Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. –Aaron Levenstein

This image has a double meaning.  Know what it is?

I told a coworker one of my ex-students had found a passion for freerunning. He turned to me, crinkled his brow, and said, “You can’t make a living doing that.”

I turned to him, crinkled my brow, and asked, “What if Tony Hawk came up to you and said he was going to make it big as a skateboarder. What would you say then?”

My coworker’s response was interesting but represents the sentiment of most people. Would you say something like this?  “I’d tell him that the chances of making any living in that is very small. Maybe 5 out of 1000 people would make it,” he said.

I don’t know where he got that statistic, but his point was simple. There’s so many people who’d want to make it in skateboarding that the chances are close to impossible.

The average human has one breast and one testicle.  –Des McHale

I told him that statistics mean nothing, that any reliance on those lies is a reliance on your ownlimitation.

He then countered with a really good counter. So good was his counter that I had to think hard in my counter to counter his counter. Are we counting how many times I used counter?

“Tony Hawk was lucky,” he said.

I think if he said that to Hawk, he’d slap him. Hell. I’d slap him.

To say anyone is lucky does two things. One, the skill and hard work people put into their success means nothing. Two, people are powerless to live their lives. Take what you get, cuz you ain’t gonna get any better.

To accomplish anything in life worth having, a person needs to take the first step. And many times it requires a sense of courage in the face of failure. There was a lot of talk in the nineties to the turn of the century about the fear of success. But that took away from the very real fear of failure.

Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything.  –Gregg Easterbrook

And when you rely on statistics, which can be manipulated to represent anything that anyone wants, you give your power away to live your life the way you want.

This is the basic choice of my hero’s journey in my book. Does he let someone else determine his life and the lives of his province? Or does he choose to fight for a life of freedom?

Ultimately, we all have to choose. Too often I see people choosing the “easy” way out, like relying on stats so they don’t have to go out and follow their passions. Follow your passions, for they may lead to great things.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket.  According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.  –Bobby Bragan, 1963

It’s funny how art mimics life, or how life mimics art.  The hero of my book has compulsions that seem to border on anger.  And it’s no surprise my compulsions border on anger.  Artists have issues.  One of the best ways to work them out is to put it into art.

Do you work at the US Mint?

I was waiting for a free table at my favorite place to write, Borders. And I overheard a high school student asking a grad student about working in the financial sector.  The grad student had financial looking books on the long table.  He said that if you worked for this certain company doing this certain kind of trade, you’d make a lot of money.

Something inside me wanted to jump up, slap the grad student across the face, and take the high school student, shake him, and tell him to follow his passions.

If that’d happened, then I’d be writing this post in jail.

The more important question was why did I react this way. And why do I react this way when I hear people say, “Do this and you’ll make lots of money.” Or the more infamous, “I’ve created a system that will create fast, easy money, bring you girls from all over the world. See this car I’m driving? Would you like to drive this car?” Then in faint, white fine print ‘Results may vary. Results not typical.’  The kind of fine print that not even Sherlock Holmes could find.

As I was waiting for a table, I checked through my unread emails and came across a newsletter from Michael Neill. Check him out. He’s awesome. He wrote about the difference between earning money and making money.

Aren’t those two the same?

The only people in America that make money are the people who work in the US Mint. The rest of us earn money.

The earning part is where most people don’t understand.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he’s helping his close friend produce some videos. My friend said he knew how to get free actors. We laughed because actors would work for free just to get their faces and names out there. But these actors are on to something. They’re putting the work in, serving others, with the hope that it’ll pay them back.

To start a fire in a fireplace, you must give it wood. This wood is the service you give before you can get heat, the payback.  Life is full of dualities.  Giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin, the yin and yang, complete opposites that work with each other.

Will I make money from my books? No. Unless I use the pages to print money. But that would be a big no no.

My job as a writer is to write the best book that I can write, to write the story given to me, and have fun doing it.  I’ve put my soul into it.  As the fame photographer Rodney Lough has said, art is the language of the soul.  Everything else follows.

There’s one in every organization. A devoted minion waiting to please their master. How do people gain these devotees is something I write about in my book.

This past Saturday I went to a friend’s black belt presentation.  Then attended an after party at an instructor’s house.

If you’ve read mybio, you know my opinion of that.

I hadn’t been back to the school for many years.  By choice mind you.  Most of the students have changed.  But nothing outside of that has.  They still teach the rigid style of martial arts, the same kind that Bruce Lee rebelled against.  But there was something more sinister going on that I’d forgotten over the years.

One of the common beliefs that the students and teachers hold is once someone gets a black belt that person is never wrong, or never questioned.  Now, they don’t necessarily teach this, but that notion is enforced.

One indication is this.

One of the things students do is bow to all of the instructors when they enter and exit the school.  It’s a form of respect.  It’s fairly normal in all martial arts schools.  But when people started bowing to black belts at the after party, I shook my head.  It’s unnecessary.  They were in someone’s home, outside of the formal school setting. And no one stopped it.  Brain washed?

Many of the students also take whatever the black belts say as gospel.  They don’t realize that black belts are just people with a freakin’ belt colored in black.  And this is where the danger comes from.

A good student is one who follows but also thinks for himself.  And as a result, they should ask the teacher questions.  Why is this important?

A student must follow in order to learn.  This is how wisdom and knowledge is passed down.  Fair enough.  The student should then think, “Does this apply to me?”  Not all the time.

Here’s an example:  If I were teaching a woman about self defense, she may not have the kind of strength and power that a man has.  So accuracy and reaction training is VERY important.  She has to be able to make every single strike count because her targets will be much more specific-eyes, nose, throat, solar plexus, groin.  Her reaction has to be instant, like avoiding a punch, because a single punch can end her day. And women have to take into account long hair if they have it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t focus on power or speed, which are directly related.  But I’d point out what she needs immediately in order to make her dangerous as soon as possible.  I’d teach her how men commonly attack women.  That way she knows what to look for, and what to attack if she is to be accosted.

If I were to teach a man, I’d still teach him the importance of striking the eyes, nose, throat, solar plexus and groin.  But his strength may be enough to offset the attacker without using lethal strikes.  So I would point out his physical strengths, his awareness of reach, and the common ways men are attacked.

I’d also get rid of the notion of self defense to both men and women.

As you can see, there are major differences in teaching males and females.  And the differences extend to teaching children.  They are further distilled down to individuals, depending on who they are.

A lot of these martial arts schools will teach a one-size-fits-all routine that don’t take into account how a person learns, how a human body works, or even the self-worth of the student, the mental side.  Add the egos that are displayed in a lot of these schools, the bowing, the not able to question teachers, and the rigid routines, are the reasons why I left.

Bruce Lee rebelled against the gospel type of martial arts.  He was one of the first to emphasize mixing of martial arts.  There is truth in that, which is why MMA is so prevalent today.

Have you seen those wild life specials where a group of congregating chimpanzees are screaming, slapping their hands above their heads? Sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion they have their own language that we don’t know about. Anyways, that’s another post.

Animal behavior often explains some of the odd things, sometimes called sins, that we humans portray.

When a father kills his wive and children, when a woman cheats on her man, when a boy goes to strange lengths to show a fifth grade girl he likes her can come from animalistic behavior. Thanks, Darwin.

We see all of this in the animal world.

Today I was eating at a ramen house and saw a group of young Asian boys hanging outside. One of them wore his sunglasses backwards, shading the back if his neck from the hot afternoon sun. He must have said something funny. Because one of his friends started laughing, screaming almost, slapping his hands together above his head. Sound familiar?

Is this important in story telling?

In my currentEpisode,my character is faced with an opportunity to prove his innocence. He has a choice. Prove it with dignity or with violence. Why the two opposite choices? If you’vereadwhat he’s been through, then you’ll undersand why he could choose violence.

Sometimes in life we don’t see how our behaviors can originate from our innate animal behavior.  If we are closest to our chimpanzee cousins, then how can we deny the strange behavior that some people exhibit?  Do I agree with it?  Not all the time.  But as story tellers, we should allow for some raucous action.

One that comes to mind is Hermione punching Draco in the nose in the third Potter book.  I thought that scene was right on.  A bigoist taunting someone should get their nose punched in.  Not because it was right.  Because that kind of behavior would elicit another.  Cause and effect.

I once had a student who was constantly bullied by another boy who didn’t respect my student’s ethnic heritage.  The bully called him obscene names.  My student asked him to stop and even avoided him.  But the bully looked for him like  a shark.  Heckling my student.  Barraging him with physical threats.  So my studentslappedhim.  Hard.

That bully never bullied him again.

The alpha male was now replaced by another.

If you’ve read my bio, you’ll know that I’ve taught martial arts since 1993. A long time. Most of the classes that I taught were kids classes. For most schools, kids make up a large percentage of the population. Parents think it teaches them respect, discipline, self-defense, and a whole slew of stuff.

As I’ve stated in my bio, the stuff we were teaching was just crap. Let me explain briefly. In all of the classes, both kids and adults, there was little physical contact. Not that I want to touch people, but in order to train for a possible physical altercation, a fight, you have to train with a training partner. Our school did little of that. Worse, all of the self-defense techniques were done in the air. Students didn’t feel what it was like to hit something, which is an important concept in martial arts.

For me, there are a few things I look for when I go into a school. Are the teachers egotistical?  Some indications questions to ask.

Do they display a ton of trophies?  A few is fine, but if there’s a lot, then red flag it.  If you’re confident, there’s no need to show off.

Do teachers treat students like people?  It’s a privilege to teach anyone because a student must open themselves up to their teachers in order to learn.  I had a student once where his teacher made him lie face down and pressed his face to the floor with his foot.  This student was nice as can be.  I went to the school to check them out, and I could read their huge egos.  I’ve had other students hit on like in a bar by instructors.  That happened often in my school even by the owner.

Ask about partner drills, bag drills, drills that will teach both reaction and striking skills.  This is a must.  Most MMA schools will have this.  Other traditional type schools may not.

Look at the cleanliness of the school.  All schools smell like feet.  Don’t judge based on that.  I’d focus on whether the school is bright, clean, and organized.  It reflects on the teachers and owner of the school.

I’d also ask about how the belt system works, how belts or rank are earned, and if they offer one-on-one sessions.  A really good school will offer a number of these sessions for free.  It shows they care.  If they don’t, ask for them as part of your negotiations.

The overall feel should be positive.  You should feel that you can learn.  The most important factor is choose something that you’d have fun doing.  I’ve not gotten in a fight since I started in 1993.  I don’t plan to.  Fun is going to have a huge factor in your improvement both in physical and mental health.