Tag: Martial Arts Inspired

Don’t Get A Big Head

At the conclusion of a martial arts tournament I’m attending this weekend, the Grand Master said the following in regards to the people who won [In a thick Korean accent]:

“Congratulations! Enjoy this victory. But, don’t get a big head.”

And in regards to the people who lost:

“If you didn’t win today—it’s okay. Now, you have something to train hard for.”

And tying it together he said (and I’m paraphrasing according to memory):

“The people who won today will become comfortable. They will relax. They don’t get the same fire inside. They get big heads. Don’t let that happen to you. Use this experience to keep training hard. Whether you win or lose.”

And it’s a great reminder I’d say to not let your head get big—in whatever space you’re in. And to always find ways you can add fuel to your inner fire—regardless of how your life experiences unfold.

Experiences are experiences. They aren’t inherently good or bad—per se. It’s what we do with the experiences—how we interpret them, shape them, use them—that counts.

…And ultimately, what’ll end up making all of the difference in each of the life experiences that have yet to come.

Lower Your Weight

Doing martial arts training today, I was reminded of how important it is to lower your weight—to enroot yourself into the ground.

To lower your weight is to simultaneously lower your attention—out from somewhere in the clouds and back into the weight of the current moment.

It’s a reminder to stand your ground; to solidify your foundation; to reclaim your power.

And the beauty of martial arts training is that there are immediate physical/ tangible/ sensory feedback mechanisms in place that display the weight of your attention at various moments of the training.

If your mind floats elsewhere during a drill, for example, you might get knocked off balance. Or if you fall asleep on a sparring partner and start daydreaming, you might take a shot. Or if you try and multi-task a martial drill with a past or future concern, you might trip over your own movements.

Lower your weight is a reminder to get out of your head. To come back down to earth. To dig your roots deeper into reality and suck the life from the soil of the here and now.

…And today, I want you to try and do just that. You might not have a martial feedback mechanism like I had today—but that just means you won’t get punched or hit if you forget.

…Which might be a more ideal situation for you anyways.

…Although, less on the line if you forget.

Nonetheless, make that your focus today and periodically remind yourself like you just took a shot.

…And keep it at the forefront to lower your weight.

Mind/Body Balance In Career

One of the things I like most about my career is the mind/body balance.

When I first started teaching martial arts, I was in the trenches. It was and still is quite physically demanding. And it keeps me accountable to myself because I have to lead by example and be the byproduct that I want my students to strive for.

As I evolved over the years, I started building skills that could be used to solve other problems in the organization I worked for and I started taking on more mentally challenging tasks. Things like marketing, curriculum development, class planning, systems management, website design, event planning, and so on.

…Until eventually, my day-to-day work was split pretty nicely down the middle with 50%-ish of my day focused on mental tasks and the other 50%-ish focused on physical ones.

Which, quite appropriately, is something martial arts aims to teach its practitioners to seek in everyday life. You never want to be doing mind-only work for the entire day and you also don’t want to only be doing physically taxing work that completely disregards the growth of the mind.

In everything you do, think about how you can develop skills in a complementary way in the complementary mind/body realm.

Some examples:

Real Estate Agent? Mostly mental work. Build physically focused handyman skills.
Construction Worker? Mostly physical work. Build marketing skills to challenge the mind.
Financial Advisor? Mostly mental work. Build health/fitness skills to become a more multi-dimensional (life) advisor.
Professional Athlete? Mostly physical work. Build pedagogy skills to optimally share gifts.
Social Media Marketer? Mostly mental work. Create and run a meditation group to physically balance the mentally taxing media effects.

Gifting Your Presence

Today, I caught one of my martial arts kids praising and saying hello/goodbye to other kids by name, completely unprompted.

“Hi, Ben!”

“Arm Shake?”

“Great job today, Alkalifah!”

“High 5!”

“See you later, Jackson.”

While this doesn’t sound like anything profound, what I usually see are kids completely consumed in their own worlds. Playing on screens, fixing their clothes, playing with toys, asking parents for money, picking out things they want in the pro-shop, etc.

…Which, if I’m being honest, is what I see from many (most) adults, too.

For a student to come in so present minded, and to have such an outward attention to the people in his environment, and to take the time to acknowledge them by name and say nice things is nothing short of profound if you ask me.

And if that’s something more of us adults could do, too, I’d say that’d be a pretty remarkable thing worth aiming for and celebrating as well.

Bald for Black Belt

Traditionally, in the martial arts organization I work in, students were required to shave their heads for their black belt or higher degree test.

The reason was that it demonstrated humility (that you are more than your hair) and created a military-like camaraderie between candidates.

Over the years, however, due to some candidates’ religious beliefs and otherwise strong-standing beliefs about their hair—we’ve made it optional. And have since been exploring alternative means we can offer that can build a candidate’s humility all the same. Things like no make-up or jewelry for a month, no brand name clothes for a month, no social media for a month, etc.

Not only is it good to offer alternative options for those who can’t or won’t shave their heads… but it brings into conversation those who style their hair shaved all of the time anyway… the ones who get no humility benefit from the practice at all. Furthermore, girls were never made to follow this requirement and it allows them to have alternative options for humility practice, too.

…If the purpose is humility and camaraderie… then it’s something everybody should have to (get to) do with equal sacrifice. It shouldn’t be something that a few of the boys with longer hair have to do that the girls and other boys with short hair don’t have to do at all.

…Where’s the humility and camaraderie in that?

Once you understand the purpose behind the tradition… you can reverse engineer your way to more innovative means for accomplishing the same (or better) ends. It’s as the saying goes in our martial arts space: respect tradition; embrace innovation.

What To Say To Those In The Storm

A student of mine broke her ankle doing a jumping kick in my martial arts class last night.

…And this was literally a few weeks after she just got her boot off from having broken that same ankle just a few months ago.

Another student has been trying to come back from a similar broken bone situation… but keeps getting slammed with various colds and sicknesses.

…And, to her dismay, has only been able to attend a handful of classes over the course of two months.

Another student came up to me last night and told me some heartbreaking news that… on top of the surgery she might have to get on her hip… and on top of the sicknesses that keep coming up in her family… her mom got diagnosed with cancer.

Life, like mother nature herself, has seasons.

Sometimes its sunny and seventy; and sometimes it’s hella cloudy and rainy.

…And sometimes, as the expression goes, it doesn’t just rain—it pours.

It’s hard to know what to say in these situations because there aren’t any words that’ll keep a person dry when it’s pouring rain and they’re already wet.

…But, maybe if you can let them know you’ll be there with them as the pouring rain comes down, and that there’s an umbrella you can share, and that you’ll be a source of warmth for them as the cold, heavy drops carry more and more of their warmth away and into the ground…

…Maybe you can make the storm suck a little less and help them see their way to the other side.

Plain Fun

Yesterday, I hosted a martial arts class where members could train with non-member loved ones as a way to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a unique, experiential kind of way.

My goal was to facilitate a type of class that was all partner themed, game-based, and contact oriented, that felt relaxed and above all… was just plain fun.

And the response from the members after the class was overwhelmingly positive with an almost unanimous request to have more “plain fun” classes just like it.

And it was a pleasant reminder that while adults on the surface often present as serious…

…They’re really just kids inside grown-up bodies who came to adopt seriousness as a way to interact with the world—maybe because it’s what they were taught, what they intuited, or what was required—when really… adults, like kids, just want to have fun.

P.s. The next book I’ll be uploading quotes from is Self-Renewal by John W. Gardner. You can pick up a copy and read along here.