Facing Setbacks

I seem to be facing setbacks in multiple areas of life. It is easy to allow myself to be overwhelmed by this. I must remember to take a step back, reasess the situation, make a new plan, and start at that new beginning I have set. One step at a time.

First Things First In Self Defense

In self defense, or personal protection, I believe it is important to prioritize one's actions. For example, I have had people ask me, as a martial artist, if I could teach them what to do if they get jumped by three guys in an alley. My answer is always to not go in the alley in the first place.

I have also come to believe in a little "preemptive self defense". Now, I don't mean to jump the guys in the alley first, this is much more effective, and much more difficult and it is something I need to work on.

If one is worried about oneself or others being jumped in an alley in a bad part of town (first, as I said before, stay out of the alley), the next step is to start improving the conditions of the environment so that people will not feel they need to resort to jumping others in the alley.

And I thought stancework was hard.

As a small step in that direction, I had my students, at their last belt test, perform random acts of kindness. Just a small step to improving the environment around them.

More to come.

There Is No Hill

One day, when bicycling with my wife, she said, "How do you like these hills?" Paraphrasing the Matrix, I responded, "There is no hill." Of course, there really was a hill, there were two things I really intended when I said that, one thing I intended was to make her laugh. The other intent, however, goes a little deeper.

I was thinking of the hill as a mindset, a mindset of focusing on the obstacle instead of the solution. So when I said, "There is no hill," like in the movie, I was saying that I choose to focus on what I can do within myself to go over the hill, instead of the obstacle presented by the hill.

There is no hill.

Self Defense (Again)

Simply because I have a friend who disagrees, I feel the need to say this again.

First go peek at this, then let me know which of those you can defend yourself against with a kick, a punch, or a gun.

Self defense ain't what you think.

Why, Why, Why?

Why study kung fu?

To defend oneself? To get fit/healthy? To learn to fight? To build discipline? To build confidence?

All these things can be done without kung fu training, and I have known kung fu artists who had not successfully done any of the above.

So, why study kung fu?

Kung fu and other martial arts have a reputation for being able to instill in their practitioners strength, discipline, confidence, etc., but they do not in and of themselves accomplish anything.

A martial artist can be a great humanitarian or a bully, a wise sage or a con artist, a mentor to children or a convincing illusion of one out to sign them to three year contracts.

The secret is not in the martial arts themselves. The secret is in your approach to the martial arts, and the instructors approach to the martial arts.

At one point, my motivation as a martial artist was to get good at kung fu. At this time I believed in the illusion that being good at kung fu meant I was a good athlete/philosopher/humanitarian/leader/etc.

At one point my motivation was a dedication to "the art" I wanted to perfect the art in myself, then perfect it in others. Again I believed in the illusion that the art itself would do all the work.

If you don't believe there is an illusion out there, go browse some martial arts school websites, most of them will tell you all about the "benefits of training in the martial arts" but if you ask the instructor, "How does martial arts training teach each of these benefits?" will they be able to answer?

So what am I doing to break free from the illusion?

First of all I fight hard to stay off the pedestal. Lots of martial arts students want their teacher to be Yoda. Sorry I guys I am a flawed and fallible human being.

Second, I want to use martial arts training to teach other important things. Training for each belt test with a long term goal of obtaining a black belt can be used to teach goal setting. Repeating a drill over and over again not only improves the drill, but teaches one how to practice for any other achievement. Memorizing a sequence of 200 movements teaches that we can accomplish bigger things than we thought we could. Training for "self defense" teaches us to always practice self defense even in our eating habits.

Third, I must remember that HOW you train your kung fu decides what you get from it. If you train only for fighting, you will learn only fighting. If you train only for fitness you will get only fitness.

If you approach Kung Fu as a holistic analogy for everything you do in life it can be a revolution in your life.

A Present? For Me?

If I did not enjoy my day at work, why do I insist on reliving it all evening in my mind?

I will, instead, focus on the present. Just like in sparring, if I am busy rehashing and reliving mistakes from earlier, I will not see the punch that is coming NOW. If I am too focused on the things that happened that I did not like, it will hinder my ability to enjoy NOW.

Now, I am with my family, my favorite three girls in the world, now I am heating water for tea, now I can still taste the chocolate brownie I just ate.

Also if I am too focused on what may come at work tomorrow, or the rest of the week, I am ripped away from cherishing now.

Now, I can smell the tea, now I have peace in my home, now I am relaxing.

Can't

A little over two years ago, I went with my wife to watch a local triathlon. She had recently gotten serious about running and had some interest in this triathlon thing. After watching, she decided she wanted to do it. Her main problem was, she was afraid of the bike portion.

Some dear friends worked together and got her a bike to ride, she started riding, continued running, and started working on her swimming as well. A year after watching that triathlon, my wife who hadn't swum in years, and was afraid of riding a bike on the road had logged hours upon hours in the pool and miles upon miles on the bike. I went to watch another triathlon, this time she was racing.

I was so excited for her, and inspired, I really wanted to do a triathlon too. I had some problems though, first of all, it hurt to run. I had some pretty intense plantar fasciitis going on as well as recurring bursitis in my left hip. Walking a mile was painful for me, running (I believed) was impossible.

So, instead of triathlon training, I just upped my other training, Kung Fu, kettlebells, pushups, crunches, cardio rounds. . . I got into great shape, but was constantly lamenting the idea that I couldn't run with my wife.

One day while she was on a run, I caught up to her on my bicycle. On some spontaneous kick, I got off the bike and ran about a mile with her. It didn't hurt, so I started thinking about running again.

There was a race she was going to run on Thanksgiving morning, people kept suggesting that I run it with her. On the Wednesday one week before the race, I said to my wife, "If I'm going to run this race with you, I'd better find out if I can actually run 5 kilometers." Then I walked out the door in khaki shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of beat up cross training shoes. I ran five kilometers. It didn't hurt.

Until the next day anyway.

The next day I could barely walk due to sore muscles in my legs, but there was no hip or foot pain. I was pumped. I ran my first 5K 8 days later. I finished in 26:47.6 for an 8:38.6 minute/mile pace in 128th place out of 369 finishers.

I've been running ever since. There have been times when I had some hip pains, and foot pains, but I learned stretches and exercises I can do to alleviate, and prevent them. There were times when I didn't want to get up and go out and run, but I did anyway. There were a couple of times I had to take a break from the running schedule to not aggravate an injury, but I've been doing it ever since. Tomorrow is my "running birthday" as my wife calls it. She inspired me to run, and because of it, I am healthy, fit, dedicated, and strong. I've added running to my list of new things I can do.

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.