Just do it already

     One of my personal requirements this year was reading. Twelve books for the twelve months to be exact. Since starting to read more this year I have also found myself reading lots of other things as well. The teams blogs, articles and blogs from other influential people and even some of the local paper now that it magically shows up on our front porch. Most of the things that I have chosen to read have a similar theme. The shortened, to-the-point version of this would be "if you want something, you need to get off your butt and do something about it".  
     Wanting something, or even making a plan to get it, does absolutely nothing if you don't actually take action. Another lesson that has come out of this is that if you need to make a decision then make it. If you trust your knowledge in a particular situation, then the only reason to put off making the decision is fear. Yes, fear. Mostly, the fear of failure. Unfortunately the decision will still need to be made and choosing not to make it, out of fear, will only add stress to your life.
     This week I decided to embrace this as true and implement this at work. The results, so far, have been very enlightening. I manage a business that employs over 100 staff most of which fall under four different trades. Generally by the end of the week there are so many things that "slipped through the cracks" that going to work on Monday's is fairly stressful.
     This week however is much different. During the week, instead of pushing things off I made decisions, on most things, at the time issues came up. At one point one of the floor supervisors was in my office. He was in there for about fifteen and in that time I had five different phone calls and two other people come to the door. As I hung up one phone a different one would ring making the timing seemed almost planned. During this time I also managed to spend enough uninterrupted time with the supervisor to answer the questions that he had for me as well. Before he left he looked at me and shook his head. I thought maybe he was discouraged by what had just happened so I asked him what was wrong. "I don't know how you do this" is all that he said. Normally by this point the stress would have been through the roof. By changing the standard "let me think about it and get back to you" to actually just making a decision the stress seemed to disappear. 
     I think that too often we allow fear to control our action which then becomes inaction. This inaction then creates stress and increased pressure. For me, the confidence that has come from practising martial arts as well as joining the I Ho Chuan team has allowed me to trust myself enough to face these fears. Will every decision be perfect? No. Will all of the answers be correct? Probably not. Will something fail because of a decision that I have made? More than likely. Will I allow the fear of failure to stop me from making decisions? Not on your life. 
     As long as there is a lesson to be learned from each failure, there is no reason to fear the outcome. 

Best Laid Plans

     Last week I had great plans of this being the week that I would get way ahead with some of my requirements. Last weeks numbers were not as high as I had hoped so I wanted to improve on that.

     Things did not go as planned. Sunday and Monday were not too bad even though muscles we pretty sore Sunday from Saturdays fitness class. The fitness class by the way is awesome and more people should attend. Tuesday however things went downhill quickly, at least for most of my requirements. Our two oldest went on an after school trip in to the city to see a play and were not due back at the school until 11pm. This made it pretty easy to go out for dinner and spend some extra time with Dawn and Baker. We did go somewhere with some healthier options though. On Wednesday, I was invited to go watch the first Oiler's play-off game with some people that I haven't seen in a few years. We met early then with a late start and and the game going in to overtime it was pretty late when I finally got home.
     Up until this point I had tried to keep up with the physical requirements daily so that not only could I keep up with them but so that they become fairly routine as well. A habit if you will. I have also really never been very good at just letting go of some things once they have happened and moving on. I have been working on this but struggling with it as well. So when I woke up on Thursday and started thinking about it I started to panic a little. Not a lot, but enough where the feeling of defeat crept in. I started thinking about one of our previous IHC meetings where we were discussing letting go of what happened and starting over fresh. Like I mentioned previously this is something that I have never been very good at. 
     While having breakfast I started doing some math. Add up the push ups and sit ups that I had already completed, subtract that from my weekly goal, divide by the three days left. Suddenly the outlook changed. That number was not that big and scary. This was now something that I knew could be accomplished. With one very minor change in perspective, the doom and gloom of defeat had been eradicated by optimism.  
     Even with having certain goals, whether they be daily, weekly, yearly, it is important that we still take some time to live life and experience things. With that being said, it is also very important to find a way to not beat yourself up over the small failures so that you can find a way to reach your goals. It is way too easy to go down the path of doom and gloom and forget about your goals completely.

Humble Enlightenment

     For a weapon form this year I choose to do the school Broadsword form. After initially learning the basic movements of the form I somehow convinced myself that the form was way too easy. I am not completely sure how this thought crept in to my head, but it did. Maybe it was the length of the form. Was it the seemingly simplistic movements? Whatever it was, it did not do me any favours.
     Yesterday however, was different, way different. I would like to start by first thanking Sifu Hayes and Sifu Beckett. With there not being very many people at open training yesterday, I had the opportunity to spend a little over an hour with Sifu Hayes working on my sword form. I had originally asked him to come over because I thought that I had a fairly simple question. To be completely honest I can't even remember what it was. All I do know is that question led to another, which led to another and another and so on. Now I know what you are thinking, so you were at open training and spent an hour standing around talking instead of actually training. It didn't happen exactly like that. With every question came a demonstration followed by my effort to emulate. We went from basic movements to nuances of the form that I had not even thought of up to that point. 
     It all came back to action with purpose. Why are you doing this action? What will the outcome be? From a thousand foot view it all seemed so easy. you have a sword. You are there to cut someone while defending yourself. When you start looking at all of the small details however, things get a little tougher. On the other hand, the closer you look the clearer things become as well. The angle of the blade, the angle of your wrist, using the hand that does not contain the weapon in order to accelerate the weapon. Everything just started to make more sense. 
     I am grateful for the time that was taken Saturday to help me with the form and how helpful everyone at the Kwoon is. It is nice to be able to train somewhere that has such a supportive atmosphere. I guess I will be able to test that theory next Saturday when I am sure to be asking the same or similar questions.

Slaying Dragons

     As I had mentioned in my last blog the last couple of weeks have been pretty tough. Last Sunday as my blog was completed and finally posted it felt like a large weight had been lifted off of my chest and I could breath again. As I began to write, certain things became clearer bringing out things that were really bugging me opposed to what I had believed the problem was. The realisation of the issues then made them much easier to deal with. This morning while working out though, I started even looking a little deeper.

     It was something that Master Brinker had said at Saturday's meeting that made me start questioning things. During one of our conversations of injuries and figuring out how to deal with them, he had mentioned that it was pretty easy to allow mediocrity in to your life when everything was going well. When everything was "easy" there were lots of the little things that get missed and sometimes you don't even notice. Then one thing leads to another, and another, next thing you know these seemingly small independent actions create circumstances that can alter your life in many inconceivable ways. 

     Six months ago, Sundays consisted of getting up at 4:40am and going to the gym. Get home around 6:30-6:45 and cook breakfast, usually scrambled egg whites maybe some fried roasted potatoes if we had them for supper on Saturday. By 8:30 we would be at Superstore doing the shopping for the week followed by two or three hours of food prep.

Below is an actual picture of our fridge from the other house.

     

     With too many other things on the go, insert many other excuses here, this fell off. This meant that any food prep that needed to be done, then had to be done as it was needed. Read that five times fast. This then made it way easier to say screw it and not do it at all. First it was suppers, even though I wasn't eating suppers most days during the week, I still managed to make something for everyone else. With no food prep done that turned in to using different variations of processed or frozen food, which then becomes eating out from time to time or getting take out. The good and bad of now living in town. Then comes either skipping the occasional breakfast or stopping at Tim's and grabbing a coffee and breakfast sandwhich.

     I had grown to be a pretty big advocate for close to source eating and the benefits that come with that and had somehow slowly gotten away from it. The difference that eliminating or at least reducing processed food makes on both your mental and physical health is amazing. The better the fuel the cleaner the fire. All of this then leads us to the current state. Feeling more stress instead of being able to deal with it. Being tired more than I should. Not being able to get up as early as I had grown accustom to. And finally missing some obligations that six months ago I would have never let myself do.

     Last week I had made the decision that April would be different. That I would force myself back in to the good habits that I had learned over the past couple of years. Reflecting on everything that was said at yesterdays meeting solidified this decision for me. 

     Being part of a team makes everything a little easier, and I would like to thank you all for that.