Any road won't get you where you want to go.

 I realized that for a lot of my life I used to sort of float along in the wind, content to go where the wind blew in certain aspects of my life.  I'm not a person that embraces structure even though I see the benefit of it.  Way back when I started baking and managing a bakery there was this boss that was all about structure.  I remember when he would come into my bakery asked me "Ian, where's your list?"  This listed all the things I needed to get made for the day in priority from top to bottom.  Needless to say I rarely had a list and if I did it wasn't prioritized.  I fought against this as I felt I didn't need one, I knew what needed to get done and I would make it happen.  Thinking back on this, it my ego that was running my life and it wasn't about to be ruled by a list.

I've realized that if I want to be successful in my personal or professional life I will need to make a few "lists".  This isn't always about making a list but more it talks about adding some structure to my life.  I can't earn my black belt just by floating on the breeze, it just won't happen.  I remember that Sifu Brinker said that black belts are "control freaks".  They want to control almost every aspect of their lives and this comes from the adaptation of structure.  

This morning a group of us candidates got together on Zoom to run through the kick portion of the grading test.  I must say, I wasn’t looking forward to it and in my mind I was looking for excuses to not participate.  I have this bad habit of thinking the worst which is a departure from my mostly positive attitude.  I am very thankful I took part because I did better than I thought I would.  I even got my wife to come and participate by holding the bag and helping keep count.  Having her there was sooooooo important to me as she is my support and motivation to keep going when I don’t want to.  

Because of today I now have a “baseline” for where I am with my kicks. I’m a data nerd so I’ve already made a spreadsheet with way too many columns just to see the data as I want to see it.  I might even make a pivot table which is WAYYYYYY too much but that’s just me.  This brings me back to the start of the blog, I now have a list of things that I need to accomplish every day and I’m consistently logging those numbers.  I can’t be successful in life or in Kung Fu by just floating in the wind.  I feel that this structure has changed my life for the better and I just need keep bringing out the inner control freak.

Mr. Repay