Perspective

 I’ve blogged about this in the past but this is something that keeps coming back to the forefront.  What’s my perspective?  It changes and shifts every single moment.  It’s affected by my environment, the people around me, the noise of society yet I have the ability to choose my perspective.  This is the great thing about being a human, we have choice.  With that choice comes consequences and we have to be able to accept them if we want to have free choice.  With those consequences comes perspective, they are completely and 100% linked.  

My wife and I have recently taken some holidays together and it was amazing.  We never set an agenda we just did what we wanted to do in that moment.  This was a little odd as I’m kind of a person that likes having a “loose” agenda.  However we didn’t have one of those and it was perfect!  I was able to get some training in, some forms practise but most importantly I was able to just enjoy being in the moment.  I was able to tune out the noise from society, the constant pull of the mobile device and just enjoy the moment.  I was able to evaluate my perspective on a lot things both Kung Fu related and non with most things having Kung Fu woven into them in some way.  

I realized during this time that my perspective has changed from chasing money and title most commonly known as “The American/Canadian Dream” to chasing time.  The ability to realize that I have enough money, enough stuff but never enough time.  Perhaps I’ve come to this realization because I’m at the mid point in my life?  It doesn’t matter to me why it just matters that I have realized this, finally.  I want more than anything to enjoy life, the smells, the tastes, the moment.  I’ve finally found peace with myself, a place and time that I’m truly happy both work and personally.  I can’t tell you why it’s taken this long other than I was always looking at the other side of the fence, what everyone else had and what I thought I wanted.  By doing this it affected my perspective.  You see I felt that I needed a title, more money etc to be happy when I didn’t need that at all.  

I just needed to change my perspective.

Mr. Repay

Public training

 I want to say that I really enjoy training in public but I don’t.  I actually enjoy the public demos we do as a group and I really really enjoy public speaking.  So it’s hard to understand the reasons for not enjoying training in public?  I’m feeling that are a few things coming into play and the one that I think is most prevalent is shyness.  I guess when I’m by myself I feel this emotion and I pull back and retreat.  However this is also odd as I don’t have any issues striking up a conversation with complete strangers and I actually enjoy this “on the spot” sort of conversation.  So then this must not be all of the reason.

Is is self confidence?  Perhaps as I don’t always think that my forms are worthy of display.  This was touched on by Sifu Brinker in last nights class when he asked if anyone thought their forms were black belt level, mine are not.  So if I think this is the case I also think that most people watching me are going to laugh at how bad my stances are, how low my kicks are and how pitiful my form looks as a whole.   I know this isn’t the case as so few people actually are martial artists and those that are are, are very kind and helpful.  I think about what I would do if I came across someone practising their martial art in a public park.  I would watch, intrigued by their form, the foot work the flow of the form itself.  I would wait for them to finish and I may or may not walk up to them and compliment them and ask them about their style.  Or I may just quietly walk away letting them enjoy their training time.  One thing I wouldn’t ever do is judge, laugh or critique them.  So if this is the way I would handle myself as a traditional martial artist then I must assume that most other martial artists would do the same.  

I’m limiting myself and I have to stop and I’ve slowly begin to change my thinking. Last week I was with my daughter in the mountains with some of her horse training friends.  I took some time to do some of my forms while they went ahead to the next part of their course.  While I was doing my forms some people walked by, none stopped to watch me and no one said anything to me.  I was surprised as I had these pre conceived notions going through my head.  I finished up and rejoined the group, no one said anything to me and we all went about our business.  Now there are some limits that I will still impose and one of those is public training with my nunchucks.  These are a prohibited weapons in Canada and I’m extremely careful with them.  Right now my wife and I are camping in provincial park and tonight is our IHC class.  I want to break them out but I won’t just because of the environment that I’m in.  This won’t stop me from practicing Loa Gar which is my IHC form.  The harder part is finding a better internet connection but that’s the least of my concerns right now.

I’ve been missing opportunities to train just because I’ve self imposed limits based on pre conceived notions that just aren’t there.  I’ve started to change my perspective =)

Mr. Repay

Mr. Repay

Struggling...with weight.

This is something that has been both motivating and demotivating at the same time. Last summer I was cruising with motivation. I was back at the Kwoon and I was losing weight and feeling great.  I was feeling and seeing results which is such a motivating factor.  Then I slowly stopped doing the things that made me successful.  The second lockdown happened, no more Kwoon and straight into the holidays and eating terrible.  This cascaded itself into the next six months of not training consistently and eating terribly. 

The success that I had when I was losing weight was tracking what I ate, mindfully eating and doing it with my wife. Together we would share what each other was eating and most importantly we meal planned and cooked together. 

Yesterday was one of those days that really made me realize that I need to make a change for my health. I had an in person (what are those lol) yesterday.  Now I had to put my suit back on and it didn't fit well.  I also noticed that I'm getting pain in my knees that I've never really felt before.  This is my body telling me that I've got too much weight on my joints. 

My wife and I had a great discussion and together we are going to get back to it.  We've set a large goal and a few small goals along the way.  We are doing this together.  Together we're going to have some fun and work toward getting our health back to where we want it to be.

Mr. Repay