The Menu of Life. Life is likely not going to go as planned. Your life well, it does what it does and as much as you plan, things change.
As much as you are an excellent planner, setting out that trajectory, establishing those goals, implementing them one after another successively. As you are moving towards that goal with values in assessments all taking place, well life has other plans. You say, “I’ll do this and as a result, this will happen.” It doesn’t always go that way.
We’re all mature enough to know things don’t go our way, but here’s a way to reframe that experience. Planners can experience frustration when things don’t go the way they’ve been planned. There’s anxiety, fear, “It’s not supposed to go this way!” is the response. We could call that reaction immature but that’s not realistic, and a little naïve.
Reframe The Baking, Let’s Cook
Let’s reframe this let’s rethink of it in terms of food preparation. You see life is cooking, it’s not baking. Cooking you can fudge a little, change the ingredients. You can add a little here, take away something here, adding some pepper to it instead of whatever the recipe says.
One of the ways that you can see this in life is on a restaurant menu. You see the phrase. “Our take,” or “Our spin on a classic pasta dish.” Maybe a Pasta Primavera and our spin on it. That is cooking. You can change the bread of a clubhouse sandwich and still have a clubhouse sandwich.
Errors in Baking
Baking, leave out an ingredient or change one. Switch salt for sugar, they look the same but you don’t get the result you want. Everything is changing. So, life is not baking it’s about cooking it’s about being flexible. Can you change the ingredients can you change the cooking time if you want? Are you flexible enough? If you’re baking you’re not, you’re setting yourself up for rigidity and disappointment. Choose cooking to be flexible and enjoy that meal your cooking.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Organization changes everything and improvement is often unmeasured, it can’t be seen. That means it’s how I feel about my progress and the feeling is often worthless. Bear with me as I lean into aphorisms, and truisms to emphasize my point. The first one and we all know it, “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get done.” This phrase is about creating accountability.
External and Internal Accountability
Creating accountability on an external level and an internal level. We become transparent to our employer or superior. Being accountable to a superior is much easier than being accountable to self. How many times have you said, “That’ll do,” and let something slide that you would not let slide for your employer?
Look at it this way, you get out of bed five days a week to get to work on time, but you sleep in on the weekends. This is not to say you shouldn’t indulge yourself on occasion. It is to point out you are likely to be more accountable to others, than yourself. You are not the driver of your life.
Feelings Are Not Measurable
Just having a feeling about how you doing is not successful. We have bathroom scales to check our waistline. Products come in dimensions or weights. Weather measurements take on many forms. Every one of these forms of measure makes sense. These measurements are necessary and they are all external.
We are not as diligent at the measurements that are our own. The internal measurement. How many things do you eat daily without measurement?
Your improvements need anchoring in the discipline. One form of self-accountability is a review of your actions because self-organization changes everything.
The popular system of Get Things Done makes you take on a daily review of the process. This review process has accountability to self and others.
This principle goes from the business world to the spiritual world. The Daily Examen by the Jesuits is an organizational method as well. You can check out The Daily Examen here.
The Smead Company based out of Hastings Minnesota is built around organizational products and how to use those products.
We thirst for the organization. The popularity of Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizational consultant, is an example of the level at which we desire structure. She has an empire built around clarity of personal space.
We Sorely Want Organization
We desire organization. Organization removes chaos. With lower levels of chaos, we can perform better in our work and our personal lives. We have the opportunity for growth, change, and improvement. The most difficult of those changes is being accountable to one’s self by one’s self is the beginning of the order.
There is no one best way, there are structures and recommendations galore. It is about finding a system that will provide the methods of action for you. You can scour the web, asks friends, find a program that gets the job done for you. Keep in mind you goal and your understanding organization changes everything.
Remember no system will operate unless you commit to it. It is a machine and you are the driver.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
The big 3 Martial Arts rituals are made for Martial Arts Practitioners. But, with some adjustments, you can see how these three principles can be used in other places in life. This is not about specific ways to solve a problem it is about three ways to see behaviors.
These three things are being taken away from you. Three items that are a need within human existence.
The need for adornment, ritual, and art.
Adornment
Human beings have adorned themselves as far back as modern man can trace human existence. Neanderthals created adornment. Neanderthals, who existed some 40,000 years ago felt the need to decorate themselves.
Martial Arts has adornment. We need to add elements, a belt or a patch, the design is to signal the participants, to say, “This is a different experience.” This is different than the one that they engage in the majority of the time. And for us, the Martial Artist, this is a deep aspect of the ritual.
Ritual
Rhythm and ritual are soothing to a child. Ask parents and they can tell you about disruption. An interruption in a child’s ritual will result in disruptive behavior.
Adults are not too far removed from this behavior and it can be observed if one turns their vision to see. Often the moments are simple. It may sound like, “This is not how I take my coffee.” “This seems to be an odd way to prepare, insert a food here.”
The idea of a tour bus for a musical group is to bring a facsimile of home with them, a home away from home. Ritual is important.
Rituals are always creating a comfort level. Comfort reduces stress. No biological life is designed for a consistent state of alert or stress. Most life is calculated for rest. Being in a state of agitation is the opposite of rest. Rituals build assurances into the day that allows for a lower ambient state of alertness.
Yes, an anathema to the martial artist we train to, “Always be aware.” A wild state of watchfulness is not a good way to live. The majority of us don’t live in a world of Hypervigilance, we live in ritual.
Art
Art takes on many arrangements. In its simplest form, art is a way artist show control. An understanding of the environment. Without art we are naked. Naked to the fact we have little control over the elements and the acts of nature.
Exchanging blows with each other. Challenging each other. Working on the bag. Every one of these acts plus others you can list. All these are part of the art, the martial arts.
At its very best art fails to capture the true nature of the subject. Art at best gives a version of the truth seen through the artist’s eyes. Art is art. And art is necessary.
Ornamentation, pattern, and expression are other words to help shape the Big 3 Martial Arts Rituals.
Martial arts provide a direct answer to these three basic needs. Adornment, ritual, and art. And now it is up to us to seize these back from the times in which we live.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Learning agenda. Learning with an agenda is predisposing yourself to a conclusion. This type of learning serves a purpose but it also narrows our lives. We create silos of knowledge and the desire to learn and be entertained. We create silos of knowledge. In those silos, we have a predisposition. We have a planned outcome of our learning agenda and it’s also entertaining.
Take a baseball fan and look at the numbers. The statistics about the game come at you in a hail storm. These numbers mean everything to the baseball fan and to you it likely means little. But you should know the basics of the game. If you are going to the park and watch the game, you’ll enjoy it more, if you understand what is happening on the baseball diamond.
Break Out
The suggestion is we break out. That we take our advice about diversity, about social diversity, about biodiversity. This is understood to be indispensable in the health of all endeavors. Learning with an agenda is learning just enough about baseball to ask a runner to hold on 1st with 2 outs in a full count. Yeah, you don’t do that. If you don’t understand baseball, you don’t know the intricacies of what is transpiring out on the baseball field.
How about biodiversity? Famine and soil depletion are the results of one crop planted repeatedly in the same farmland. People die from lack of food because the overuse or the lack of diversity of the land. Learning with an agenda is narrow and it is also important. I need to study for this test it creates a focus. A focus to find what you want and how it can suit your immediate need. An example is, I have to take a driver’s test. But burst out of that in your personal life find a shoulder item to study.
The Shoulder Item & The Learning Agenda
The shoulder item. Here’s the way to think of that. You’ve got your head and that’s your basic endeavor, let’s say martial arts. A shoulder interest might be on one shoulder, yoga and the other weight lifting. Similar but different endeavors. So, find a shoulder industry. Find a shoulder to study and go ahead and learn something about it. Learn for the sake of educating yourself.
Lidia Valentín Pérez is a Spanish weightlifter, Olympic Champion, 2 time World Champion and 4 time European Champion.
Recently I chose to learn more about Olympic style weightlifting. In particular female Olympic style weightlifting. I got an education and a half. Not only about competition, styles, and philosophies but learned some things that I can use in my day-to-day life.
So, learning with an agenda has a purpose but burst out. Find that shoulder, find that thing and learn about it so that you are diverse. Like the biodiversity, the social diversity, and the cultural diversity, because if you don’t you can see the results.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
Light the Lighthouse. Terror, fear, the pain they create confusion and then we go into survival mode. That’s not new the survival mode, but here’s a way to look at survival mode and how you might deal with it as somebody else is experiencing it.
The Sub-Personality
One way to look at this is as a subordinate personality that’s rising to meet the challenge of the panic, the terror, the fear, and the pain. These personalities are siloed and are not complete. However, they’re housed in the silo, they’re not total.
The fun movie Multiplicity
The person who’s experiencing these extreme traumas searches for the personality that can handle the moment. Once it’s found, Boom! They have an incomplete set of protocols. A set of behaviors that answer the simple question, “Can you make this stop?”
No Arguments
You can’t argue with the subordinate personality. The subordinate personality knows what it knows. It knows how to get what it needs, and will in some instances burn down the barn to roast the pig.
From the outside, this situation looks nasty and well many other terms. A friend of mine says it this way, “Keep the lighthouse lit.” Climb the stairs and light the lighthouse. The people you have lit it for well, they may still crash their ship, but you let the lighthouse.
The Lighthouse You Can Be
You’re standing outside of their frenzy, their fear, their panic, their terror. And you’re lighting a beacon for them to follow. It’s an incredible metaphor for one simple phrase which is “Look over here I can help you if you choose.”
If you find yourself staring into the face of pain confusion fear and seeing it in another’s eyes climb the stairs of your lighthouse.
Lite that lighthouse and do it again, and do it again, and do it again. Because that’s what you can do.
You can climb the stairs and light the lighthouse.
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
The best reasons to attend a martial arts seminar. The reasons are four-fold, COVID has taught us, there is no replacement for being on the floor. Zoom classes are a nice bandage or as a banker might say a bridge loan, something to get us over a hard time.
There is no substitution for being on the floor and crossing hands with another. We gain the perspective of another person. We get to meet and work with others we likely would have never met, even in today’s connected world. The renewed motivation and often a confidence build are the result of spending time and effort at a martial arts seminar.
Flow, Anxiety, and Boredom
Martial arts seminars are challenging. Awhile back I was on the floor working with another martial artist and I had to pause. Holding my hand up I uttered, “Give me a second, I have to work this out.” It was a new way of moving to me. A valid way of moving yet different, I had to get it. A few repetitions and observations from my partner and I had it. Then he did the same thing, “Let me see if I got it.” It was challenging, not uncomfortable, just challenging. and if it wasn’t challenging, I would have dismissed the seminar, “As not that valuable.”
Listening is an interactive skill. We are used to having material substantiate our viewpoint. We like to be correct. But just like many things in life, there can be more than one solution to a situation. The experience of listening, attacking the work, and being listened to, these are invaluable. This combination of experience comes from live interaction, hands-on, and in no other way.
The seminar needs to challenge you, but you have to have just enough skill to do it. That keeps you in the flow state.
Too much difficulty without sufficient ability and you have an environment of anxiety.
Too much skill without enough of a challenge leads to boredom.
Further, you get many proof points you can see. “Are others struggling with this?” or the conversation during the pause in the action. The notes, the observations from other perspectives available in real-time in a, “Feel it,” moment. The seminar becomes multidimensional in leu of a flat linear experience. Yes, you should attend a Martial Arts seminar.
Expert Knowledge
Seminars are events of concentrated experience. You get to study deeply and you get to say, “I like that,” or “No thank you.”
I walked up to a participant at a seminar who was sitting at the end of the bleachers. I want to check with him that all was in order and he was doing well. After a brief conversation, I discovered he was fine. The session offered was not fitting with his system. He did Pencak Silat, an Indonesian form, and what the instructor at the moment was offering was not fitting into his methods.
Choices made
He excused himself from the present section and the next session was back out on the floor. Brilliant. This guy had a clarity of vision, he knew himself and knew what he wanted. He was not discounting the expert, he simply said, it’s a mismatch. It is the expert’s responsibility to bring the goods for a fine event, it is on your shoulders to engage the expert knowledge in a manner that is useful to you.
Yes, and No are both valid.
Networking
Along with having access to others and their martial arts, you get to meet other people. Some may not even be martial artists; they could be there for a multitude of reasons. During a break, I walked over to the gentleman who was filming the seminar. I discovered he had worked on the films, Lawrence of Arabia and The Shining. Immediately I began to pick his brain.
The result was a wonderful conversation. I learned about the film industry as well as personalities. He ended the conversation with a calm request. When I spoke, “To please stay away from the windows, they cause problems with the lighting.” Call that one more lesson.
An outlier of a moment?
An outlier of a moment? Possibly, but the gems, the skills, the experiences that you get to avail yourself of are all on the floor for you to simply snatch-up if you choose.
Solutions to difficulties and challenges are also at these seminars. Arriving in town a day early to teach at an event, I was invited to a private school Physical Education class, it was karate.
All students were addressed as, Mr. and Mrs. After class I asked “I see you are doing this, what is the reason behind this.” It wasn’t what I assumed. It was school policy to use formal titles when communicating. The instructor adapted the school policy for continuity. Interesting. I put that lesson away.
Later when I taught at a private school I leaned into the lesson. I learned about that school’s culture integrating their communication policy into the karate class. And I didn’t enjoy the casual first name basis used by the educators and students, but that was the culture.
Connections
The connections made on the floor of a seminar cannot be overlooked or undersold. The ability to pick-up the phone and say to a new acquaintance, “What did you do in this situation?” or be that person with the answer. We all can grow as a result of good connections and new friends. If you are not taking advantage of this moment, you are failing to pick-up diamonds left on the training hall floor. You will be amazed at the number of diamonds left on the floor for you to pick-up and walk away with when you attend a Martial Arts seminar.
Refreshed Enthusiasm
We are creatures of habit; we don’t like it when our world gets disrupted. COVID as serious as it is, we hate the upside-down rattle of the tin can it has created. It was not of our choosing. This can result in anxiety, and much more.
Yet, if we look for a change, we can often get that change on our terms; we like that. This form of change has little anxiety and a truckload of enthusiasm. If you ask a fresh participant from a recent seminar you will hear words of passion, passion renewed. It is that simple.
You chose it. You experienced it on your terms. Because you had a good time you retained more information and new ideas stick. The other great experience is to have your ideas you always knew where correct validated.
Get to a seminar, experience the flow, avail yourself of expert knowledge, get to know people, and get refreshed in your art.
Resources For More Karate Information
Here is an article that you may find helpful also: Karate Tips – 8 Simple Tips To A Better Experience
Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in Seattle Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who will listen about the nuances of the Canadian Football League.
