Tag: Motivation

I’m NOT Special

We live in a world where we’re conditioned that giving up is normalized.

Conditioned to give into fear or not even begin going after our dreams because of others insecurity / past experiences of “failure” projected upon us.

April 16th, 2010, I signed over my life to the hands of a neurosurgeon & his team as I said goodbye & “I love you” to my younger brother & parents.

I was 21 years old & was responsible to sign off of all the profound risks of said brain surgery as a young adult, & the risks consisted of paralysis, going blind, having a stroke, or death as the top of what stood out & caught my attention.

As I sat there signing my life away, I remember this being the first time I truly experienced what life or death fear was like & the thought of dying, never seeing the people I love again, & never riding my bike again consumed me.

Not fear in the sense of thats “scary” or anxiety/worry. More like fear of actually dying & accepting this fact as they inserted the IV into my arm & prepared me for what’s to come with no looking back.

This moment in time where I accepted I may die was a turning point in my life in that something switched inside of me that no longer gave into fear of dying & I presented myself with a choice.

A choice to put my focus, & therefore my energy, into a worse case scenario I didn’t want. Or, a choice in the vision I desired after I woke up from surgery.

This choice to focus on my desired future-vision was a by-product of my being raised to work hard for the life I wanted & from BMX teaching me if you fall once, try twice if you want it bad enough.

This choice was a pivotal moment that would serve as fuel to overcome what was to come in the next 10 years leading to my reality today.

It taught me that so often do we make decisions disguised as fear to take the “easy route” rather than the route most would give up on.

I’m not special. I just made a choice to not give up. A choice to learn & grow.

A choice to prove to myself & others we’re capable of what we set our sights (internally & externally) on & the potential we all possess with a believe in ourselves.

What do you want to be true about your life?

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back

We only know what’s possible when we TRY.

Far too often do we let fear control how we think, feel and act in our lives which can, and usually does, limit our potential in our lives.

Fear is nothing more than a thought from a perceived threat in the moment our near/far future. This can be a life or death situation, judgment, failing a test, not paying rent, being turned down, or getting into an altercation, etc.

It’s inevitable that fear is going to be a player in our lives but we choose how much playing time fear gets.

Fear is essential for life as it’s hardwired into our human being existence to protect us.

The problem today is most of our fears are man made from non life threatening fears.

These are the thoughts that hold us back from going after our dreams because we either fear what others may think if we don’t succeed or we don’t want to go against our parents desires, expectations, or wishes for us.

These are the fears that hold us back from taking action in our lives to better our health, start a dream business, take a class we are passionate about, write a book, ask him/her out, speak in public, leave a job we hate, speak our truth, and so on.

What would happen if you chose to recognize your fears in the moment and evaluate.

1) where the fear is stemming from?

2) if this fear is past conditioning to keep us safe emotionally or safe physically?

3) is this fear serving us or taking from us?

4) do we want this fear present in our life during this moment or do we want to thank our ego for trying to protect us and set it aside?

BMX and overcoming multiple brain tumors in my life taught me that we have the power to either push past fear and have it fuel our efforts, or, we can let it paralyze us and keep us from taking risks for the things we aspire to do with our lives.

Fear is a great indicator of the places (internally and externally) we must explore, audit, and shine a light on if we are wanting to do, feel, or acquire something in our lives we currently are not.

What are you afraid of but what are you willing to do about that fear?

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

Responsibility (response-ability)

Consciousness is step 1 to changing any aspect of our life.

Step 2 is to take ownership or responsibility of our reality. That’s a powerful step as it puts us back in the driver seat of our lives and empowers us to move forward as we’d like.

When we give blame to outside things or people, we give away our god given power to manifest the life we desire and deserve.

It’s not about blaming ourselves, it’s about creating self awareness and realizing that we are the problem to our undesirable experiences, feelings, actions, etc. which enables us to realize immediately that we’re the solution as well!

When we choose to believe we are the cause our of life rather than at effect to life, massive shifts begin to occur if we’re willing to take responsibility (response able) for our actions.

Step 3 is asking ourselves if we want to stay where we are? Do we want to continue playing the victim card? Do we want to continue complaining about what we don’t have or what we don’t get to do while others are putting in the work to do what we may be capable of?

If the answer is “no”, then the 4th step is to take action in making changes to your being and how you show up in life.

The last few years taught me that in order to achieve new results in our lives we must change who we are: what we think, what we feel, and what we do.

Are you conscious of your thoughts, language, and actions?

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

Truth Will Set You Free

Ever heard the saying “the truth will set your free”? I felt confined most of my life with regards to speaking my truth to my fullest capacity.

This confinement lead to a gap between my truest self and what others perceived of me.

I suppressed my truth in various forms of my life during many experiences in different times.

The voice suppression began at a younger age with a violent and abusive step father that punished me in various forms for speaking out with how I felt, what I was thinking, and in general if it was a time that triggered his anger.

This voice suppression led into my adult years as I have realized I was conditioned to suppress my truth out of fear for getting hurt or being “wrong”. This conditioning almost killed me as I was 21 and let the medical authorities convince me that I was “fine” even though I was suffering on a daily basis until a concussion led to an MRI finding the cause- a brain tumor.

This conditioning led me to not showing up and expressing myself in my truest form, which affected many of my personal and business relationships.

This conditioning almost prevented me from sharing my truth around the ketogenic diet and lifestyle, which has allowed me to support many people around the globe with empowering themselves to improve their health and quality of life.

After a third brain tumor diagnosis, shortly after placing top 10 in the BMX World Series, I left my dream to speak my truth with no regard to anything besides the purpose of serving others around the world.

Since doing so, I’ve felt more free and have unlocked so much potential to do new things, reach more people, and learn more about myself.

I’ve made it my mission to inspire perspective in others that leads to owning their truth and speaking it as much as they possibly can while empowering themselves to be as healthy and happy as possible.

There’s no reason anyone should feel as if they don’t have a voice and it’s our responsibility to support each of our truths and voice to share that truth.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

What Are You WILLING To Do?

What are you willing to do for the things you say you “need” and “want” in your life?

Are you willing to sacrifice moments of instant gratification for the long game of sustainability?

Are you willing to put yourself in uncomfortable ale situations or moments of immense pain like I experienced in this photo?

The difference between a pro and amateur is the willingness to push past moments of physical and mental pain, fear, doubt, worry, judgment, stress and whatever else comes your way.

The future vision we create as a pro of our life’s journey is what defines us. We’re not defined by our past, who we showed up as yesterday, the times we fell down or “failed”, or the times we heard the word “no”. We are clear on our purpose behind the vision and won’t let anything stop us, no matter how far off course we find ourselves.

Pain is just information. Use the information to trouble shoot navigating forward to success.

When you find yourself comfortable, that should set off an alarm that it’s time to optimize.

Adaptations are healthy and necessary to build strength, but comfort can lead to stagnant phases in life and lead to unhappiness.

That’s what I’ve found in my life and BMX has taught me there’s always more in us to optimize our current level in area of life, if we’re willing to put the work in.

Get after it with clear, purposeful, and align intent that matches the vision you’ve created for your life.

Don’t settle for anything less and don’t let moment of pain persuade you off the path.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

The Gap

This was the moment I woke up from a 6 hour brain surgery.

This “gap” of who I wanted to be & how I felt internally, & how others perceived me and my life, developed from a young age and continued to grow as I progressed in my BMX career.

On the outside, others would often assume I lived “the life”, which I have been fortunate to have worked my ass off to live such a life with amazing experiences.

Others would assume my life was easy, I must have a ton of money, I was always happy, and would often say “it must be nice” when I got to travel the world, meet amazing human beings, and or design my days to do what I wanted when I wanted.

Although I did and do live such a abundant life, I have been suppressing deep rooted limiting beliefs, insecurities, pain, and unworthiness.

It took being told “Josh, you may die” at the young age of 21 to wake my ass up to begin expressing my true inner self, and to begin letting go of all those emotional blocks holding me back from true joy and fulfillment.

It lead me on a quest of progression to become the best version of myself, inside and out.

It taught me that we all have amazing amounts of potential to change our lives and the lives of others when the effort is put forth with a clear vision of what we want to create backed by an immense amount of purpose and dedication to that vision.

It taught me life is all about perspective- how we CHOOSE to see the world and our lives in regards to our personal reality and the actions we take to create that reality.

It taught me how health is an internal aspect of reality, not solely what’s on the outside or in a scale.

It taught me that our reality is a manifestation of our choices in life- what we consume (nutritionally and mentally), if and how we move our bodies, how we choose to think and what we choose to believe, and how we choose to act in our lives in which create an emotional experience, all of which makes up our identity known as “self”. At the end of the day, this moment in that surgical bed not only saved my life, it led me to my higher purpose of showing others what we are all capable of when the desire to write our own life script is large enough.

Josh P.💚🧠✌️

BE Before You Become

Without consciousness (awareness) of our personality, we can’t expect to change.

When we live each day as our past self, making the same choices, having the same thoughts, and creating the same emotional experiences, we trap ourselves into a loop of auto pilot.

The thoughts we have, the actions we choose, and the emotions we feel as a result creates our state of being.

In order to change, we must be greater than our state of being, which takes an immense amount of awareness, commitment, and faith in what we can not yet see.

I had a long conversation about this work with @lifesamitchism last week and something he reminded me of clicked. He reminded me that once we leave the “program” (our subconscious personality made of our thoughts, behaviors and emotions) and get into the seat of the observer, let go of judgment and just OBSERVE ourselves for what we see and surrender from controlling our past or future.

For me, letting go of past judgments of myself is a huge success in overcoming myself. I’ve always been so hard on myself and put unneeded pressure “to succeed” when in reality, we’ll “succeed” once we choose to feel as if we have already and can feel that emotion.

In order to get into the seat of the PROGRAMMER and change our reality, we have to let go of any intention and emotion that makes us the current version of “ME”. Once we can establish this new observation and behavior pattern (personality), we can begin to rePROGRAM our personality defined by a vision of the future we have for our lives.

To create a new reality, we have to shed the past / current state of being of ourselves that’s creating the current reality in which we desire to change.

Of course, if you’re truly happy and fulfilled with you’re reality then this may not apply but I argue this applies to all us striving to be the best we can be.

Biggest lesson so far from learning about this topic is “be before you become”. Don’t wait for a cause and effect situation, create the effect that draws the cause into fruition.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

When You Grow Up

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

We all remember being asking this as a kid, right?

The possibilities are endless we were told.

But, how sincere was this question when it was asked & how true is the latter statement? How many of us manifested that dream into our reality, better yet, how many of us actually took a risk on that dream?

It seems, although sparking creativity & inspiring imagination, this question was a mask for confirmatory disguised as an idea of a dream when those asking this question most likely didn’t take a chance on theirs…maybe they did, maybe they didn’t.

I’ve realized there are few of us that take a risk on who it is we truly want to become when we grow up & that’s because few are often supported in being that person when they’re younger.

I was encouraged to “go big and fly high”, as my mom always told me, & my family backed anything I chose to do, as long as I worked hard at it and gave it my all.

I realize not everyone has a support system as I did growing up with, but I also had my own struggles along the way.

I often hear the phrase “must be nice” or “you’re so lucky” & it pisses me off.

To me, it negates all the hard ass work, the sacrifice in a “secure” career left behind to pursue and unlikely & unconventional path, pain and suffering endured to find my way (mentally and physically), risking my life, & the countless times I fell down (figuratively and literally) in order to get to a point people have the audacity to say such things to me.

To be on a path speaking my truth to people I don’t know, 100% fueled by passion & purpose, is crazy to sit back & reflect on.

It started with a self filled dream to become a professional BMX athlete and after many unfathomable adversities along the way, I got real clear on my purpose in life to show others what’s possible when we dig deep within ourselves, even when we thought we had nothing left.

This purpose is fueled with a mission to inspire new perspectives in others to step into that untapped potential empowerment by living through the lens of my life rather than waiting for catastrophic events to occur in your life to wake up.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

Defined by A Vision Of the Future

Are you defined by your past or a vision for your future?

I struggled with overcoming who I thought I was that was molded by my past identity and personality.

I thought who I am was determined by what I did and experienced.

It wasn’t until I began learning about consciousness and our subconscious minds that I realized I was living my current life based on a past perception of my being.

In doing so, I was creating the same reality and one could predict how my tomorrow would look based on these actions.

When I began to understand this concept on a deeper level, I began to audit my thoughts, actions and emotions that were influencing the creation of my reality today and tomorrow.

It hasn’t been easy but it’s been worth it to let go of the familiar past in an effort to focus my attention and energy on creating my future vision.

The mind is beyond powerful as it triggers the things we say, do and feel, all of which make up who we are in terms of our personality, which creates our personal reality.

By choosing to let go of who we think we were or the identity we’ve clinched onto for the familiarity of the “known”, we can grow the courage to step into the unknown where all the potential possibilities live for our future.

It hasn’t been easy to remove my past identity as I built over half my life based on it, but it’s been an amazing experience to see how much contribution I’ve given to others in the short time I’ve consciously worked on focusing my time, energy and resources to create a new version of myself build upon a future vision I’ve created based on purpose.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️

Purpose > Giving Up

Never in a million years did I think this was possible.

That I would be speaking to a crowd of hundreds to thousands of people I don’t know.

Especially with my insecurities of being “good enough” to speak on such a stage.

Or, my social anxiety of speaking with strangers and how they may judge me and my life decisions.

Or, thinking “who wants to hear what I have to say? I’m just a high school dropout that pursued BMX as a career option, overcame some challenges along the way, and am trying to find my way in life beyond my past identity as just a BMX athlete living with brain tumors”. That’s the thing about being on PURPOSE, though.

You overcome the mental challenges to pursue the mission at hand while finding yourself in situations you never fathomed being in.

In this case, my mission is to inspire new PERSPECTIVE in others that leads them to making the choice to step into their power of creating the best versions of themselves.

With that said, I find myself speaking around the world, making videos sharing my journey, experiences, passions and my TRUTH, and reaching out to strangers to have a conversation to what value I can provide and what perspectives/insights I can learn.

The last decade of my life has taught me 3 valuable pieces to life that I live by and am passionately sharing as much as I can:

– perspective is essential.

– Health is internal.

– our reality is a manifestation of our choices.

The more I focus on my purpose to serve others, the more the anxiety, fear, and overwhelm disappear but it’s a constant work in progress to do so.

As a former professional athlete and multiple brain tumor survivor, I find myself being incredibly hard on myself and thinking I could be doing more.

I’m learning this perspective is limiting my ability to fulfill my purpose on a archer scale and manifest my goals in an efficient and the least challenging way.

The fact that I get out of bed every day & don’t give up even when I feel as if I’m a failure, I can’t handle the overwhelm & stress, and think “why bother because no one would care either way”, is something to be grateful for.

If you haven’t given up, be grateful & see the value in that.

Josh P. 💚🧠✌️