Best Is Temporary - Be Better

By Joe Jekel

Best is always temporary. Becoming better as an individual is possible every day. The collective of humanity only rises when the individuals within that collective take personal responsibility to become better each day. Living with a platitude such as live your best life, or do your best, historically, sets up more failed attempts than successful accomplishments.
Results require action, not platitudes or soundbites. Knowledge and individual participation are critical for longevity and quality. Best is Temporary; Be Better is a guide to learning the importance of self-discovery and personal development influencers on all performance enhancement. Enhancements that create a better person.
Anyone can become better each day if they participate. Learn how to ask better questions, understand proximity to greatness, control environments and set boundaries, increase communication skills, improve your health and wellness, think, do, and become by your own design. Opening your full potentiality, not another fortune cookie, or Lao Tzu quote on Instagram! Make the choice to be better every day – it is your choice to make, but you can always use a guidebook! Here it is, that guidebook that you are looking for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982233334

Joe Jekel

Joe Jekel is an International Sport and Performance Psychology Consultant. Joe holds a formal education with an M.S. in Sport Psychology, a Post Masters Certificate in Leadership and Accountability, multiple health and fitness, martial arts, and functional training certifications. Joe has worked with professional athletes, Division I College athletes, published models, entertainers, military personal on multiple continents, police specialists, CEO’s, Entrepreneurs, and most importantly laypersons seeking to make their life better in some specific capacity or another. Madzook brand is a lifestyle philosophy born of academic and life experiential knowledge. Knowledge drawn from others and from personal experience. Self-discovery and personal development lead the way for any performance enhancement is the operable mandate as opined by Joe Jekel and the Madzook lifestyle philosophy. A philosophy to become better, individually. No fallacy accepted or prescribed!

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Joe Jekel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3332-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3334-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3333-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019912496

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/22/2019

BEST IS TEMPORARY – BE BETTER

Best requires a competition – you are not, or should not, be in competition with anyone, especially yourself. Better is an evolution – best is a finality point! You can be better every day, you can only be the best for a finite period! Forget about needing to be the best, work harder to become better, every day!

Madzook Joe

The importance of excelling in personal growth outweighs any specific competition to be the best. Performance enhancement is achieved by learning multiple and specific ways for you as an individual, to become better. Better at raising the skill level and competency of the individual involved in the process. A resolution that by default will also enhances the universal collective. Sometimes change is the key and other times consistency is the best approach. If you can find an appropriate path, why change just for the sake of change itself? Increase the intensity of purpose or go deeper into the constructs and practices that are fulfilling your goals and creating a better you – a mindset towards personal evolution is superior to the constant feelings that changes are necessary. Construct who you want to become rather than changing into who you want others to think you are.

The advancement of a collective through employment of a humanistic proficiency mindset. An individual mindset that limits the acceptance of sufficiency, or complacency, brought on by fear, doubt, envy, and conditioned fallacy that victims and blame will provide a path forward. Humanity must abolish the longstanding fallacy of victimization, blame, and any idea of fairness existing for a false utopian fantasy World. In fact, it is realistically mandatory to reinforce the positive elements and constructs that increase everyone’s personal capacity as an individual to become better. The suggestions or associations with competition, labels or victims means that someone must lose, or the victor must somehow subdue or destroy the other competitors, participants, or subordinates.

A dangerous, ineffective and flawed way of thinking, or paradigm, that has failed humanity. Seeking mastery, critical thinking, self-discovery, personal participation are not just platitude elements that should be bandied about for $19.95 as a precursor to the sale of some modern-day snake oil or enlightenment mantra. Candid realism, personal responsibility, communication skills, and pragmatic truths are the way to become better, individually. Individuality is the better way to create a better collective. Mastery sets higher bars of performance, provides goals and offers modeled behaviors for others to aspire too, or in some cases outright emulate. Everyone can discover their own personal capacity and seek the opportunity to become better.

The age-old story says that I do not have to be faster than the bear, I just need to be faster than you. Well, what happens when there is another bear – who will you have to outrun then? THE BEAR! History has demonstrated time and time again, that there will always be more bears. So, you can out run other individuals all the time, or some of the time, eventually it is just you and the bear left in the race, in the end you will still lose and how is ultimately becoming a loser equitable to somehow being the best? A simplistic dichotomy of complexity. If we base our life trajectory on competition, then we will need to compete every day. If we base our life trajectory on improvement and evolutionary participation, we will need to seek improvement and participate in that improvement every day. Which choice do you suppose ends with you becoming the better version of yourself? A competitor rarely ends his or her run as the champion and seldomly ever gets recognized as the best forever. A person that improved everyday will always be remembered as a fighter, a doer, a winner, an individual that touched lives and lived their own way. How many champions are hated or loathed? How many persons seeking personal improvement are respected?

Self-awareness is a precursor to self-discovery. Awareness manifests simultaneously as personal development skills create stronger self-discovery capacities. One important thing about self-awareness that much of humanity fails to fully understand – (a failure or resistance to fully understand can apply equally or be said about many constructs one encounters over a lifetime). People may learn parts of what it means to be aware. Hearing a few constructs or talking points of what awareness means from another’s perspective will not increase your personal awareness. Learning happens through multiple constructs and personal choices, as well as environments, and modalities available. Knowledge is a great treasure to possess. Discovering how to apply an expanded knowledge is surely better. However, none of it means anything without personal participation, enhanced competency practices, and individual experience. All of humanity, the people you meet and those that you will never encounter, everyone, can learn more about becoming better, an example of an absolute truth.

Mankind’s greatest weakness is their inability to know, what it is, that they do not know. – Socrates

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

- Marcel Proust

Choice NOT chance determines your destiny – Aristotle

The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination. … until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.

- Iyanla Van Zant

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. - Mark Twain

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. - John Wooden

The goal of education is understanding; the goal of training is performance.

- Frank Bell

Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. - Angelique Arnauld

The eight quotes listed above are an example of how developmental psychology or conditioning can use semiotics – or signs within text meant to create a deeper significance. The number of quotes equals eight, the sign for infinity (a mobius band) is the sign of a figure eight laying horizontal. The linear pathway to discovery and growth is horizontal but also circular, and the depths of the vertical disposition are measured for competency and accuracy. The reasoning for explaining the semiotic unconscious learning potential, is an example provided on how to expand vision and to realize that increased depth is required to personally evolve.

I hope to take you deeper into your own self-discovery and performance enhancement processes. Plenty of inspiring quotes, introductions to the existing works of great minds, and powerful performance enhancing practices, are provided for your consideration and analysis. However, much more than simple platitudes are found here within. I hope you enjoy the discussion and your own self-discovery journey towards a maximized personal development strategy! Best is always a temporary position, be better! The process to be better begins new every day and the expansiveness lasts a lifetime!

CONTENTS

Preface: Purpose of This Book

Introduction

Conclusion

Reference

Appendix A

About the Author

PREFACE

Purpose of This Book

1. The Purpose of this Book

To create a better humanity, an advancing collective forwarded through focused individual improvements. A foundational guide for increased performance. Enabling individuals to contribute uniquely and competently to that collective. A path forward that eliminates envious initiations of competition as the goal of becoming the best at anything by emphasizing for us how to become better at everything. Holding ourselves as individuals accountable so that we may participate at holding a better collective accountability. Introducing applications that develop a better humanity through the mandate of a proficiency mindset. Individual participation will strengthen an educated and improved humanity. Reinforcing and celebrating how our differences make us better, that the unique qualities of each individual are the ingredients to the masterpiece of humanity as a combined product.

2. The role of Individual responsibility for a seeker

Individuality begins with self-discovery. You, as an individual must know who you are before you can determine who you want to become, and how to become such an individual. The collective, humanity, is formed of integrated individuals that collaborate, oppose, tolerate, enhance, or multiply each other. Relationships that form the macro and micro groupings cumulatively known as humanity. Anyone seeking to improve themselves, by default, contributes to the collective experience. Everyone that seeks to improve the collective must first better develop themselves in order to effectively contribute to that World in which they wish to live in and construct.

MADZOOK places an emphasis on the baseline and continuum of specific constructs for building and maintaining a better collective through individual participation. Increased personal development by deep and candid self-discovery is vital as a genesis point. Mandated competence in yourself and in others, for all that you do, is the key to maintenance and evolution for a greater environment and energy exchange. Participate in establishing proficiency over sufficiency.

Individual participation is the critical key variable for achieving any level of self-actualization. Individual participation is also a causal factor of collective, multicultural, and inclusive humanity. Diversity and inclusion are both achieved when individuals within the said collective contribute to the capacity expansions of inclusiveness and true diversity. Individual development is required for integration of diversity and inclusiveness with any measure of success.

3. Your paradigm choices of life’s perspective are the filters that influence your outcomes – either everybody is a victim, or everybody is a participant, which view do you espouse? Paradigms are defined as a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns from which the primary assumptions for underlying feelings, thoughts and behaviors originate or find reinforcement. Some people also refer to this as personal biases, heuristics, and Worldviews with eventual crossover, and some specificity in distinction for each term, accordingly. The synergistic summation is that we as humanity, and individuals within said humanity, all hold varying perspectives from which we choose to initiate our reactions of emotion, thought processes including memory recall and knowledge acquisition or intelligence levels, and physical behaviors. Individuals litigate, conjugate or originate our thoughts and behaviors based on the intensity and emphasis of the assumptions that we follow or select as our basic assertive or accepted viewpoint(s). Some examples of Paradigms and Worldviews include:

• Utilitarian

• Positivism

• Post-Positivism

• Constructivism

• Pragmatic

• Naturalistic

• Interpretivism

• Critical Realism

• Biological

• Cognitive

• Humanistic

• Psychoanalytic

• Behaviorism

• Sociocultural

• Evolutionary

• Symbolic Interactionist

• Functionalist

• Conflict Perspective

• Individualist

• Socialistic

• Objective

• Subjective

• Relativist

Understanding who you are as an individual, what your Schematic influencers are, where your paradigms and Worldviews originate or attract too, and what the heuristics, linguistics, and environmental or genetic influences that you have encountered, are part and parcel of self-discovery if one is to candidly, and effectively reach a conclusive discovery. Ontology, and Epistemology are constructs of varied pursuits which one will undertake and learn important depths that matter to the learned and for the skilled. A reliance on shallow opinions simply satiate the weaker or complicit. A position that eventually succumbs to a conditioned victimization mentality. You do have a choice, in fact, you have many choices of multiple importance and intensity level that you will encounter in a lifetime. Will you encounter such with knowledge and skill development or will you watch them go by? That is of course, if you even recognize what you did not see as it passed you by. Reading this book will help you know how to determine the better choice(s) for you.

4. The role of a coach/mentor/educator/ leader

The role of any good leader, mentor, educator, or coach is to help the individual learn how to navigate choices, and where to ask questions, when to look internal or external for answers, and what skills are even a potential element or factor, considering timing and capacity. The idea of the coach is for a person to open the doors, show you the concepts, and to help you discover the capacity and desirability of your own choosing. The competent coaches introduce you to the level of proficiency required for the skills that you acquire and utilize.

I, or any other coach may tell you words and constructs or show you opportunities for personal development. Ultimately, you must decide whether or not to pursue those depths required to master the constructs, including specified knowledge acquisition. How many of the provided paradigm terms above did you research to see if the term is applicable to you? How many did you just assume that you already understand and by having such an understanding have predetermined who you are based on what you currently understand? Is this predetermined person who you want to be?

If so, put this book back on the shelf, and continue down the path you are on – I cannot help you if you are already determined that you know who and what you are. I wish you well on your journey. If you are the former, the one that decided to seek out the terms and to look at all of them before adjudicating who you are, or who you want to be – (remember the learned can combine constructs and form their own soup mastery) then read on! In the famous words of Bruce Lee, a master at his craft Intake all forms, learn them, and apply to your training those elements of each that work for you, as an individual – be formless but create your own forms! A good coach, their role is simple yet complex – simplistic complexity! The competent coach will help you to discover your purpose, your questions, and your pathways to find the answers – a competent coach will help you build knowledge and skills to accomplish your goals and resolutions! This is the role of a good coach! I hope that after you have finished with this book that you are full of questions! However, I expect you to know how to ask better questions and how to analyze all potential answers for efficacy and practicality!

5. Acknowledgments

I have been blessed to travel the World, be a father, be a husband, be a son, be a brother, be a boss, be a worker, be respected, be ridiculed, be mocked, be desired, and to be loathed. I want to acknowledge all the people that I have encountered in my life as both the academic and the esoteric have contributed to my personal growth opportunity and my learning capacity.

I would also like to specifically acknowledge my loving wife for her healing powers and her contributions to my knowledge and my patience level. She has truly made me a better man. My daughter, showing me the capacity to understand love and to recognize the importance of living in and participating in the creation of a better World. My mother who has always loved me with her highest capacity to do so. I also want to thank those in the World that doubted or competed with me so that I learned to overcome and truly understood the importance of resilience by coming to the truth. The truth that resilience alone is not going to help anyone achieve their own mastery! Life, travel, and books have all taught me valuable experiences and wisdom. I thank all of those that were involved in any way toward that progression.

INTRODUCTION

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

– Stephen Hawking

Today the self – help industry seems to prey upon the emotional domain as if it were a golden goose. The many and varied claims to improve the lives of the lost are filled with platitudes and empty constructs of emotional release and attachment principles or associated with a correlation to trauma. Sometimes, we even see general people on social media, or those acting as qualified counselors, mentors, Guru’s, spiritual advisors and other monikers actively comparing their trauma, to the next persons trauma, as a method of comradery. Seeking validation by trying to out trauma others in order to reinforce how awesome they are as an individual. An individual that overcame some greater adversity than those others with condescending or patronizing passive–aggressive manipulation! The issues of self-confidence, resilience, and personal development or the power of change are indeed relevant phenomena. However, the way that these issues are abused, misused, parroted, and bandied about unethically in a multibillion-dollar business is one of the main motivations for writing the book that you have in your hands right now.

Individual responsibility, communication, competence, evolutionary improvements and a four-pillar growth mindset; marital, cognitive, spiritual, physical are the primary contributory factors for any personal development and performance enhancement strategy. I do love the work of the great master Loa Tzu, as well as the next person might. One must seriously ask of themselves, how many times can you read the same quotes and platitudes with empty reasoning or repeated advice on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? There are books, and programs available that sell millions of copies each year, and yet the stories of successful improvement to people’s lives is nowhere close to parity with the purchase of the products provided.

Some sources are better than others and there are many good books and practitioners available too. That is part of the problem, people are buying what seems to fit their current life rather than actually seeking out how to improve what they have, alter what needs altered, and most importantly, make additions where and as deep as possible. Stop swimming at surface level and trying to reinvent the wheel!

The works of many great master’s in psychology, philosophy, science, Eastern and Western holistic practices, and education have been sidelined by fallacy and stifled accountability mandates. The platitude of live your best life is even tattooed on people’s body while the same person simply employs a sufficiency mindset and seeks a complacent life as their measure of success. Considered successful so long as life appears more material than their neighbor, high-school alumni, or co-workers at the company. "Live free or die has been replaced by how many Instagram pictures can I get this year, or how many likes or flowers do I have on Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Who agrees with me and thinks that I am cool, is the accepted question of purpose rather than what is the meaning of life"? A prospect otherwise known as the field of ontology for the learned by the way.

The truth is, humanity can become better, if the individuals seek to become better. If every individual seeks to live their best life, how many can actually do it? Will more people fail than succeed at that proposition? Once best is reached, does a person simply plateau or become complacent and satiated? Best, suggests a constant competition to win – is it true and reasonable for someone to suggest that you are expected to win every day? If this is true, how do the books and the programs focused on emotions, and traumatic resiliency rule the field of self-discovery? How many times can you tell a person to get back up and be the BEST, perform at their best, rest is for the weak, and all those other worthless platitudes that lead to more need for overcoming a loss or failure.

You see, to make any individual better, the mindset needs to be on becoming better each day, not the best on any specific day – best is only temporary but better is a continuum and evolves iteratively through critical thinking and reflective thinking. Somewhat like the tides which control the moons. Yes, those same moons believed to control emotional potential for some, or so it is foretold. Foretold in books, books of knowledge, epistemology, classics written by masters of discovery and development. The ones that spoke the truth about personal involvement in personal development!

Benjamin Bloom, Albert Bandura, and Howard Gardner, all discussed the importance of multiple domain skill development and the importance of learning by creating conducive environments. Stop trying to be the best! Begin to start each day trying your best to become a little bit better. Sometimes, that will be a full cup and other times that will be a half cup, either way it was a successful day! Save your valued resiliency for an accelerated opportunity at seeking proficiency, use the same power of resilience to continue to get better, rather than squander it trying to continually be the best. A measure of best being adjudicated by others acceptance or proclamations. Best is a temporary position for any of us if really examined with depth and potential. Simply put, becoming better is the best approach.

The Madzook Method, a four-pillar development construct identifying four distinct areas of personal discovery and development through a five–stage process. A simple to use guideline for learning important strategies that dive deeper. Recognizing what the value of personal participation and competency development mean for an exigent evolution into an optimum performance capacity, regardless of your genesis or etiology. Reflection, candor, and the consistent quest for knowledge, coupled with the mandated practice of personal participation creates a space for you. An open-ended space allowing you to become the person that you want to become by your own design and actions. Eight archetypes are defined for personal association or discovered attributes. You will look inside and outside for how your thinking can improve and how much of the works from the prior masters can show anyone their path, the footsteps toward reaching greatness of one’s own pragmatic attainability.

I believe that to be a good leader, you must first desire to always be a lifelong student. Meaning that one must never stop learning and growing. I have a philosophy that everyone must seek to learn as much as possible, every day. Additionally, I postulate that the following qualities are mandatory attributes of good teacher and a good learner;

1. Strong critical thinking skills

2. High ethical and moral standards

3. Great communication skills

4. Good motivational skills

5. Strong knowledge of varied and applicable Pedagogy – Metagogy - Andragogy – Heutagogy tools that are available.

6. Depth and breadth of knowledge for leaders in the field such as Howard Gardner, Albert Bandura, Benjamin Bloom, Thomas Guskey, Michael Schmoker, Peter Senge, Carol Dweck and Todd Whitaker to name a few specific examples of the many that could be listed here. Find a proximity to greatness, read the works of the great minds!

7. Depth and breadth of knowledge for theories of educational and behavioral importance such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, motivational theories, personality theory, systems theory, and communication constructs et. al.

8. Multicultural understandings that extend beyond the USA. Expanded understandings for those that are focused solely on a single or limited context of race perspectives from an individual country holding less than .001% of the World’s population as the determining inclusive relevancy.

9. Fairness, commitment, empathy, and knowledge – doing what is right – base all of your future adjudications on merit and actions, not by emotional attachment or sentiment.

10. A genuine care for the welfare of humanity’s growth through individual, and collective learning constructs.

11. Ask questions, demand competence, expect multiple perspectives, weigh the evidence and the practicality of the intention, the action, and the potential outcomes.

CHAPTER ONE

The Self an Elusive but Exclusive Entity

"I am but one more soul on an individual journey through a collective of time, space, energy, physical, meta-physical, or spiritual in nature and experience including all encounters that shape my perspectives and form my contexts. I am just going to be me, and enjoy the ride – life is living with