Frustration

 My board breaks, or rather my No board breaks. Frustrated to say the least. Angry, and a little disappointed with myself. 

Now to turn these feelings into breaking those boards. I wasn’t feeling the flow, the snap, or the intent. And it was obvious. Back to the drawing ‘board’ in a sense. Time to dig deep and see what went wrong, and how to make it right. Take this frustration and turn it into my intent. 

Yes, I was disappointed, but it was also a great opportunity to feel what wasn’t right. A great opportunity to learn from what went wrong. Look out boards, I will be back!

Mixing it up

 Last week was a great ‘challenging’ week. I came to realize I’ve had myself in a silo of sorts the last little while. I have been so focused on grading, and IHC requirements that I wasn’t doing much outside of that. Besides classes it was a continuous circuit of training with not much to mix it up. 

Last week’s week of daily challenges was exactly what I needed for a refresh. Adding different challenges into my daily routine and training schedule was great. It wasn’t all physical training, which I also needed. 

I push myself and sometimes forget to enjoy what I am doing. This challenge reminded me of that. It reminded me that there is so much more. 

Thank you for the challenge. Thank you to those that put so much work into it. Thank you to those that participated. And thank you for the opportunity to remind me why I do this. 

An Interesting Opportunity

An interesting opportunity presented itself to me today at work. My branch manager came into my office and asked what I was doing Monday night. My immediate answer of course was that I had Kung Fu. She said okay, can you can miss a night of that? I was baffled for a moment not knowing why she was saying this. 

She then proceeded to tell me my presence was requested at the Oilers game on Monday night. With the Vice President of ATB Financial. In the ATB skybox. Pardon me? 

I was truly perplexed. And it’s our Board Breaking challenge next week!!! I cannot miss that! My next thought was I need to call Master Brinker! And that is what I did. I’m sure he thought my house was burning down or something for me to be directly phoning him in the middle of my workday lol. I explained the situation, and he assured me that we will work it out, and to not give up this opportunity. 

Back to why I am blogging about this. This truly reinforces to me what Kung Fu has done for my life, and how much it truly means to me. Yes, this is only a hockey game, but for me to be personally requesed to attend with the Vice President of this huge Corporation is also something special. But my first reaction, and alliance was to my training, and Kung Fu journey. This makes me very happy, and content with where I Am in my life. 

Now I’m left wondering - why me?? I guess I’ll find out Monday! 

Keeping it Sustainable

 As we are working on our short videos for IHC for new team members (thank you for the fantastic idea, and all of your work on this Todai Ward!), I also wanted to put my thoughts into a blog, and always have it to look back on here. 

For the video, I gathered a bunch of pictures taken at some of the great experiences provided by being part of the IHC. And these were my thoughts -

An important part of the IHC is being able to keep your training sustainable. The IHC is a year long program about Mastery. It provides all the tools needed you will need to learn, and live your life with Mastery. How do you fit all of this into an already busy life? You keep it sustainable. We all have very busy lives with family, jobs, school, Kung Fu classes, and everything else that always pops up. 

A key to keeping your training sustainable is having a plan and schedule to be able to maintain your goals. Plans will need to change, and be able to be flexible with time. There will be days that your allotted time to train will be busy with something else. It is very important to find that time elsewhere in the day. It may be in 10 minute intervals through the day. One of the things that helps me when I am super busy and stressed is to take a 5-10 minute break and do some push ups, sit ups, or a form or two. It allows me to reset my mind, and it actually helps me to be more productive. 

Another important factor in being able to keep your training sustainable is your diet. When life gets busy, we tend to grab whatever is easy to eat. This can often be something that is not very healthy for us. I keep some containers of pre washed and cut fruits and vegetables at the ready. These provide a healthy snack that your body will thank you for. 

The most important factor to sustainability is to never quit. Start each day anew, and keep your goals in front of you. With a solid plan in place you will be surprised at the time you have in your day. 

Birthday Challenge 2 Minute Blog

 Timer started after the Title…

Five favorite smells

Fresh baking apples - so fitting for this time of year!

Roses

Crisp spring air

Freshly washed laundry

Not this hard, maybe should have thought it through

Can’t think of a fifth… and time 

What’s this? I don’t got it??

 Somewhere along the way, my eye for detail became lazy. Funnily enough, apparently one of the topics in our Saturday class was ego. I missed this class as I had to work, but Todai Burke wrote a great blog about ego. 

This week was an eye opener on ego and eye for detail for me. One of my favorite and go to forms is 18 Temple Motions. Now I love all of our Kung Fu forms, but this particular one feels the most versatile to me. It can be my warm up and cool down form, as well as my powerful precision form. The internal and external forces in this form is something I treasure. This was the form I chose for 2 IHC years in a row for these reasons. 

Now I should have ‘gotten’ it by now, right? Wrong. When it is said - when you think you’ve got it, you don’t - it is said for good reason. This week I was shown how I am doing a couple of techniques incorrectly. Somewhere along the line I lost my eye for detail, became comfortable with being incorrect, and also let my ego take over. I’ve been focused for so long, how can it be incorrect? Insert ego. 

Now this is actually very exciting for me. It reinforces that I always need to have an open mind to be teachable. I am human, and my ego has a way of being ever present even when I don’t think it is. I am on the path to mastery, and there is never a time to not be mindful of mediocrity. We need our ego to keep our progression in front of us, but we also need to always be aware and mindful of our ego blinding us to mediocrity. Although I am needing to make small adjustments to a couple of techniques, this is actually quite monumental in my journey. The constant reminder of when I think I’ve got, I don’t.

One of the things I love about this great martial art of Kung Fu is it will never become mundane. No matter what level we are at, or where we are in our journey, there is always room to grow, and to learn.