Tag Archives: Karate

You Never Can Tell

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One of the great gifts of martial training is learning to trust people. One of my black belts, who also happens to be an accomplished musician, likens the higher level expression of martial arts to music. The reason being that musicians need to have implicit trust with each others skill sets in order to play off of each others notes, especially when jamming.

In this video, Bruce Springsteen is in front of 45,000 people preparing to play a song his band has never played before. It’s great to watch a group of professionals, who trust each other implicitly, taking a short time to create a novel experience for all to enjoy, right before your eyes.

Achieving this level of trust takes time, but the more I learn to trust my fellow practitioner, the higher I know we can collectively take the art. To me, this video is the ultimate expression of joy when a group of people establish collective trust. I’m guessing none of them could ever have known who those trusting band mates would have been if they hadn’t learned to trust themselves first.

New Year New Leaf

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As the year comes to an end, it’s always a good time to focus on ‘new beginnings’. If you have any negative habit that you’ve been needlessly conforming to, then I want you to make the active decision to leave all of those negative thoughts and feelings behind.

You’ll be thanking yourself for getting rid of the negativity that you surrounded yourself in and, more importantly, the people around you will be thankful that you are in a more positive place.

Some of you may be thinking: “But I don’t know if I can do it!” The simplest way to start is by turning your perspective upside down. Try to engage your life from one that imposes skepticism, self-consciousness and self-doubt to one that embraces positive change. Small steps in mindset are needed in order to make any significant improvements in your life.

Worst comes to worst, fake it ’til you make it! Just let the old habits go like the ball dropping at midnight. Take a deep breath and say goodbye to your self-doubt and your fear of failure. Instead, embrace YOUR desire to change and make the conscious decision to improve. Take the first step towards re-creating your new self.

Sure it’ll take time and of course you’ll meet resistance from everyone involved with your life – yourself included. But, did your “negative habits” NOT meet resistance? Resistance, friction and conflict get such a bad rap, but without them, we would never move forward…or never stop!

Never forget that this life belongs to you. If you love yourself (which, if you don’t, you should make sure to fix that problem first) and respect yourself, then you should protect yourself. After all, you can’t save anyone unless you save yourself first.

Do yourself a favor and make this your year of positive change. Resistance and conflict are a natural, reoccurring part of life. However, if you make the choice to actively diminish the amount of bad habits and negative actions that you partake in life, then making positive changes will eventually become a daily and refreshing event in your everyday. Make your mark!