This is my journey

This is the first year that I'm really feeling like this is my journey.  I'm no longer comparing myself to the rest of the student body like I had in the past.  I've realized this isn't a race to black belt.  It's the journey to black belt and beyond that's most important to me.  In the past I couldn't care less about the journey, I just wanted to get there.  I've realized that I missed so many important things along the way.  Maturity along with humbleness through failure has allowed me to really focus on my journey.  

I'm embracing a concept called "seek first to understand before being understood". It's helping me develop empathy and patience where in my past I would've interrupted people mid sentence.  I wanted my views or comments to be heard.  This was 100% ego talking.  

I've also realized that my journey isn't completely mine alone.  I share this journey with my friends, my I Ho Chuan team and my family. I'm happy with where I am right now.  I'm happy embracing the journey and I'm going to soak up everything that it has in store for me.

Mr. Repay 

Student of Silent River Kung Fu

Month one in the books

With one month officially over for the year of the Rat I want to take some time to reflect on how it's currently going.

What's working?

- Mentally I'm in the best shape I've ever been in a I Ho Chuan year.  I'm not experiencing too many highs or lows.  I'm approaching this year with a "steady as she goes" approach and I'm liking the results.

- Physically I'm getting stronger.  My back pain has almost disappeared due to the strength I'm building from the physical requirements.

- Online presence is important to me.  I've tried to leave meaningful comments on as many posts and blogs as I can.  This helps me stay engaged with the team and the school.

- Blogging is my absolute strength this year.  In the past it was my weakness.  This year I'm writing as many topics and feelings that enter my mind.  I keep a bunch of them in my draft folder in various states of completion.  Using the Blogger app has been so helpful as I use my mobile phone for almost anything.

- Tracking the numbers.  This is the first year that I've been dilegent in recording everything.  I think this has a lot to do with my sales CRM habits.  I've applied the same attitude toward recording my numbers as I would sales calls.  It's helped so much.

Where am I failing?

- Spanish - I haven't kept up using Duo Lingo to help learn Spanish.  Perhaps Sifu Cosgrove and I can help each other with this?

- Acts of kindness.  I know I do them, I just don't record them.  I need to come up with a way of remembering to record them, anyone have some suggestions?

-Class attendance - this is a tough one as I do travel a lot for work.  Right now I'm on a three week stretch where I haven't been home for more than a couple of days.  Working on my Kung Fu on my own is ok.  It's been better this year than previous years but I still miss the kwoon and my friends.  The Kwoon is a massive battery charger for me.

Finally here are my totals.  I can't recall that I ever posted my totals in past years.  However this is the best way to be accountable for my efforts or lack there of. 

Totals
Push ups 1400
Sit ups 1400
7 hours 20 minutes of Spanish
21 - Loa gar 1
19 - Loa Gar 123
22 - Da Mu Sing 123
6 - Kenpo 123
115 - 18 temple motions
3 - Hung 12
34 - rounds of sparing
1 - Random act of kindness
6 - Bokken form
5km - walked

Sourounding myself with positive people

I've started to see the impact that the people I souround myself have on me.  I didn't think that people could have that much positive and negative impact.  I see now that I only want to souround myself with people that truly care, share the same morals and ethics as me.  I find myself wanting to distance myself from certain people that have a negative attitude.  They bring me down and they don't have any value.  I don't want this to come across as extremely cold but I've realized that my time here is finite.  If I truly want to live the life that I want I need to live it with people that are living the same way as me.  Kung Fu has ingrained it's self into me so deeply that I can't ever unwind it from my soul even of I wanted to.  My wife has seen the positive impact on me as a husband.  My kids see me in a different and better light than ever before.  I owe this all to them and SRKF and the people that I've trained with and train with every day.  You see the people that choose to stay and make king Fu part of thier life are the people I want in my life.

Mr. Ian Repay

Student of Silent River Kung Fu

Emotional Bank Account

I've had this topic in my drafts for a number of weeks.  Today seemed to be the right time to write about it as Mr. Bjorkquist and I had a good conversation about it during open training.  

The concept comes from Stephen Covey.  It's about interactions with people and building relationships.  Consider this, if you spend all of your money before you get paid, do you have anything left until then?  Maybe, what if you have an overdraft.  Let's say you have an overdraft and you keep withdrawthing are you now in a negative balance?  Yes we are and this philosphosy can be applied to realtionships.  Everytime we do what we say,  we make a deposit and increase our balance within that relationship.  Help that person with a project, deposit.  We should always be working toward increasing our balance with people.  But what happens when we don't keep our word or lie for example?  We then have made a withdrawal in that relationship.  Same thing applies when we insult someone, don't show empathy etc.  Do we always know when we're making deposits and withdrawals?  No. There are times, especially when we're not empathetic towards that person they perceive our actions as a withdrawal.  While we saw it as a deposit.  I've found that if I apply mindful empathy then I'm likely to make more deposits than withdraws.  

I love this concept and I'm starting to have it present in my mind every day.

Mr. Repay

Student of Silent River Kung Fu

Martial Art's isn't only about winning in the cage.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube recently as I'm trying to get some ideas for my bokken form.  As you start searching for videos Google gets to start recommending videos it thinks are related.  Some of the suggested videos are titled "why traditional martial arts don't work".  You have a "guy" talking about why the traditional martial arts don't work on the street or in the cage.  He bases all of his arguments on this philosophy which is knocking out or submitting your apponent inside the cage.   He shows how a couple of  "traditional martial artists" are beaten against a MMA fighter.  What he's showing in my opinion is just fighting.  It doesn't show the other intangible benefits of traditional martial arts.  

The traditional martial arts have taught me how to live a better life.  How to reduce my ego.  They've taught me empathy and how to become a better man.  Do I think I can get into a cage and beat a guy who's only trained to punch, kick and grapple but may lack empathy?  No I don't think so and that's ok with me.  I love my traditional Kung Fu training because of the exact opposite of this.  It's not all about kicking and punching, it's about being a well rounded, confident and overall better person.

Mr. Ian Repay

Student of Silent River Kung Fu