New Blog, Big Fishes!

     This will be a blog for me to lay out some thoughts on my progress in brazilian jiu-jitsu. Hopefully I will be able to look back and review what I've learned and update new details on techniques as I pick them up. I may dive into little lessons I learn here and there about life in general as well. lol

On another note I ran across a nice little Brazilian story today..

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with your kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman smiled. :)

     In my own opinion too often in life I see people overlook the simplicities in life that make their hearts content. Instead we go out of our way trying to meet everyone's expectations all the while complicating/ sacraficing our lives trying to live someone else's dreams and ideas of what a realistic life should look like. In a world or consumerism it seems as more people believe the more material things we are able to amount the better our lives should ideally become so we stress ourselves out looking for ways to meet that quota. When was the last time you sat quietly, blocking out the noises in the background, and thought about what truly made you happy and tick? Life is too short to  head in a direction that is not true to oneself. As the story implies, you don't have to wait until you are wealthy in material to have wealth in your life.
     My goal is to strengthen the connection to my higher self so I may tap into my higher consciousness level, towards Courage. Far too long have I been terrorized by Desire/Fear/Pride where my thoughts and concerns were driven by my own ego. I hope I am able to step away from that lower consciousness level along my journey and into a higher state of mind and more in tune with my needs. Balance is king..