…Is one of the questions I fought over yesterday. My answers came quick and felt surprisingly solid once written. Each borrowed from another great human who came before… being shared with you today so you might borrow and share them into other corners of the world.
1. Be the change you wish to see in the world. This is a lesson drilled into me by the head master himself. He preaches constantly how important it is to lead the lifestyle you’re promoting. If you’re teaching discipline, be disciplined. If you’re teaching health and fitness, be healthy and fit. If you’re teaching respect, be respectful. And so on. We need to be who we want our students to become.
2. Never underestimate the power of a small group to make change—for it’s the only thing that ever has. Helping one student with a single martial move can be discouraging when we hear about influencers influencing millions from a single post… but, it’s only because the perspective is wrong. It’s not about comparison, it’s about gift giving. It’s about doing what good you can with what you have. It’s about starting somewhere and committing.
3. Life grows in proportion to courage—be bold. I’ve stepped onto some of the biggest sport martial arts stages in the U.S.—and I nearly crapped my pants each time. Which is precisely what courage is: feeling fear and doing the thing anyway. So many doors have opened for me since then. The same with the courage it has taken to publish these writings daily or speak publicly or do something insane physically. Life grew for me after each step taken into the realm of fear.