Tee Up For Life 2012 – New location, new prizes, same great cause!

If you haven’t marked the date for the 2012 Tee Up For Life golf tournament, please do so now.  This is your very best opportunity to play golf and raise money for the American Cancer Society!

Saturday, August 4th
Antler Creek Golf Course
Peyton, Colorado

 
New Location
We are very excited about the new location this year. Antler Creek is a great course and very well maintained.  They have 6 sets of tee boxes which should provide a lot of fun since we are once again using the “Move Up on a Bogey and Move Back on a Birdie” format.  The clubhouse is spacious and will give us plenty of room to hold the award banquet inside.

How to Register
You can register online at www.TeeUpForLifeColoradoSprings.org.  If you aren’t able to play this year, you can also submit your tax-deductible contribution.  Remember, Tee Up For Life is a 501(c)3 and all proceeds go the American Cancer Society.

In The News
You may have seen the television interview that I did with Comcast Cable on their NewsMakers site.  This is a 5 minute spot that Comcast will run through the month of April.  If you don’t have Comcast, there is a link to the YouTube video on the TUFL website.  While you are on that site (you didn’t forget it did you?  Its www.TeeUpForLifeColoradoSprings.org), go ahead and register your team for the tournament.  Do it now to take advantage of the early-bird pricing.

The Public Relations firm that works with Antler Creek is also working with us to promote the tournament on a local radio station!  Those details haven’t been finalized yet but I’ll let you know once they are.

Returning Sponsor
Braxton Technologies is returning for the third year as the event sponsor.  Their contribution to this event goes beyond financial – the management and employees participate in the tournament and help behind the scenes.  Many thanks to all the Braxton team.

Prizes and Other Goodies
Like last year, we will have the Hole in One Contest, lunch for the participants and goody bags.  The board is working on putting these packages together but the biggest hurdle we have at the moment is getting sponsors to underwrite these costs.  Can you help us with this search?  Do you know a local company that might want to donate $500 to sponsor the Hole in One contest?  How about $1000 to sponsor lunch for the participants?  If you do, please put us in touch with them and let’s see if we can get the ball rolling!

Stay tuned for regular news about the tournament.  We’ll be distributing updates via email, Facebook and WordPress.  I hope to see you at Antler Creek on August 4th.

Tee Up For Life 2012 TV Interview

Brad Mears being interviewed on Comcast’s NewsMakers segment.

Our Problems, Our Friends

Let’s say we all got together and we each wrote down all our problems on a piece of paper.  Then we threw them all in the middle of the table and you had the chance to trade problems with anyone else.  Would you take someone else’s or would you take back your own paper?

One of my mentors shared that thought with me years ago and said that if you really understood other people’s problems, you would take your own back in a heartbeat.

My daughter ran across someone yesterday that made me remember this lesson.  We were downtown for the Colorado Springs St. Patty’s Day 5K.  After the race, Kelsey was walking around and said she had run across one of the local homeless guys that seemed very agitated.  He was upset at  the mass of people and didn’t understand what was happening.

When she told me that story, my heart went to out to him.  How did his life unfold so that he ended up in that situation?  I’m sure that when he was a small boy and his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he didn’t say “I’m going to be the crazy homeless guy that wanders the streets downtown!“.  Is he a vet that saw too many things?  Was it alcoholism?  Drug use?  Depression?  Or just bad luck?  I don’t know and never will.

Sometimes I hear people talk badly about the homeless.  They say things like “It is their choice to be this way.  They could go to a shelter, get a job and get cleaned up.“  And maybe, just maybe, if the person talking was thrust into a similar situation, they would be able to lift themselves up and get their life back together again.  Maybe it would be just that easy.  But we don’t all have the same innate tools and talents that others may have.  For whatever reason, some people don’t have the same intellectual drive, the motivation to change or the ability to envision a different life.  We all have different kinds of limits and not everyone has the ability to overcome them.

One thing I learned from instructors in the martial arts is that you never know what is going on in someone else’s life.  Maybe you can see their pain and suffering on the outside but many times you can’t.  The smiling face can hide many problems.  The person that sits next to you at work – what is on their mind?  Maybe they are worried about a sick family member.  Maybe they are wondering if that new lump means their own disease is back.  Maybe it was a enormous victory for them to put on a smile when they got to work this morning.  Then you gripe at them because they forgot to make a new cup of coffee…

Would you trade your problems for theirs?  Not if you knew the truth.

Inner Peace or Outer Peace

My mind is like an ocean.  I wish that meant that it were deep and full of wonders.   No, it means that’s sometimes the mind is calm and peaceful and sometimes it is a Class 5 hurricane.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes life just gets stressful?  Maybe the problems in question are your own or maybe they belong to someone close to you.  Illness, financial worries, relationship problems.  They all cause stress and that keeps the mind spinning.  If this was television, right here is where the Infomercial voice would jump in and start screaming .

“For just 3 easy payments of $29.95, you’ll receive the amazing Bradco Stress Buster DVD! But wait there’s more!”

Okay, I turned the volume back down… Sorry, I don’t have an anything amazing to sell you.  But if you want to send me three easy payments of $29.95, feel free.   Where was I?  Oh yeah…

I was thinking about stress and worry and the absence of those – inner peace and outer peace.  And I started wondering which one comes first?  Do you go around looking all calm and relaxed because you are able to control the turmoil in your mind?  Or can you control what goes on internally by controlling the outer symptoms of stress?  And that brings me to my story.

When I was younger, I had a tendency to get angry.  Okay, not “You won’t like me when I’m angry” like the Hulk.  But I was definitely not calm or relaxed.  People would tell me that I had to learn to calm down and not get so mad.  They would give me good advice like :

“Calm down and don’t get so mad.”

Believe it or not, I had a problem implementing that guidance.  It was a good end goal but I didn’t know how to get from where I was to there.  So I had to figure it out on my own.  “If I can’t control what goes on inside my mind, I can surely control what goes on with my body.“  I listed the outer symptoms of anger:

• Tightened fists
• Furrowed brow
• Clenched teeth
• Taut neck muscles
• Shoulders pulled up

I took that list of symptoms and told myself that I could still get mad but I wasn’t allowed to show those physical signs any more.  So the next time I got angry, I deliberately relaxed my hands and unfurrowed my brow.  And once I was able to control those things, I worked on relaxing my jaws and neck muscles.  Do you realize how hard it is to stay angry when you are thinking about making sure that your forehead isn’t all wrinkled and your shoulders are relaxed?  Sure, I was still angry but on the outside it didn’t show (as much).

Pretty quickly, I learned to recognize that I was getting angry and could cut it off before it happened.  So I ended up not getting worked up as often.  And when I did get worked up, I calmed down quicker.  Which brings me back around to the point of the article: what comes first – inner peace or outer peace?

In my case, I was able to calm the body in order to calm the mind.  I’m sure there are examples of how it can work the other way too but this is what worked for me. I’ve also learned to use the same techniques when I’m stressed or upset about other things.  If I see that stress or pressure is building up, I focus on controlling the symptoms and eventually I relax enough to address the root problem.  It doesn’t work every time but it works often enough.

But before we go, I’ll close out with a story of this approach actually worked too well…

When one of my daughters was still in high school, she did something that she shouldn’t have done.  Her mom was pretty upset about it so I sat down with the daughter and tried to talk things out with her very calmly and rationally.  Believe me, it took all the tips I outlined above to make sure that I didn’t act angry or upset!  Later, my daughter calmed down and she made a comment about when I was “yelling at her“.  I said, “Now honey, that’s not fair.  You know that I stayed very calm and never raised my voice.  I wasn’t yelling at you.“

“Yeah but when you talk all calm like that, I know you’re upset so it’s just like yelling.”

Sigh… sometimes you just can’t win.

Was it Ignorance or Hate?

What does the Confederate flag mean to you?  Is it a symbol of slavery or a historical banner of a failed nation?  After all these years, it is still a divisive symbol and generates heated feelings among many people.  And I’m sorry to say that at one time I displayed it proudly.

When I was twenty years old and going to college, I drove a 1966 Mustang convertible.  On the back was the regular state-sanctioned license plate assigned to me by the Texas DMV.  And on the front was a novelty plate showing the Confederate flag.

Honestly, I don’t remember how I came into possession of that plate.  So why was it on my car?  Was it there when I bought it?  Did I pick it up at a yard sale?  I don’t know any more.  I just remember thinking that it looked cool and gave the car a distinctive look.  When asked about it, my stock answer was that I was showing pride in my Southern heritage and then I would make some joke about the “damn Yankees”.

It never really entered my mind that it had a far different and uglier meaning for many people.

Even though I did well in American History in school and even though I knew (some of) the facts about the Civil War and the civil rights movement, I didn’t have the empathy to really understand them.  The images on television and the stories from textbooks didn’t intrude on my reality.  They didn’t represent real people, real pain, real heartbreak to me.

Southeast Texas in the 60′s and 70′s was an interesting place.  By and large, the whites lived in their communities and the blacks lived in theirs.  And yes, many of the people I was around every day were explicitly racist.  But I also worked with and went to school with a lot of blacks.  So I had plenty of opportunity to understand… I just didn’t take advantage of that opportunity.

What did people think when I drove up and the first thing they saw was the Confederate flag? Talk about bad first impressions!  As time passed, I realized that it was wrong of me to have that plate on my car.  Even if there were no hateful intentions on my part, it was wrong.  Even if it truly was “Southern Pride” and not racism, the message that other people received was probably not the one I intended or wanted.

So you decide… was it ignorance or hate?  Was it Southern Pride and a rebellious dose of poking fun at the “damn Yankees”?  Or was it the same racism that pervaded the south during that era?   Does it really matter which one it was?  If it caused pain in others, if it caused them to see me as one of the bad guys, then motives don’t matter.

Whatever the truth was then, I’m glad that the boy that I was is not the man that I am.

True Self Defense

Over the years, I’ve had some pretty fun and interesting jobs.  And then there was this one…

For a few months during college, I had a job in the office at a country & western bar.  This was back in the early 80′s when Urban Cowboy was still a new movie and honky-tonk bars were all the rage.  I would get to work around 11:00 PM and then stay until after closing to count up all the money and put the money in the safe.

For a while, it was kind of a fun job.  Every time I went to work, it was like walking into a party.  Of course, every night I went to work, it was also like walking into a room full of drunks.

One night, I was sitting in the back room working and the owner, a man named Johnny, walked in carrying a couple of shotguns.  He told me that they were expecting trouble and if any of the bouncers came running back there asking for the guns, I should hand them over, pronto.  The rest of the night, I sat there looking at those guns wondering if the expected trouble would ever arrive.

Closing time came around with no incident and the crew started cleaning up, which normally took until about 3:00.  I would stay until about 5:00 am and walk out to an empty parking lot to go home.  And as I counted the night’s receipts, I started thinking about how some drunk cowboys might think that ripping off a busy night club on a Saturday night would give them enough scratch to buy a new four wheel drive pickup.  The thought occurred to me “Johnny and the bouncers were worried enough about trouble early in the evening to get the shotguns out but now those folks are at home and I’m here looking like an easy target.  There is something wrong with this picture.“

I stuck with that job for a while longer but then got the opportunity to work in an area more closely related to my college studies.  The new job was still on the graveyard shift but it was in the computer center at a bank.  It meant fewer drunks and better money, so I took it.

But I look back at that time and think about what might have been.  I had put myself into a risky situation for a job that paid barely better than minimum wage.  Why?  There are some things we have to do and there are things we choose to do.  I didn’t have to take that job.  There’s nothing wrong with taking justified risks, either for your job or your recreation but beebopping though life without thinking about those risks is foolish

In Kempo, we talk a lot about True Self Defense.  True Self Defense isn’t about being able to do a flying jump-kick and beat up a couple of would-be robbers in a dark parking lot.  It is about paying attention to your surroundings and the way that you lead your life so that you don’t get into those situations in the first place.

I’m glad I came

At the end of our kempo classes, we frequently wrap up by standing in a circle and saying “I’m glad I came.“

Truth be told, there are many times when going to class takes a lot of effort.  When I was coming up through the ranks, there were times I would get frustrated at how quickly other people would catch on while I struggled.  Or an injury would slow me down.  Sometimes it seemed to be too much and there was more than once that I thought it would be easier to chuck it all and stay home to watch the TV that night.  But there was a lesson from Grandmaster Buell that always stuck in my head.

“A black belt is just a white belt that never quit.”

So I would turn off the TV and drag my carcass down to class.  And by the end of class, the stinkin’ thinkin’ that almost kept me home was long gone.  I’d be covered with sweat and exhausted but would think “I’m glad I came“.  And step by step, I kept progressing.  Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly but always with a goal in mind.

These days, those thoughts of quitting are long gone.  If I’ve had a bad day at work or I’m not feeling well, I don’t think that I’d be better off to stay home.  Instead, I know that the best cure for me is to get to class and work hard with like-minded people.  I don’t even have to wait until the end of class before my mood changes.  As soon as I kneel down and tie my belt, I’m able to say “I’m glad I came.“

Whatever your goal – black belt, losing ten pounds, running a marathon or getting a college degree – there will be times when it will seem easier to give up.  And in the short run maybe it will be easier.  But if you stick it out, you’ll be glad you did.