I Challenge You to Be An Original

If you look around at the people you interact with each day--especially in a well-populated city where you cross paths with an ever-changing crowd-- you will notice that there are really, simply only two types of people in this world.

Don't bail on this post already, thinking it's cliche and you know where it's headed. Instead, I want you to read this next sentence twice:

There are only two types of people in this world, the first type are those who are forging ahead in their own direction, creating their own story and their own journey....the second type are people desperately seeking to mimic the lives of the aforementioned individuals, constantly shape-shifting and pretending to be something different than what they are.

Okay, go ahead and read that again, team.

Now, take a second and evaluate...do you believe you are more like the first type of person described, or along the lines of the second type? 

There is no right answer--we are all on different journeys discovering things in our own time. There IS, however, a right direction to be headed in.

We spend so many years of our lives...through first learning how to be social in grade school, to the gossip ridden years of junior high and high school, to the tumultuous social environments of college, and beyond into much of the corporate world....comparing ourselves externally. We size our looks, our ideas, our intelligence, our worth, our everything....up against someone else.

It's human nature to compare, contrast and evaluate; it's how we interpret our world and our place in it. 

Here's the thing, though....it's an endless cycle of you comparing yourself to your co-worker, who's comparing themselves to their sister, who is comparing herself to her roommate, who's comparing herself to the trending actress, who is really just being a type 2 person to fulfill whatever they think the public wants them to be.

I know, it's a confusing tid-bit of information to process. The bottom line is, if EVERYONE else is pretending or trying to be someone else, where does this dog-eat-dog cycle end?

I'm glad you asked. It ends with YOU.

I challenge you to break a link in this ego-filled chain.

I challenge you to OWN your story.

I challenge you to create your own journey.

I challenge you to be an ORIGINAL.

I challenge you to start this now, today, by taking action. The longer you hang around as a "type 2" person, the more difficult the journey to "type 1" will become. Don't waste another day trying to be someone else.

DO YOU, and DO IT WELL.

-Cassie Taylor
Founder & Coach

OLLI Fitness

"One Life, Live Infinitely"

Reset & Restart: The Power of a Positive Environment

The Power of a Positive Environment

Creating the life you want seems to be a simple process:

Step 1: Discover yourself

Step 2: Discover your passion

Step 3: Hustle your face off to make it all happen

Easy enough, right? The journey of fulfilling these steps and upholding the principles, however, is a constant daily battle between doing what is right and doing what is easy.

The easy way out will always be there….tempting your determination…challenging your will-power…begging for you to take a detour from your hard-fought path towards success. 

So the question lies not in what to do to embark on your journey, but rather how to stay on your journey with the same tenacity and clear vision you set out with.

You will face many challenges and temptations along the way.

You will fall into a slump and feel defeated.

You will feel frustration, confusion, and impatience.

The key to fighting your way through the obstacles is accepting these things as temporary circumstances and refusing to let them become permanent realities.

The difference between status quo and success is the ability to face adversity, and fight all the way through it. Your success rests in the amount of resilience, tenacity and passion you have to overcome the obstacles you run into. 

Regardless of your goals in life, this is true…

Whether you are studying to complete your degree, with the ultimate goal of landing your dream career…or training to complete your first marathon…or starting your own business. Those who make it, those who land on success have made it there by waking up each and every day, ready to fight their way through anything that dares to stand between them and their vision.

So, when you find yourself in a negative mind-set or you’re feeling exhausted, in need of motivation, you absolutely have to recognize and own the state you’re in. Then, you need to get out of it and get back on track with consistently engaging in activities that will move you forward, rather than hold you back.

One of the most important ways to minimize how often you fall into these frustrating situations, and decrease the depth of your fall, is to create an electrically positive environment to exist in. This infiltrates multiple areas of your life and must be implemented in a holistic way. You cannot create positive, forward-moving progress by only looking at one segment of you (as a person) or your world.

Here is a list of some of the major areas to start really looking at:

1.          Own who you are, where you’ve been and what you’ve experienced. You need to brave the pain of facing yourself, facing your past, and getting comfortable with every element of what makes you, you.

2.         Own your space. Whether it’s your apartment, your office, your car, your dorm-room…create an environment that fuels your positive energy. Take pride in your space and invest what you need for it to support your efforts. Minimize your obstacles, do this today.

3.          Own your relationships. In a digital age, this can be more difficult. We have surface level connections with people from our past that aren’t doing much to move us in a positive direction and we are faced with negative energy from mass media, newsfeeds, and every other possible channel it can find its way through. Do your part and take control of who and what you interact with. This may mean you need to distance yourself from certain people-—if they are a negative influence, they will become toxic. The power of negativity is its contagion—don’t let a single piece of it in your world.

4.         Increase the input. No one says you have to fight this fight alone. Bring as much positivity into your realm as possible. Find people who are equally as motivated & passionate—make time for them as often as possible. Find groups to be an active member in. Listen to daily audios or watch videos. Read as often as you can to better yourself and become an expert in your field. 

5.         Don’t forget about the basics. You’ll never advance forward if you aren’t taking care of yourself. Setting aside time to exercise, prepare your meals, meditate, do yoga, be social, get outside, or whatever else is important to you, will ultimately enhance your productivity in a more sustainable way.

Once you’ve discovered yourself, discovered your passion and are hustling to make things happen….never lose sight of the power of a positive environment.

Be a little delusional…be a lot tenacious…and MAKE THINGS HAPPEN.

-Cassie Taylor

Founder, Director
OLLI Fitness

“One Life, Live Infinitely”

Reset & Restart: Energy Signatures

Each one of us has a unique energy signature, or vibe, that we carry with us…infect other people with…and often times define our lives by. People can get a feel for who we are, simply by being near us. In fact, other people pick up on our energy signatures without us realizing it’s happening. Often times, we don’t even know what our “signature” is—we tend to be totally out of touch with our “vibe.” This vibe is deeply intertwined with who we are, what we do, how we think about things, and how we engage with the world. 

If we are not actively working to be in touch with this defining force, we are very actively doing the opposite: becoming out of touch with all that defines us and creates our world.

Recently, I’ve had a number of interactions with people who are very evidently taking a passive approach to defining their vibe. They are so consumed by the overwhelming, rapidly transpiring, continuously fleeting, incidences of their every day lives that they are really just along for the ride. They are on a hyper-speed train being controlled by outside forces. Being on this train draws people so deeply into their micro-universe that they become engrossed in whatever is the easiest pattern to follow. 

Most often, the pattern looks something like this:

-We become easily influenced by the things and people around us. Whatever the given of the situation is, we take it on as an attribute and let it control how we operate. Negativity & doubt are especially contagious.

-We misinterpret the magnitude of our “problems.”

-We fly in auto-pilot mode, simply trying to get through the day and go through the motions of our lives.

-We exude the stress, the negativity, and the elements of disconnect that result from tumble-weeding through each day without a connection to ourselves.

Being disconnected from our energy signatures, and falling into the above-described pattern sets us into a perpetual cycle. Not taking the time to understand and own our vibe, leads to losing sight of what’s important to us, what’s important in the grand scheme of things, and it encourages lack of forward, positive movement in our lives. Something abrupt has to happen to halt the cycle and give us a wake up call.

Unfortunately, many of us stay within the cycle until a major life event forces us to stop and take a step back. Disastrous situations do not allow us to avoid re-evaluating our perspective, our issues, or ourselves. Paths of self-discovery are triggered when our rapidly moving, every day lives are disrupted by something earth-shattering. 

Learning to own and define our vibe without the need of the token catastrophic wake-up call will help to exude & attract positive energy. There is an easier way to get in tune with our energy signature and become adept in using it to create the life, the relationships, and the environment we exist in. 

The first step (and the most painful) is getting out of our micro-universe. We can’t rely on something epic to just present its self and shift our lives in a different direction. We need to become capable of creating that force on our own, in a positive way. It’s important for us to separate ourselves from the hyper-speed train, refrain from becoming absorbed in fleeting everyday incidents, and start connecting with the universe at large.

If we can control the energy signature we are putting in to the world, it will directly translate to what we do, how we do it, who we spend our time with, how we engage with others, and what we are capable of achieving.

To embark on this journey of self-discovery, keep this list in mind every single day:

1. Slow down; the world is already moving fast enough around us
2. Be mindful; get in tune and totally lost in the present
3. Understand and recognize what real problems are; check yourself if you’re sweating the small stuff
4. Get outside of your own world; connect with people, explore new places
5. Recognize the vibe you’re carrying and how it influences those around you
6. Create your positive environment; people, places, atmospheres, and attitude
7. Make a positive impact everyday; even the smallest deeds help define us
8. Remember that what we create, we also attract
9. Live beyond the edge of your comfort zone
10. Create a vision for yourself; clarify & define it frequently

As always, take care of yourself by establishing healthy lifestyle habits, positive self-talk and embracing the “OLLI” Philosophy. Once we understand our powerful defining force, we are limitless in what we can achieve. One Life, Live Infinitely.

-Cassie Taylor

Founder & Coach, OLLI Fitness

RESET & RESTART (Part 1)

Reset & Restart, Part 1

“Getting off the train”

I’ve found that a lot of people look at me, and others in the fitness industry, as leading this ridiculously healthy lifestyle that would never work for the “normal” person. Yes, there are certainly those select few fitness competitors that travel around the city accompanied by an oversized cooler, in which perfectly weighed and measured food is neatly packed. There are, however, many of us looking for a more balanced approach to living healthy.

As I’ve confessed that I face many of the same challenges as my clients, they’ve warmed up to me more, realizing, “oh, okay she IS human.” Even as a coach, life gets crazy and I fall off track. I travel quiet a bit for my work managing a nonprofit and, like many business travelers, I end up on a train with nothing but snacks and soda available, or maybe some random bar or restaurant with a late night menu. Often times, if I don’t prepare for my trips, a few days off track while traveling can snowball into a week or two off my game, even after I return. It’s a slippery slope; once you start giving in to habits you’ve worked hard to keep in check, you feel like you have to go back to the start. Then you feel defeated, guilty, and probably employ the, “Well I already had (fill in the blank), so I might as well just (fill in the blank) and get back on track next week.”

So, yes, I’ll admit it: There are times when I may go a week without really training. I do indulge (usually on sweets). Sometimes I, too, get on a roll with self-defeat that I have to drag myself out of to get back to my healthy routine.

The questions remains, what do you do when you don’t need a total overhaul, but you’re off your game and need a way back? It’s time to reset & restart, folks.

For the full article, please visit: http://www.ollifitness.com/1/post/2013/09/reset-restart-getting-off-the-train.html

ACTIVE STRETCHING (Repairing Your Fascia, Step #3)

Repairing your Fascia, Step #3

ACTIVE STRETCHING

Okay, so now your body is waking up a little. You’re moving in a more consistent pattern and you have worked out some of the major knots that were locking you up. You should be feeling relief and release already! Step #3, Active Stretching, is to promote permanent improvements with lasting positive effects of the preceding soft-tissue release and mobility exercises.

I’m sure many of you have been getting mixed signals about stretching---don’t do it before exercise, it doesn’t actually do anything, you only need to do it if you want to do yoga, and other myths!

Here are a few facts to set you straight:

·      -- Active, or dynamic, stretching is a valuable practice preceding exercise, throughout the day, and even post-workout. This approach allows you to contract and relax into some of the tightest areas throughout your body. When done correctly, active stretching will aid in opening joints, muscles, connective tissue and articulations. This restores the space meant to exist, allowing all these structures to move as they should, in however many directions as they should.

·       --Active stretching, alone, accomplishes very little beyond instant and short-lived effects. Active stretching coupled with tissue release, mobility & exercise has remarkably progressive and permanent effects.

·       --No matter what your physical activity or performance goals are, flexibility is crucial for your body to move efficiently and function at its most optimal level.

To get started with Active Stretching, check out some guidelines on the following page and ask us about additional resources to really dive into Step #3 in Repairing Your Fascia!

For the full article, please visit: http://www.ollifitness.com/1/post/2013/09/active-stretching-repairing-your-fascia-step-3.html

TISSUE RELEASE (Repairing Your Fascia, Step #2)

Repairing your Fascia, Step #2

RELEASE

Now that we have been moving a bit more to help identify where our main restrictions are, it’s time to really dive into repairing our fascia. Step #2 titled “Release” is all about unlocking your soft tissue and spending some quality time with your fascia.

In “Step #1: Mobility,” we outlined a few very basic movements to open specific areas of the body that are very often locked up—such as the Thoracic Spine, Lower Back, and Hips. To progress towards more functional, strenuous exercises, you need to give your muscles, bones, & joints room to contract, relax, stretch, and move the way they are intended to.....

For the full article, please visit: http://www.ollifitness.com/1/post/2013/08/tissue-release-repairing-your-fascia-step-2.html