Back after 6 year break!
Everyone thought I was a coach!
More pics here…
http://www.thelugeman.com/2010.htm
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
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Josh Gardner, Age 3, September 2008
I am sending this email out to raise awareness of a tragic, chronic, and lifelong disease a friend of mine is facing with his 3 year old son, Joshua.
A little over one year ago, Josh was diagnosed with Eosinophilic GastroIntestinal Disease (EGID), a very rare immune system disease. The short explanation is that we all have eosinophils in our body whose job is to attack parasites. In Josh’s body, they attack all food as if it’s a parasite.
As you might imagine, there are a number of complications that come from having your esophagus, stomach and intestines in a perpetual war zone, of sorts. Josh was placed on a naso-gastric feeding tube July 28th. His parents have removed all food from his diet since then and he has been sustained by a formula that essentially breaks food down to the amino acid level so the body doesn’t recognize it as food.
Imagine what life would be like if your kids had this rare disease.
Due to the complexities of this disease, his parents have transferred his care to a specialist in Denver who is one of only a handful of experts on EGID nationwide. They are returning there November 6th for the next surgery and to evaluate whether their 18 month old son, Timothy, who is exhibiting all the same symptoms, also has the disease.
Why am I telling everyone I can about this?
Because Josh’s parents are fighting back at this misunderstood and mis-diagnosed disease, and they need your help. There has been less than $2,000,000 raised in the past 5 years by the two main foundations focusing on this disease. Because that is not nearly enough, Josh’s parents have decided to establish the Gardner Family Foundation (www.gardnerfoundation.org), a 501c3 whose focus is to raise $15,000,000 in the next two years to combat EGID.
Imagine if your son or daughter could not digest food. Personally, I can’t imagine what life would be like if my kids had this disease.
Please take a few minutes to check out the Gardner Foundation and to help out.
Motivational Speakers
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Every day you have opportunities to take a leadership role by meeting the needs of the hour. We all have opportunities to take charge and atke action on something we believe in.
How we act during these defining moments show us and show others who we really are.
How we respond to challenges shows what we are made of. How we deal with tough choices does too.
You and I will have many defining moments ahead of us. By looking ahead for them, you will be in a better position to make the most of them.
Remember, success is a choice.
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1. Your attitude determines your altitude.
Positive thinking doesn’t ensure success,
but with it, you’re more likely to succeed.
2. Make the law of averages work for you.
The more you fail, the more likely you are
to succeed because every time you fail, you
learn from the experience.
3. Focus all your efforts. When you focus
all your efforts on one goal, your chances
of success are almost guaranteed. If you
split your focus on two goals, your chances
drop to 66%; three goals mean only a 25%
chance of success.
4. Take control of your own life. Whenever
you take personal responsibility for your
own actions, you maintain control.
5. Work through other people to create
win-win situations. Learn leadership skills
so you can enlist other people to team up
with you to achieve your goals.
6. Go for the Gold! Focus on doing everything
with excellence, and you will build a
reputation that will take you to the top.
7. Always set goals. The purpose of goals is to
focus our attention. The mind will not look
for answers until it has a clear direction.
8. Become a person of action. Focus on what
you can do NOW!
9. Don’t make excuses. Excuses are a waste
of time. Successful people don’t waste time.
They use their time to figure out ways to
become successful.
10. Take advantage of opportunities.
Winners don’t hesitate. They jump,
knowing the net will appear.
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
Motivational Speakers
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I was just on a speaking tour in South Africa. My host Sean O’Keeffe of O’Keeffe & Swartz made sure I didn’t have a a dull moment. We visited one of Johannesburg’s many gold mines. This gold mine was 9000 feet deep! We descended to 750 feet and took a 45 minute tour.
Sean and his sons Kyran and Callan deep in the mine. The whole mine is blasted right out of the rock. The rock is taken up, smashed into dust, and then the gold is extracted.
Each of these carts holds one ton of rock. Three of these carts yield one whopping ounce of gold! Now I know why my wife’s jewelry is so expensive!
Before 1925, the workers worked by candle light. It was not romantic, it was brutal. They used picks and hammers to make holes in the rock. They put dynamite into the holes, left the mine, blasted the dynamite, then four hours later, after the dust settled, they went back in to haul the rock out.
Sean’s grandfather worked in the mines as a ventilation specialist and died in a rockfall in the mine.
Today they use the machine gun looking, high pressure water blaster to dig the dynamite holes.
This is tough work. Definitely hard labor. If you are working down at the bottom of the mine at 9000 feet, it takes 2 hours to get back to the surface. A tough commute!
African rickshaw driver outside the gold mine (you can see Sean’s boys in the back).
Next time you are not too happy with your job, remember, you could be working in a mine in South Africa!
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
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Running with the Bulls in Pamplona
We stood for hours in the plaza trying to stay warm in the chilly Pyrenees Mountain morning. About 3000 of us. People of all ages from all over the world drawn to Pamplona by the mystique of running with the bulls.
You could feel the tension rise as the time got closer to 8:00 AM, the time when six bulls and several steers would be released to run through the cobblestoned streets of Pamplona. The half mile course is only 15 to 20 feet wide. There is no place to escape and since bulls can run much faster than people, in time, everyone will be overtaken by the bulls.
The bull run only takes about 3-4 minutes. The most dangerous and exhilerating three minutes of your life.
There are always injuries. So many injuries that there are emergency medical crews and ambulances every 50 yards. Someone will be hurt today. Occasionally someone will lose their life. In 1995 a 22 year old American was gored to death less than 30 seconds after the beginning of the run. His first…
What drives people to risk their lives running with the bulls? Some say you feel most alive when you are nearest death. Others run for the challenge. Personally, I just think it’s fun, exciting, and exhilerating.
Before going to Pamplona I took the same approach I take with everything. I seeked knowledge from the experts. I read three books about Pamplona - several times. I contacted one of the authors - a man who’s been running for 30 years, to pick his brain. Then, I spent many hours watching videos of the bull run to study the paths different runners took as they ran.
At first, the videos just looked to me like a horde of people running for their lives. After watching the videos over and over again, I started to see well defined patterns. All of a sudden, the things I had read about in the books started to make sense. I realized that there is a right way and a wrong way to run with the bulls.
I did my homework and that made all the difference.
What did I learn from all my study? I learned a handful of insights that drastically reduced my risk and turned a potentially deadly adventure into a science. Into a strategic challenge.
Just like in business and in life, you find two types of people in the bull run. There are the amateurs who show up, wing it, and often get hurt. And there are the professionals. The experts who armed with knowledge and skill rarely get hurt.
95% of the people are amateurs. 5% are the pros. The experts. The winners. Just like in business. Just like in life.
What did I learn from my research? I learned simple things that made a huge difference in my Pamplona experience.
First and most importantly, make sure to run sober and watch out for the drunks. There were lots of them out there. The drunks are more dangerous and more unpredictable than the bulls. The drunks trip, fall and cause human pileups that you have to hurdle as you run down the street.
Secondly, if you fall, cover your head and stay down. The bulls will jump over you. If you get up, you become a big target and you could easily get hurt.
Thirdly, tie your sash in a slip knot. Everyone in Pamplona dresses the same way during the Fiesta. White shirt, white pants, red bandana around the neck, and a red sash around the waist. If you tie your sash in a double knot (like 95% of the amateurs did) and a bull’s horn hooks your sash, the bull will drag you along the streets with your head bouncing off the cobblestones the whole way. Not the best way to spend your time in Spain.
Like I said, simple stuff that can make a huge difference.
Finally, where do you run?
The half mile course has five sections. Most deaths have occurred at the beginning and at the end. Most injuries and gorings occur at a sharp right hand curve in the middle of the course. Stay away from those three areas unless you have been running for many years.
The whole time you are running you are deep in a narrow canyon made up of 10 story buildings on either side of the narrow streets. You are in the shade the whole time except right before you enter “Dead Man’s Curve” or “La Curva” as it is known in Pamplona. Right before “La Curva” you are blinded by the early morning sun. The bulls are blinded as well and they slip on the moist cobblestones and slam into the retaining wall at the far side of the curve. Many injuries occur here when the runners get pinned by the falling bulls.
The experts told us to begin the run about 50 yards past “La Curva” on the right side of the street. Why? Because the bulls tend to run on the left side of the street after passing “La Curva.” By starting the run from the right side, you have a chance to gradually approach the bulls as you run down the long straightaway past the curve.
The top runners position themselves in the middle of the street and try to run right in front of the bulls’ horns for as long as they can before they are overtaken. We were happy to run beside the bulls. Close but not too close.
There is a bull run every morning for the 8 days of the Fiesta. I was there three days. I watched the first day and ran the second and the third. I’m still a beginner at this. Like everything else, practice makes perfect. I think it will take at least 2-3 years of running all 8 days to learn the basics. And then a lifetime to master the basics.
So what does all of this have to so with success? Everything! Whenever you are about to try anything new, something that looks too hard and too risky to be worthwhile, do what high achievers everywhere do. Don’t try to figure it out on your own. You don’t know what you don’t know and what you don’t know can hurt you.
Rather, find the experts. Learn from the best. Then give yourself a couple of years to learn the basic skills by taking consistent and persistent action. By doing that, in time you will become the expert others turn to for advice. By pursuing excellence in everything you do you will make your life a masterpiece.
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
Motivational Speakers
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“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-the-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Wining is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing…”
“It’s a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they’re there - to compete. They know the rules and the objectives when they get in the game. The objective is to win - fairly, squarely, decently, by the rules - but to win.”
“And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. there is something in good men that really yearns for, needs, discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.”
“I don’t say these things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.”
- Vince Lombardi
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
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If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you won’t.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost.
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will,
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But to the one who believes
He can.
- Anonymous
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
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Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?”
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not jus in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
by Marianne Williamson
Olympic Motivational Speaker Ruben Gonzalez
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