Socrates believed, “To know oneself is to know one’s body, mind and soul.”  All three create a symphony of life.  My mom used to tell me:  “Health is the beauty.”  Your body is the place where intelligence and wisdom meet each other, and without a healthy body, our minds become wasted.

How did you choose to start your morning today?  Let me guess.  (I might be wrong, and I hope I’m wrong!)  You checked your Facebook, your email, your iPhone, your BlackBerries, your Twitter feed.  Am I right?  I used to be there, too.  But imagine:  waking up to the sound of a rain forest or to your favorite music.  You rise and do meditation for ten minutes.  You say five things you are grateful for this morning.  You take a shower, eat a bowl of blueberries, have a cup of orange juice, greet everything in your house with a joy and appreciation.  You notice photographs of your family, your friends…you have so much to be grateful for!

It takes only small changes, made one at a time, to have a healthy lifestyle.  All you need to do is choose what makes you happy, and what is good for you.  Make those small changes, and be consistent.

Stress is a part of living, but when we make small changes, we can eliminate the stress in our lives.  By getting good rest and sleeping peacefully at night, by eating well, and exercising, by choosing to reduce our stress by living well, we can improve our abilities and help us be more focused and productive.  It can all be done just by finding an extra five minutes a day to walk one block in a meditative state of mind.

Jhoon Rhee is called Master, and he is a Master.  He has mastered fame, power, body, mind, a life of purpose and the secret to happiness.  Master Rhee’s priority is helping others achieve balance, so he formed the 100-21 Club, “one hundred years of wisdom in a twenty-one-year-old body.”

According to the Master, the purpose of life is to be happy, and there are two kinds of happiness:  physical and spiritual.  Material wealth provides us with physical happiness.  Spiritual happiness is obtained only though art, such as music, dance, painting, sculpting, cooking, etc.  Master Jhoon Rhee’s philosophy is to lead martial artists toward a classical art form to align them with the purpose of our lives, happiness.

We obtain our knowledge through seeing and hearing.  We appreciate art through the same two senses.  All visual beauty is expressed by various types of lines.

If you ask Master Jhoon Rhee what he teaches, he says:  “True education begins with physical education that develops a vibrant and strong body at an early age.  Then, we motivate our children to live a happy life by teaching the purpose of life, the way to achieve the purpose, and how to enjoy it during the process.”

Master Rhee—acknowledged worldwide as the Father of American Tae Kwon Do—remains very active in his community, and has become a role model and an educator in its truest sense.

Master Rhee was dancing on December 20, 2003, at one of many Christmas parties and he felt discomfort in his chest.  He mentioned the pain to me, and I told his wife about it.  His wife, who is a registered nurse, immediately made an appointment for him to be examined by his heart doctor.  He had open-heart surgery on February 12 for ten hours.  They found out he was born with a heart murmur.  He later had two bypasses and a stroke.

Master Rhee told me, “The fear that my teaching will stop never entered my mind.  I knew I would recover soon to resume my normal activities, and the only thing that would take a bit more time would be being able to demonstrate sharp kicks and punches.  I thought I had enough credibility built with all my students around the world and they all knew I lived a positive life prior to my surgery.

Master Rhee never thought why me?  Instead, he thought, “What is the next best thing under the circumstances?”  He also lives his philosophy that says, “Everything happens for the best.”

Master Rhee’s advice is quite simple:  proper diet, proper rest, proper exercise, and proper mental attitude.  I strongly recommend his philosophy to everyone.

Master Rhee has indomitable spirit.  He said, “My disease did not affect my spirit at all, because I know time will heal me completely.  I took it as one of many challenges, nothing more than the normal challenges we face everyday.”

Now, at the age of 80 he is able to do 100 push-ups a minute and does 1,000 push-ups a day.

How would you like to be a person with 100 years of wisdom in the body of a seventeen-year-old?  According to Master Rhee, it can be done!  All you have to do is to develop small daily disciplines as your permanent habit.

The most important part is:  It can be done.