Do you feel like your having lots of fun?
Or are you feeling fed up?
I find it funny that when you see a friend and you ask them how thing are, they often answer that things are not too bad. But as the conversation continues you quickly discover that things are far from fine. Because they then start to tell you about their problems. Plenty of problems. Big ones and petty ones.
People are always talking about what went wrong. How many bad things have happened to them. How close to the edge of disaster they are. The next thing is that you are joining in the spirit of the thing. You start trying to outdo them with the number the size and severity of your problems.
Now you may have been having a great day (and I am going to tell about how to have a great day, every day). But now your mind is full of negativity, you have lost that great feeling.
I'll come back to that in bit but before I do let me tell you an interesting story.
Terry O'Neill is a Karate champion who is a lifelong friend of mine. He knew Arnold Scwarzenneger when Big Arnie, as he was known, was the greatest body-builder in the world.
When Big Arnie got in to movies, he got Terry work as an actor and martial arts technical adviser in some of his films.
Terry, Dennis Martin and myself are three lifelong mates. We are gym rats, movie fanatics and keen students of the human condition. And for years we used to meet up three times a week in the Cavern Club coffee shop in Liverpool.
As I said, we are gym rats and movie fanatics, Dennis and I couldn't wait for Terry to get back from each trip to tell us tales about working on the movies and working out in the gym with Big Arnie.
Here is one of them.
On a film set they start work very early for variety of reasons. It wouldn't matter how early. And I'm talking about 4 a.m starts! Big Arnie would get get up two hours before work AND before BREAKFAST and go through a gruelling weightlifting work-out. This was like water to a duck to Terry. One of his bigger buzzes back in Liverpool was to borrow the keys from the gym owner, get me out of bed and go for a flat out work out. On Christmas morning!
Anyhow, back to Hollywood! (If only. lol)
Terry immediately fell into Arnold's training plan. He said that Arnold was perfect model for how to get the most out of life. He would push himself and everybody else to the limit in the training but, at the same time, he would be cracking jokes, playing pranks and having fun every minute, all the time, non-stop.
After the gym session, Arnold would have breakfast but only with a gang of specially invited friends. No hangers-on, opportunists or favour seekers.
If the film set was in a Hollywood the meal would be in a certain cafe and nobody would be allowed to join the group without Arnold's permission.
One thing that Terry had observed was that Arnold had no time for negative talk or negative people.
Here is the point of this post.
One morning, in the cafe, after the work-out, one of Arnold's friend started going on about some on-going problem he was having.
Arnold interrupted him and said:
"This is the second time that I've told you about moaning and complaining. If I have to tell you again, you won't be training with us or eating with us."
This had a tremendous effect on Terry (and me and Dennis when he told us). Terry would often repeat the story. And Dennis would. And myself. (I've just repeated it again lol)
This is a lesson about negativity, negative situations and negative people. You must learn how to avoid them.
Anywhere!
Everywhere!
At all times!
Another, stronger real life lesson from Big Arnie and
more from Terry and Dennis later.
:-)
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