How Mothers and Bodybuilding are Alike

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome back to Graceland Ontario, your one stop location for success advice from the greats. Today, in light of Mother’s day a couple days back, we’re going to talk about being thankful for getting to where we are today. And I think some of you might be surprised by what I say.

What’s your earliest childhood memory of your mother? If you’re like me, you probably have a couple. I couldn’t tell you for sure which one was first, but I think it’d be of my Mum driving me while I was in the back of her car, playing with me while I watched TV or at Christmas dinner. I remember as a kid always wanting to impress my Mother because I loved her so much. Sometimes, I felt like I fell short.

But, as you grow older, sometimes it’s easy to get the whole “grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side” mindset, in everything. Now, I’m not saying settling’s good, but all of a sudden you feel like you aren’t enough and others are better. And, many times, mothers become embarrassments you’d rather not show your friends.

Now, first off, I’d like to say after dealing with Mother’s other than mine, I’d take my Mum any day over them. They may seem cooler at first, but you tend to find they make all the “mistakes” your Mum makes while tending not to love you as much.

Whatever your relationship with your Mother, it’s important to realize how much you owe them. Without her, you typically wouldn’t have been born (quite literally) and you certainly would’ve grown up to be a different person. You are indebted to her for the way you are today.

But I hear some of you saying, “my Mother was terrible and I hate her and she made my life a mess”. To that I say, even if she contributed to making your life less than it could’ve been, she’s done something great for you. Instead of directly teaching you how to behave, she’s given you a challenge to overcome. And if you’re here, you’ve probably either overcome or are attempting to overcome it. Like the pain it takes in a gym to forge beautiful muscles, she’s given you a barbell to lift up.

And when you make it, you’ll have taken your life to a whole new level.

So, whatever your current situation or relationship with your mother, be thankful. Challenges are learning opportunities. The person who gave you them, or taught you to deal with them, is the person who helped shape your character most.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother”

So do you.

Alex H.

If you like this post, you might also like these other Graceland Ontario updates:

• Being Thankful for Surviving a Plague of Flying Crocodiles
• Graceland, Ontario: The Only Disability
• Graceland, Ontario: Had a Bad Day? Smell a Rose!
• Graceland, Ontario: Have a Job You Love (or "Don't Do a 'Normal Job'")
• Graceland, Ontario: The Elvisian Diamond Jubilee Special

Cool Down!

Hey Guys,

Thanks for tuning into Graceland, Ontario for another week of Elvis-teaches-success awesomeness!

This week I’m going to talk about something a bit more qualitative than I tend to. No names or dates being dropped here. But it will do wonders for you once you put it into action.

This week’s article is inspired by an article I read in John Alanis’s daily newsletter. John Alanis, for those of you who don’t know, is a direct marketer and a seller of attraction guides for men with unsatisfactory romance lives. His daily newsletters deal with the problems men create when they show unattractive behaviours to women and what men can do about it. Needless to say, reading it is always a highlight of my day.

In the article I read a couple days ago, Alanis points out that people buy Apple Ipads not for functionality, but because they’re cool. Not only that, people will actually buy expensive Ipads year after, despite limited use, to be considered cool. And more than this, no copies of the Ipad are considered half as cool as it is. And they flop, consistently, trying.

It kind of reminded me of something my Mum and Uncle once said about the fashion climate in England, where they came from. They said that it was always changing, not only annually but seasonally, too. And if you didn’t have the latest gear, well, you weren’t quite in vogue. You weren’t quite cool.

Now John Alanis, Apple Ipad’s and English clothes got me thinking: why do people like Elvis? I mean, he did have a great voice and watching him onstage was incredible but there’s something more than that, a reason why people have followed him even after death.

He’s cool.

Simple as that. Even when there were these other acts back in the fifties, like Eddie Cochran, trying to take his fame. Elvis was cool. It’s not that Cochran or Buddy Holly weren’t, but though they were newer, they couldn’t take away the King’s electricity.

And even in the late sixties, when the Beatles were rocking the world with the White Album, or in the early 70’s when Led Zeppelin was out. The only reason Elvis could compete was he was as cool as they were.

I mean, he had the clothes, he had the looks, he had the shades. People wanted to, and still want to be, like Elvis. They are more interested in taking a share in his coolness than trying to be cool themselves. Perhaps they think it’s harder being cool when you can simply use someone else’s cool persona.

They’ve got part of the idea right, about emulation, but not the part about lack of identity (I must write an article on identity soon). You see, like the Ipad, copying something cool directly won’t work. It’ll make you look like a copy and people will think that you aren’t genuinely cool, only pretending to be.

So, how do you be cool? As John Alanis writes, you simply state it. You state it and you don’t sweat the small stuff and you act cool. You know what cool is. You’ve been brought up with it. And you certainly know that Elvis was it. You only have to act like it and you will be it. It’s subconscious.

And once you’re cool, well, you’ve changed the ball game. Now, like Elvis, you will be the one people want to emulate, the go-to person in the group, the people your friends want to be like. All of a sudden there’s something about you that is so appealing, so attractive, yet others can only imitate it, or mirror it. You’ll have that edge that no one else can portray like you. You’ll be different.

You’ll be cool.

Elvis’s Lessons:

Ø Take it from Elvis, and John Alanis − be cool. People will flock to you when you are unique in a group of people. But how do you be cool? State it. Once you declare (to yourself, not to the world) that you are cool, people will feel your vibe and subconsciously agree with it, or be jealous. It sure as heck worked with Elvis. Why don’t you give it a try today?

P.S. If you want to see an example of Elvis being cool, here he is joking about during a press conference prior to his Madison Square Garden concerts in 1972 (Youtube video).

P.P.S. If you're interested in some of John Alanis's attraction products, here's a link to his site.