What UBBT has done for me...........

Being part of the UBBT 7 team has changed how I approach my training, my training has brought me to a place that has changed me and how I approach life. Do I need to say more than that? Well, perhaps a little.
At the beginning of the year, I was very sick and could not do anything physical. I wanted to withdraw from the team but Sifu Brinker assured me that we would work it out. At the time, not being able to do anything for three months seemed like a lot of lost time and I questioned how I would reach any of my goals. I wasn't even sure that I could complete the acts of kindness requirement unless being nice to my dogs all day long counted. Sifu Brinker said, Do what you can. So I started slow, real slow, painfully slow, so slow that the seniors at the track were lapping me. I kept on blogging, although it felt like complaining with a little whining mixed in. And I kept up with my written assignments for class. All these things kept me engaged in my training and feeling like I was a part of the team. Being a part of the team was definitely what kept me going when I didn't think that I had it in me to do so. I gradually increased my training until I was doing between two and three hours a day. I am not sure if I would have accomplished as much if I wouldn't have increased slowly, I think that I would have gone charging out of the gates and run out of steam early. I have learned to listen to my body and push hard when I can and take it easy when I have to. I am still amazed at how much training I manage to fit in every day, and I do it because I want to not because I think that I should or that someone else wants me to do it. I like how I feel when I have put in concentrated effort every day to improve my kung fu.
I am learning to control parts of me that I thought were just parts of me that I can't do anything about. Like my feelings, my thought process and changing how you think so that you can have more confidence and try more things. Meditation and learning to consistently give positive messages to myself have made a huge difference in my life. I have learned to release my inner ninja.
I did not reach all of my goals and that is okay. I learned so much from each and everyone of them that I think that they are each a success. The real value in each goal is the journey trying to reach it, not necessarily reaching it. I learned to improve my eye for detail by paying attention to how I was feeling when I did a move or a form. I learned to break down my forms into small pieces so that I could figure how I wanted to move. I learned about working towards mastery when I decided to improve just one of my forms. I learned that I need my training to be a balance between class time, alone time and partner time. This could go on and on but I will stop here. As promised, UBBT 7 has changed me and how I approach my training for the rest of my life.
Until next week, work hard and have fun.

Turning Point

A life changing decision. How does one know when they are making such a decision? I am not really sure, I can say that it is not easy. You have to dig down deep and ask yourself, 'What do I really want?' without considering anyone else. The answer will probably come easy and quick, if you are really listening, and then comes the hard part.....acting on that decision. Even though the turning point was making the decision, the strength came in the telling. The more I explain myself the stronger I fell about the decision that I made.
I have wanted something so bad that I have changed my lifestyle, put pressure on all my relationships and worked harder than I ever have before. I came to realize that what I thought that I wanted wasn't the case at all. What I was striving for was the journey not the end result. Now I am embracing the journey.
I am not sure how to teach that to anyone else, I have heard that it is about the journey many times but I didn't really understand until I lived it. I guess I just answered my own question, the best way to teach it is to live.
Until next week, work hard and have fun!

Our (My) Troops

Support is an interesting concept.

When my brother returned from Afghanistan (in one piece), he explained to me what it is really like to be in a modern war. One of his comments was, it is not like those WWW II movies I always made you watch. It is like nothing I had imagined or could be fully trained for. It is nearly impossible to fight an enemy you can't see or protect a country when a bomb could go off in your face at any minute, but they keep going and continue to try to figure it out.

My oldest brother joined the Army more than twenty-five years ago and trained his whole life to protect us. He has spent years and years learning and sometimes teaching the best way to protect his country. When I expressed my concerns about him going to Afghanistan, he consoled me by explaining that he has been training his whole life for this opportunity. He feels privileged to serve his country, he calls it an opportunity!!! Imagine that?

My youngest brother is in the Army Reserves, he spent most of his summer training to protect us. He talks about his summer with pride and passion, he says that he missed his family but they understood what he had to do. He is not just saying that, his kids are very proud of their dad and the fact that he spends so much time training. They were excited that they had a short five day holiday to hang out with their dad.

So how do we support these people? I used to think that just being nice would work, but you also need to show some understanding that they have been through life-changing events and acceptance that they would do it again and again, regardless of the personal sacrifice. I have met many people that support our soldiers and they all do so in their own unique, successful way. Let's keep telling them that we appreciate that they fight so that we can live the way that we do.

These people are my living heroes.

Diet vs Kung Fu

My doctor and I have had a few discussions about my weight and thought we had come up with a strategy to decrease it. There is a program that was created by a doctor for athletes (sounds great so far) and it is high in protein and low in carbs ( I can live with that) and you have to do virtually no exercise in order for your body to burn fat (that's just not my reality). Let me explain; the diet provides you with enough energy to survive and burn fat instead of just carbs all the time. If you do any exercise (kung fu) then your body uses the energy it was going to use for fat burning, for the energy that you are expending. So I have been faced with a choice, do I go on this diet and not do any kung fu until I have reached my weight goal or do I scrap the diet and continue on with the life style that I love? It was a no-brainer, I couldn't even say take a break from kung fu without the words getting stuck in my throat. I didn't realize until I had decided to stop the diet that I had done it again. I said that I wasn't going to go on any more diets because I had my obsession over food under control. I had myself convinced that because my doctor recommended it and it was healthy that it wasn't really a diet. I was wrong, I quickly fell into old habits of punishing and rewarding myself with food. I need to re-group and make a better plan so that I don't get off track again. Clearly, my work in this area is not over, but I continue to move forward. I am sure that it looks like the same thing over and over again on the outside but on the inside I learn a little bit more about me and how I work each time I try something new.
Until next time, work hard and have fun.

Where do we go from here? Forward, of course!

I have no idea what to write about. Hmmmm.... I wonder how many times that has been the first line in one of my lengthy blogs? I am feeling like I should write something but I am not sure what it is, so I decided to start writing and see what comes up.
I am not where I thought I would be today, I thought that I would be past the test and working towards a similar but slightly different goal. Instead, I find myself refocusing, re-planning the next 300 days and trying to figure out what needs to change in my training regiment, if anything. For now, I am continuing on in my training, practicing my techniques, my forms and my kicks. I am paying attention to how I am feeling and what I am doing. I am staying in the moment as much as possible and I feel like I am at the beginning of something fabulous. Have you ever had the feeling? I have been so excited about where my Kung Fu is and where it is taking me for the past two months that I can hardly contain myself some days. I want everyone to experience this amazing feeling. I believe the prescription is hard work, dedication and keeping promises to yourself. As I look back over the past year or two and try to describe how I got to this point, I think of working on specific parts of a form over and over again, staying engaged in my training when I was too sick to participate, and getting going when I could and sometimes didn't feel like it. There were a few times when I trudged off to my workout, not really in the spirit of accomplishing anything other than the promise to myself that I would go. Those were some of my most amazing workouts, I usually discovered something ground breaking about how I moved, or ran an extra mile with energy and vigor. I am happy with what I have accomplished over the past little while and I look forward to learning more about improving myself and my world as I continue on with my journey.
Okay, so it wasn't that long!
Until next week, work hard and have fun.