

Donald Ravenscroft is a fourth degree black belt in Taekwondo and one of South Africa’s best chances of winning a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics next year.
He still has to qualify but if he does go it will be the end of a long and hard road, after injury and illness ruled him out of the two previous Olympics.

He began studying Taekwondo in 1995. With a background in other close quarter combat styles, he quickly progressed through the ranks and fell in love with the fierce discipline, respect and humility that this Korean martial art embraces.

In 1996 he was selected for the South African national team and by 1998 he won the African Taekwondo Championships in Nairobi, Kenya to take the African heavyweight title. He has managed to stay at number one in Africa ever since.

In 1999, he qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. But just before leaving for Australia, he picked up a serious injury during training that effectively ruled him out of the games. Donald was understandably gutted.

“For a long time I blamed Sam Ramsammy (Chairman of National Olympic Committee of South Africa) and Wayne Derman (2000 South African Olympic team chief medical officer) for not letting me fight. But I realised I was wrong and recently phoned them and apologised.”

After some time away from the sport after the Sydney Games, he bounced back and in 2003 won the African title yet again, and was ranked 5th at the World Championships in Germany. He was selected for the South African Olympic squad for the 2004 Games in Athens but contracted malaria and was unable to compete fully at the qualification tournaments in the few weeks after, thus putting him out of the 2004 competition.

According to Ravenscroft he has learnt some very important lessons from his past disappointments.

“I was trying to prove to everybody that I was an Olympic athlete. And the truth of the matter is I was complete as a person already. I was successful, I had an incredible life already. But I wasn’t seeing it, because I was so focussed on trying to prove to other people that I was good enough.”

European circuit

In 2005 he decided to relocate to London to be close enough to Europe to compete on the European circuit and gain all the extra training and competition experience in his push for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

In November 2006 he won the British National Heavyweight title. After working as a personal trainer the last two years for Fitness First in Islington, London, he decided to start training full-time, two to three times a day for two hours each session.

“My dream is to go to the Olympics. It’s very, very important to me. But whether I go to Olympics or not, whether I win a medal or not, I’m still going to be the same person. My life is going to be complete. It is complete now. I don’t want to go to the Olympics to prove a point because of what happened in the past. I want to go to the Olympics because I love the sport.

After the Olympics I want to go back to South Africa and uplift people and inspire them. I want to show South Africans that we all have this massive amount of potential and greatness inside of us.”

Ravenscroft aims to qualify for next year’s Games at the Olympic World Qualification tournament in Man-chester in September. He’ll have to take one of the top four places in order to qualify. Failing that, he’ll have to focus on the African Qualification Tour-nament for the Beijing Olympic Games in Tripoli, Libya, in November and he will also have to finish either first or second.

Thomas Jefferson:
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

Gladiator

Tuesday 20th June 2007

"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. And at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

President Theodore Roosevelt
Paris 1910