After 20+ yrs of training, today is the day I got to test for my 5th Degree Black Belt in ITF Tae Kwon-Do.
As I was prepping for this day, I thought about what 11 year old me—the one who started Martial Arts all those years ago—would think if he watched me perform.
I imagined that overweight, self-conscious, always-hard-on-himself kid and I thought about everything he wanted to become: fit, confident, disciplined, looked up to, able to perform under pressure—and able to do cool moves, of course.
And it was an overwhelmingly emotional moment for me when I finished the test and thought to myself: I think he would’ve been proud.