Eyes on the road

I’m a huge racing fan and through the career I’ve chosen, I’ve been lucky enough to get some time on racetracks and learn the very basics of driving a race car.  The very first lesson I was taught happened well before I was behind the wheel.  I was told by my instructor that safety was above all else.  That kind of goes without saying but when you flying down the race track as high speeds your not really thinking that much, your more reacting to the situation.  

When my instructor started teaching me about safety he talked A LOT about where I should be looking.  He said if you look where you want to go, you’ll go there.  Sounds simple enough but then he added on.  If your looking just in front of your car your not going to be able to see the cars that are a few lengths in front of me nor am I able to see the upcoming corner.  That corner comes up so quickly and if you want to get around it safely and with speed you need to see it coming, place the car where it needs to be, brake and downshift then hit the apex. If you do all of these things correctly you’ll hit the apex and carry the speed out of the corner.  

If I move my eyes too far down the track how can that be a bad thing?  I’m looking far down the track too see how far the next car is in front of me, I’m looking to position my car where it needs to be in two turns down the track.  Doesn’t seem like a bad idea right?  Nope not the best either.  If I’m constantly looking that far ahead I’m missing the small details in the track that are right in front of me.  Missing these small details will scrub speed off of my car and ultimately slow me down and or I’ll miss the corner and off the track goes my car.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about racing and how it relates to my Kung Fu.  I believe they’re almost identical in how I approach my vision to my training and the track.  I have a set of goals and promises that I made at the start of this year.  These are the same as looking down the track with the right amount of vision.  They’re in front of me but they aren’t too far away as I’ve broken down the requirements into daily goals.  If I looked at the 50,000 push up target as one big number that would be like looking at turn nine when I’m turning into turn two.  Now if I focus only on push ups and sit ups and nothing else then I’ll make that turn but I’m missing what’s ahead of me because I’m so focused on that micro target.  I’d be happy that I made the number at the end of the year but I was so slow that I didn’t finish the race.

There is balance to my training this year.  I have my promises and they are in front of me.  Not too close that I can’t see anything else but far enough a way that I can make the corner, carry the speed and set myself up for the next.  

Mr. Repay

I don't want to train, I train.

This is something I've heard over and over for a very long time but before I got to the parking lot I started to forget about it. It's a simple concept that I've only started to put into practise. 

I will grade for my black belt this year.  

I will not be able to do that if I don't start to control my training. I can't rely on talent alone of which my Kung Fu skills are no where near being good enough anyway. 

I must accept that I need to apply myself to train in a way that's sustainable daily.  This morning I most certainly didn't want to train. However there was something nagging at me in the back my brain.  Something that kept getting louder and louder so that I couldn't ignore it anymore. It was the promise I made to myself, that promise of mastery. Down I went into my training hall and started to train.  Slowly at first, just swinging my stick and loosening up.  Things started to feel better, looser and then they felt great!  I did what I needed to do, more because I want to live up to that promise I made to myself than anything else.  

Mr. Repay

I am a teacher

 I think if I could do things over as a career, I’d be a teacher. Being a teacher comes with a lot of responsibility and good teachers understand that. I look at myself as a teacher that practises empathy and can bring out the best in people. I really enjoy teaching and I find that when I’m in that role I learn more than I think the person I’m teaching is learning. Perhaps we’re getting the same amount but in different ways? I recently joined the level one class in which I hadn’t attended in over a year. I was back in a place I forgot how much I enjoyed. I really liked watching all the students learn and adapt to what they were being taught. I could see the raw talent but also how they looked at their kung fu in ways I’d forgotten.  Then came the opportunity to teach. I wasn’t the sifu leading the class but yet I felt that I could help and contribute to some of the students. It was such a great feeling to help them with that technique and then watch them grow from my little bit of help for the rest of the class.

There was one time in my life that I want to share that’s changed my life forever. It’s when I moved to Winnipeg and was a partner in a business there. I arrived to a very broken and dysfunctional group of people. I must say that these were some of what people told me were “the worst of the worst” in the industry and to be honest a lot of them were, expect for Joey. Joey was a young man with a young family trying to do his best to support them. He wasn’t happy in the current role and when I asked him what he wanted to do he said he always enjoyed selling but no one gave him the opportunity. You see everyone in that shop didn’t think much of him and bullied him at times. I decided on the spot that I was going to take him out the next day and teach him how to sell. He was rough around the edges but he had some key personality characteristics that I liked. He was sincere and genuine and understood how to look after people the right way. My job was to teach him the other aspects of selling but it was worth it as I knew he’d succeed. And sure enough he became the best salesman on my team, but what happened next shook me to the core. One Saturday his wife and kids came to pick him up at the end of his shift. His wife came over to talk to me and thanked me for believing in Joey and giving him an opportunity to do sales. Then she said “It changed his/our lives”.

This is the most powerful and humbling things all at the same time. Being a teacher is so important to me as a kung fu martial artist but it’s also just as powerful in my life outside the kwoon. Thank you, Joey.

Mr. Repay

Participation & Engagment

With today being the lunar new year I'm taking a brief looking back on last year.  When I mean brief I do mean brief as there isn't anything I can do about last year.  When I create business reviews for my clients I limit the review on past years business to no more than 15% of my total time.  I'm much more focused on the year in front of my clients than what's behind them.  I can't change the past for my clients so why spend so much time dweling on it? We're focused on what we can do together and the plan for the upcoming year.  Guess what's needed for the plan to succeed?  Yup everyone has to participate and live up to thier commitments that we've made to each other. 

My lack of partcipation with my training and more importantly my team was abysmal.  Because I wasn't participating on a regular basis I started to feel myself pull away and dis engage for long periods of time.  I'd gotten to the point that I was a hairs breath away from throwing in the towel on my Kung Fu journey.  It's hard to admit that becuase Kung Fu has become such a posative part of my life for almost twelve years and yet I was ready to walk away.

When I look back, I can clearly see that most important thing I needed to do was participate more.  I gave myself so many excuses to justify that Kung Fu wasn't for me anymore.  The more I told myself this the more I fell backwards and disengaged even more.  

That's the key to most everything isn't it, partcipating?  Showing up and and taking part with like minded individuals is all I need to stay the course and see the benefits of my Kung Fu.  I just need to make sure that I'm participating but I see it as a key part, no the most important part to staying engaged.  

Mr. Repay

Throwing kicks in the kitchen while boiling eggs.

 By reading the title of this blog your probably thinking waaaaaaaa????

I forgot how much fun it was to throw kicks in my kitchen.  I used to do this all the time and I actually got a lot out of this.  Let me explain, when your cooking in the kitchen there are all sorts of sharp and hot things all around you.  

Like this morning when I was cooking some boiled eggs for breakfast.  Hot pot of boiling water on the front burner of my stove.  Right next to the stove I thought it would be fun to practice a part of Loa Gar.  The part where there is a low kicking block followed by a palm sweeping block then the crane's wings with a front thrust kick.  I love how this flows so I started to play around with it WHILE the pot of boiling water was bubbling away right next to me.  

I was aware that it was there but I was also away of my technique all at the same time.  I found this "dual" awareness pretty cool and I loosely likened it to a bit of self defense.  When I reflected back on this, it has similarities to a multiple attacker scenario.  I would have to be aware of my surroundings while at the same time execute my techniques with precision.

Pretty cool realization and it all came from throwing kicks in my kitchen.

Mr. Repay

Year of the stick

 2022 is going to be the year of the stick for me.  This is the weapon that I’ve chosen for the Year of the Tiger.  Interestingly this is the first weapon I learned and the the one I want to master in the run up to my black belt grading. 

I’ve been drawn to hinged weapons (nunchucks to be exact) as I liked watching Bruce Lee movies as a kid.  They’re flashy and super cool.  The stick at first glance doesn’t look like a flashy style of weapon.  But I won’t let looks deceive me as I feel that the stick is a very cool weapon in it’s own right.  I’m pretty confident that a skilled martial artist can more than hold his own using a stick against nunchucks.

Last nights class was pretty amazing.  I hadn’t really picked up my stick (oh and it showed lol) in a long time.  However after a few minutes of getting to know each other we felt good together.  I enjoyed dusting off the HUGE amounts of cob webs from the stick form.  By the end of the night I was feeling a lot better and today I picked up my stick and kept going. I’m really enjoying the movements of the form, I can feel both the connection and disconnection of the six harmonies.  There are moments when things feel really good and there are a few more moments where they don’t.  

I’m grateful to have this next year to work on mastering the stick.  There are so many things that I’m going to learn and perfect along the way.  The best part of training with my stick is it makes the rest of my Kung Fu that much better.

Mr. Ian Repay

Time

This is the #1 most important thing in my life.  I never realized how important time is but I'm guessing many of us don't.  I also think that we all get to the realization but for some it's often too late.  I've spent most of my adult life chasing things I thought were more important than time.  Money being at the top of the list becuase I really didn't have much of it.  I chased prestige and titles at the expense of time with my family.  I thought that in order to be happy I needed to have more money and more "stuff".  How very very wrong I was.  What I needed was to find a balance between money and time spent on the things that truly matter.  

For many years I made decions based on chasing that "wealth goal" because when you don't have much of it you think this will solve your problems and deliver happiness.  It also doesn't help growing up and living in a society that preaches consumerism and wealth.  Chasing money and wealth consumed me for a good portion of my life.

Not anymore and not for the past few years.  I've come to realize that time is the most valuable thing in my life.  I have absolutley no idea how much more of it I have in front of me.  What good is all of the money in the world if I sacrificed time to get it?  What will I have lost?  What I enjoy the most is the time with my family, my wife, my children and being able to have the flexability to do the things that make me happy with them.  I wouldn't trade my current career for 10X the salary if it meant that I'd have to give up what I have right now.  Remember the old saying "careful what you wish for?", it's true.  There are times when opportunities are presented to me that make me take a step back.  At these moments in my life I really think and weigh the opportunity against my current situation.  I'm extra careful to weigh the pros and the cons and I make decisons based on what's most important to me and not for my ego.  And that's time.  

Mr. Ian Repay