What motivates you?

So you have had your breakfast, you are enjoying a nice cup of tea and you are planning your day. At what moment, in what thought pattern, do you get up and begin your day? You have many things to do and sitting around means some of them won't get done. What gets you up and moving?
I used to be one of those people that would sit and think of all the things that I had to get done and not move. The longer I sat the more disappointed I would get in myself for not getting up and moving it. As you can imagine, this was not a very successful life pattern. When I first started setting goals for myself, that is Kung Fu goals, I would go through a similar experience daily. Sometimes, I would get a little training in, but most days, I would not. This would set me up for a day, sometimes a week, of doing nothing. I had no faith in my ability to stick to a schedule, practice, do the things that I needed/wanted to do. It was like, I had so many things to do, that I was overwhelmed by it and did nothing.
So, what did I do? Well, I set my daily expectations to something small that I could accomplish no matter what was happening in my life. At that point, I couldn't look at the big goals, I could only focus on what I needed to do every day. Each day I contributed towards my big goal in some way and my confidence in my ability to follow my plan grew. I slowly added more things to my daily expectations until I was participating in the plan that I had set for myself. Some that is super smart,once told me that it is all about keeping promises to yourself. That is so true. When I get up and I do my push ups and sit ups each day before I do anything else, I am keeping a promise to myself and I carry that feeling around all day long. It also makes accomplishing many other things, a walk in the park because I have that trust in me already so I just get 'er done.

Searching.......

What am I looking for? What is the purpose of my journey?
At first, I wasn't sure, I engulfed myself with the physical, making sure that I was so busy I wouldn't have time for much reflection. I did add in some goals that would require reflection but sort of hoped that I could fake my way through those without any serious work. (I am trying to be as honest with myself as possible). I had thought about the end of the journey and what it would look like many times, it always involved dreaming about my physical accomplishments, nothing more. The reality is, I am looking for me. The last couple of weeks have revolved around figuring out which direction to go and receiving lots of advise and not knowing what to follow. This lead to the question, which way do I want to go and what would be best for me? I have no idea! I feel so out of touch with who I am that I don't think that I have the ability to make a decision based on what is best for me.
What do I think? What do I know? I feel lost in a sea of doubt. I am overwhelmed by the tasks that I have taken on. I am not sure that I have what it takes to complete my goals, right now it seems like too much. How do I find me in all of this? When I look too closely, I don't always like what I see, that scares me and I stop looking. I return to the physical because that is something that I am comfortable with. Should I keep pushing the physical and hope that the rest works itself out? Should I expand my journey so that I reflect more on me and what I really need to do to feed my soul?
The answer is yes. Don't stop, keep searching, striving, working, growing. One day, there will be more answers than questions.

Conflicted

So here I sit staring at the blinking cursor again. I am not sure what to write about because I have some conflict going on in my life and I am not sure how to deal with it. This then seeps into everything, creating a feeling of unsureness about everything. It is not catastrophic, just a shadow of doubt. I am not letting it control my world but I can definitely feel the effects of it. My training week was difficult, I seemed to have to really fight to find time to train and then when I got down to it, the energy, focus and intensity was not that great. When everything is going well in my world, I think that I am in control and nothing can stop me now. When I run into little glitches, I think that there is no control and I don't know where to turn to re-establish it. I am only now beginning to realize how black and white I am, in regards to how I react to the world around me. It's like I have two setting good or bad, no in between. So the eternal question is, how to I create internal harmony, regardless of the world around me? I know that I can not create harmony for anyone else. The struggle begins and ends with how do I limit my reaction to what is happening around me. Do I face adversity and gain experience on how to handle it? Do I protect myself from conflict until I feel strong enough to deal with it? How will I get stronger if I don't test and push myself? How do I get stronger if I am constantly testing that strength by welcoming adversity? I don't have any answers, just more questions.
These are the things that have been plaguing my mind for nearly two weeks. I think/hope that if I set aside the dilemma for now, the answers will come to me.

What to write.....

So I have no idea what to write this week. It seems like it has been a long time since I face this struggle. I wasn't sure at first how to deal with it, but I have decided to start writing and see what comes out.
My training was great.
Thirty minutes later....
Okay I don't have anything to say, til next week.
Work hard and have fun.

It's about what you don't see

It sort of felt like cheating the other day when I posted my May assignment as a blog posting. So here are some thoughts on that.
I have been thinking a lot about mastery in the last couple of weeks. Partly due to the assignment to memorize Stewart Emery's thoughts on mastery and partly because I really thought about the words that I was committing to memory. It is about a bit more than expecting more of yourself than others do, it is about doing it. I thought it would be about others noticing a difference but it's not, it is about affecting that difference. It is about countless hours of practice anywhere and anytime. It is about breaking down techniques and forms and putting them back together. It is about not only having an eye for detail but knowing exactly what that means and how it feels.
I had a rather romantic idea of what it would be like on the journey to black belt, I thought about the thank you speech, the sense of accomplishment and the sense of relief. I did not realize that it would be about what you don't see, the dedication and determination that I need to rely on each day to accomplish my daily goals.
So on the road to mastery, it is important to surround yourself with people who expect more of you than you do and to rid your environment of mediocrity. It is also important to work hard every day, regardless of how you feel and what is going on in your head or your life.

Mastery by Stewart Emery

Mastery in our career and consciousness simply requires that we constantly produce results beyond the ordinary. Mastery is the result of consistently going beyond our limits. For most people, it starts with technical excellence in a chosen field and a commitment to that excellence. If you are willing to make a commitment to excellence and surround yourself with things that represent excellence and pursue events and experiences that become miracles, your life will change. ( When we speak of miracles, we speak of events and experiences in the real world that are beyond the ordinary).

It is remarkable how much mediocrity we live with, surrounding ourselves with daily reminders that the average is acceptable. Our world suffers from terminal mediocrity. Take a moment to assess all the things around you that encourage you to remain average. These things keep you powerless, unable to go beyond the limits that you have arbitrarily set for yourself. Take you first steps towards mastery by removing everything in your environment the represents mediocrity, removing your arbitrary limits. Try surrounding yourself with friends that expect more of you than you do. Didn't some of your best teachers, your coaches, your parents expect more of you?

On the path to mastery, erase any resentment towards masters. Develop compassion for yourself so that you can be in the presence of masters and grow from the experience .Rather than comparing yourself and resenting people who are masters, remain open and receptive; a let the experience be like planting a seed within you - with nourishment, it will grow into your own individual mastery.

Correction is essential in power and mastery. You see, we are all ordinary. But a master, rather in condemning himself for his ordinariness, he embraces his ordinariness and uses it as a foundation to build the extraordinary. Instead of giving up, like ordinary people do, a master uses his ordinariness to correct his errors, which is essential in the process towards attaining mastery. You must be able to correct yourself without condemning or invalidating yourself, accept the results and improve upon them.

Correct, don't protect.