Questions & Thoughts
Ask a question or share a comment. I’d love to hear from you. Once your question has been read and answered I will move it from here the category “Your Questions, Your Thoughts”.Ask a qustion about business, education, athletics, or relationships.
Talk to you soon,
Coach Bri
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Brian,
If you can offer some advice on this problem I’m having that would be really appreciated.
So, theres this girl that I’ve been kinda seeing for the past few weeks, about a week ago she told me she is addicted to crystal meth. She says she wants to get off it and is trying to use less and less but if she doesn’t use she cant function at all and just lies in bed feeling like shit. Her theory is this, just use enough so she can do things like work etc and gradually get off it. I don’t think that will work. I can understand why she uses, she has a really troubled past with alot of abuse and other bad things happening to her, most of which is too painful for her to even talk about, so using is her way to block it all out and feel better even if only for a while. She is also on a bunch of prescribed medicine for depression, anxiety, and taking tranquilizers etc.
I want to help her but really don’t know what I can do. Whenever we are together, if we are having fun she is high and if she isn’t then she is just sleeping, or feeling really sick. Also since Ive been trying to help her by just being with her Ive been ignoring things I should be doing for myself which may sound a Little selfish but i feel like on one hand its too much for me to deal with but on the other I want to help her and cant just walk away, she doesn’t really have any friends or family that can help her.
If she doesn’t stop this will kill her.
Oh yea, when I was young my dad died from a drug overdose, that’s probably why this is really close to me.
Please help if you can.
Thankyou
Hi Brian. John Leinemann here, conrad’s brother. Last year when you saw Barb and I,
you said “would not it not be a wonderful world if all the children were spoiled”.
I was wondering if you could expand on that?
thanks, John.
Dear John and Michael
With all the suffering, the poor and hungry and how we here in North America live and what our children have, I think is sad. We have so much and yet we are suffering to the same extent as in the 3rd world, it is just our suffering is different. We suffer psychologically because we have a belief that the worth of a person is expressed in what they have – the car they drive, the home they live in, the letters after their name or the size of their bank account.
When we look at spoiling a child I feel that every child should grow up with the feeling that they are loved and important and, most of all, they need to feel listened to. It is a blessing to have the time to spend with a child and what they teach us about what is really important in this life.
Now the previous person, Michael, sent me an email regarding a girl whose life is in trouble with regards to drugs. Why do people resort to these behaviours and get addicted to drugs? Is it not that they are disconnected from people and relationship in their life where they didn’t get the caring and love they needed? They weren’t listened too, put first in anyone’s life. So here they are now, in pain and life sucks, so what do they do to deal with the PAIN AND ALL THE DISCONNECTION ,THEY USE. You have only to look at your own life and see what you do when you are in pain. That allows us to understand why we need to let every person and child think that they are the cat’s meow. Every child, every person needs relationships where they are loved and cared about, and spoiled with affection, so they grow up feeling confident,and can builded trust with other people to satisify their wants and needs. This poor girl who is in deep trouble must find some relationship maybe a sponsor in a program if she ever has the chance of rehabiliating. Michael you are kind person who wants to help and maybe you can, and this girl needs a program and a lot of support and kindiness. Maybe here she will find that she is worth it, life is worth it and she can make a change if she wants to. Most people in these types of traps need people who once were in the trap to show them the way out so it is every specialized help. But why should she change when most adults in her life have let her down? We all pay the price for poor parenting, but we can be better parents if we are willing to stop blaming life, parents, karma,and others for the state we are in. We can have a better life if we choose it. If we want the world to be a better place we must be that change we want in the world. The best thing that I know to make the world a better place is to do something for someone else. Michael, she does need help but so much that you yourself will not be able to provide. Talk to her, get close to her and support her in some program that is available in your area through social services. Let her feel your love and care but don’t put yourself in harms way. There are people who are trained for this type of help but stay connected and every chance you get, make it a positive connection. Spoil her a little!
I hope this answers your questions.
coachbri
There’s no doubt that I love my girlfriend.
Every once in a while we have a minor conflict and we have become quite good at evaluating ourselves and seeing our own selfishness that is destroying our relationships.
I have to admit, its usually me who is at fault when there is a conflict.
When I am in the moment where I say something that she is hurt by, I realize it immediately but I am too egotistical to fix it (love) in the moment. I almost, in the moment, like to see her feel insecure. I wait untill the next moment that I am alone (could be hours later or even days) to really put myself under the microscope and self-evaluate and apologize.
“Why does she have to feel insecure” I like to ask. I think the answer is that, I do things where she chooses to feel insecure. If I were to spoil her (as Brian talks about when answering John’s Q about spoiling children) and just love her all the time, she wouldn’t choose to feel insecure.
Why do I not choose to respond by embracing her and loving her instead of ignoring her call for me to love her?
I know the answer. But to know and not do is more painful than not knowing. That is my struggle.
RIch
Hello, my name is Diane and I enjoy kick boxing. I love teaching it and competing. I love training and staying in shape. I enjoy the relationships I have at the club with the students and the parents. I eat healthy and I exercise healthy. I am always at competition level when it comes time to fight, my heart & lungs are strong and my power is great. My skills are there and I practice them often, in hopes that when I compete I will react more naturally instead of wasting time trying to think about what I should do. My Physical game is good, but my mental game is not, and I have tried several self talk methods that I use with the students, but for some reason I have a hard time performing because I’m nervous, or I seem to be in a state, when I compete, like it’s not as important as it really is. I feel like I’m in a day dream and I hate it! I am disappointed that I couldn’t effectively execute the skills I have to overcome my opponent the way I need to. Need some guidence if you have some suggestions I would really appreciate them.:)
Since our get together, I feel like I’am struggling. With things like my ego. I believe
I have a hard time letting go of my ego. It’s seems like I have been confusing ego for confidence. What I guess I need is help, help to see how to let go of my ego.
(Rereading this short note I noticed how many times I typed “I”, just an obsevation)
Hi Diane
Thanks for your email.
There are a couple of things that you may want to inquire into.
What do you want the most:
1) to be a performer or 2) to be the good teacher and inspire your students.
First, follow whatever it is that you love to do the most as love is the best teacher.
There are four parts to peak performance.
Thinking
You must have very little thinking going on in your brain and what you do have must be positive and relaxed yet still intense and watchful. When you think too much, focus on your breath and do everything from you breath. Whatever action you do, master your breath in every kick, punch and movement. Learning to master your breath, you then with master yourself and then you will master your situation.
Never trust what you’re thinking – always listen to what you feel.
Thinking is very limited and only useful in technical things.
When you compete your will to win must be second to the production of the quality kicks, punches, and blocks you perform. Producing quality in the moment, your mind must be free of the past. Thinking breeds fear, and fear is always the future of what might happen. Be it two minutes from now or ten fights from now, fear is always the future. This means you are in the cycle of doubt.
What does a quality punch look like? feel like? breathe like?
Compete from there and you compete from the cycle of inspiration which involves learning from everything you do. If you look at your life, you will see the same problem in relationship with someone you can’t get close to and you resist them.
As you resist your own growth limited by your fear in competition so you limit your life. The two are one. Change in one area causes the other to follow.
Coachbri
Hi John,
Nice to hear from you again.
Let us talk for a moment on accessing the deepest interest in a human being’s life. Is in not oneself. Everything we do is an attempt to meet one or more of our basic needs. Years ago, giving talks to a group of priests, it was a revelation to the speaker to discover that even living in the streets of Calcutta with Mother Teresa was a movement he did to make himself feel good about his life.
We have become so self centered and we don’t see the damage it causes in our relationship with one another.
The self is the source of all our misery. To be confident in oneself is to set up the danger of thinking we know that what is best for me is best for others.
To share your confidence because you are listening to your own needs and feelings is to set in motion a meditation that allows one to live in a way that doesn’t prevent anyone else from meeting their needs.
If you were put in a room with a snake that was poisonous, you would never take your eyes off that snake. Can we be as diligent so as to keep our self interest out of other peoples’ lives? This means one must be awake and paying attention to all things going on inside and outside of oneself without any judgment. So when one perceives oneself as greedy or jealous, or angering or whatever, one does nothing about it but watch it. In that watchfulness there is perception as action. That action is love and compassion and it burns away one’s self centered activity. To practise selflessness is to be full of one’s self. To practise detachment is to greatly be attached to how detached one thinks one is.
Where self is not there is love. That love is virtue and a virtuous person can never recognize their own virtue. If they did it would be an egoism. Compassion is what the world needs and each brain must come to her unaided. Most people think that spirituality can be sought after and practiced. Any practice. To be something other than what one is is a life of self deception. Self deception is what most people want because it is a refinement of entertainment. To see oneself as a holy or religious person is the greatest deception of all. Love holds on to nothing, compassion releases the mind from the preoccupation with the demand for pleasure and escape from pain. In this world we have become schizophrenic because we want to have one foot in love and goodness and the other in pleasure and pain. To see the truth of all this to be free of it. That freedom brings about it own discipline.
Coachbri