I'm suprised no one has commented on this thread yet. What a gem J-K.

Thank you Tom Gadbois for beating the AHA into me.

When I was 20 (about 10 years ago), I packed all my belongings into a van and headed east to Nampa idaho to live with a Guitar master who would change my life forever.

Not only was I there to learn classical guitar (which never happened), but I was there to study martial arts, how to breath, meditation, and just about any damn thing Tom felt like teaching us.

He was Mr. Miagi, and I was Daniel Son.

After driving all day across the blistering Oregon desert, I arrived in Nampa Idaho and made my way to my new masters house. He had just moved from New Mexico with 2 current students and his wife. Adding me to the group made 5 of us together.

Tom had convinced a wealthy doctor to take all 5 of us into his lovely hilltop mansion that overlooked the Snake River. It was baffling the doc would let
all 5 of us live with him, free of charge. He was so amazed at Tom's insight that he would of done anything for us.

Anyways...

I pulled up to the doctors beautiful house in my 85 Chevy Van and parked in the driveway. Instead of getting a warm welcome from Tom, all I gott was a pissed off voice asking me...

"Does your van leak oil?"

I don't know I said.

Wrong answer.

Tom started grilling me and basically told me I should just turn around and drive back home. He had no patience for people that weren't using their brain and weren't "In The Flow", as he called it.

The doctors driveway was immaculant, beautiful, and lacked any sign of oil spills. However when I peaked under my van, sure enough, I had dripped a bit of oil onto his driveway. How the hell did Tom know? I thought.

As I backed my van off the driveway I instantly knew I had to be on my toes in this place.

Apparantly, the day before, Alex had gotten sent home becuase she had left a light on, and that pissed Tom off too. Wow, so the group was down to 4 of us.


I couldn't believe he was being such an *******, but soon I began to view it much differently.

The oil thing really made sense. I simply wasn't thinking about it. Not many people would think about something like that. The fiasco with Alex leaving the lights on made a bit of sense too. Here's this doctor who let's 5 people live in his house, the least we could do would be to not mess it up or use anything in excess.

These simple examples prepared me for a journey of using my mind like never before. Sure it would of been easy for me to say F.U. Tom and bail, but putting myself through his torture cemented a way of thinking into me that will keep me forever grateful.

I had daily meditations that I was required to do, chores, mind excercises. It was grueling to spend hours at a time just watching your thoughts, or counting your breaths.

Training for Aidido and Judo prepared us for our surroundings. Anything moved, we assessed it. Anything potential danger, we assessed it. However it was more of a feeling thing then an analytical assessment.

We were studying how to avoid attackers, not just defend against them. We were studying how to avoid problems, not solve them. However, once the problem arrived, we were to be "In The Flow" and ready to absorb any type of friction.

This wasn't just for martial arts either. Being in the flow, ready, and alert is a mind state. It's being aware of your surroundings, feelings, and most importantly your "Outs".

It's kinda like poker. You gotta know your outs before your embark on some dead end journey. Learning to see the bigger picture and seeing it from a different angle is tough for some.

Tom taught me a lot of stuff about life.

Most importantly, he taught me how to "Witness my thoughts".

It may seem strange to understand witnessing your thoughts, but it's an amazing excercise for opening the AHA part of your brain.

So give it a try, for 30 minutes a day, just try to lay in a meditative
state and when thoughts come to your mind, go there. Dig deep into the origin of that thought. Explore it. Why did you think that? Why does it make you feel that way?

This is tough because many of our thoughts are dark, but they need to be explored. Digging deep into your thoughts, and allowing yourself to freely release what's inside can really open up more paths to aha moments

People are just not that optimistic. Their own pessimism will obstruct many chances at AHA moments before they begin to arise.

I'm very thankful that I've spent near a decade preparing for the AHA moments. My brain never stops looking for a fix, even if the problem doesn't yet exist.

And the bottom line is, AHA's are damn fun.

The ideas, the journeys, the discoveries, may they never stop.

Never stop witnessing, and you will be bombarded with AHA's.

However, becoming a true watcher is much tougher then it seems.