Recently in the past few weeks, people have asked why I think martial arts schools are behind the times.  Why I referred to the school I used to attend as crap in mybio.

Bruce Lee said it best:  ”Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it.”

In earning my kinesiology degree, I learned something about human movement that not only undermined years of martial arts practice, but destroyed the basis of most martial art foundations.

Most schools teach by practicing patterns of movement.  There’s nothing wrong with this, but eventually people need to move past this mode of learning.

I remember learning how to write, doing lessons in workbooks.  One of them required me to follow dotted lines for each of the letters of the alphabet.  Once we graduated from that simple lesson, our class moved to copying simple sentences my teacher wrote on the blackboard.  Then she wrote simple paragraphs that we copied into our notebooks.  The paragraphs we copied got longer.  As we moved up the elementary school echelon, we were taught the structures of the three paragraph essay, then the five paragraph essay.  We were given subjects to write about and we wrote.  And so on and so forth.

Now, imagine teenagers in high school, or students in college being given homework, copying dotted letters of the alphabet.  That is what you have in the traditional martial arts school.

Have you seen old English calligraphy?  All those swirls, extra lines, and decorations?  How inefficient would that be in everyday writing?  A lot of that is in traditional martial arts, as well.

In our particular school, we always made fun of Tae Kwan Do students.  They limited themselves to kicking, and when sparring they didn’t allow striking to the head.  But one thing they did a lot was sparring.  Sparring is the key to truly learning anything.

Kinesiology taught me that people need to be in dynamic environments if they are to perform in dynamic environments.  If I taught you a martial arts technique to deal with a right punch, and I drilled that technique over and over again, all you would’ve learned was the technique.  What you wouldn’t know how to do is react to the right punch.  To do that, you can’t be told that a right punch is coming.  And sparring gives you that opportunity.

Yes, learn the technique.  Yes, practice the technique.  Then forget it.

The above quote by Bruce states exactly how I live my life.

When I first attempted my first three novels, I had no idea what I was doing.  Then my best friend suggested many sources that spoke on the structure and techniques of fiction writing.  I read them, attended seminars and learned so much.  But those lessons didn’t sink in until I sat down and wrote.  By the end of my many revisions and writing myepisodes,I had to go back and do one last revision/rewrite.  I’d changed so much as a writer that I had to do a line by line examination of my manuscript.

I didn’t want to at first.  I knew it would take a long time.  But once I dug in, I became more intimately engrossed with my story.  And something happened that was unexpected.  I fell in love with my story again.

I also realized that I’d broken some rules of writing.  I didn’t do it on purpose.  That’s just the way the story needed to be told.

Bruce Lee said:  ”Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.”  That has definitely worked out for him.

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It sucked.

I was used to benching a certain amount of weight, but had to cut it by more than 50%.  I can tell you my ego didn’t like it one bit.  I still wanted to workout and knew how to rehab my shoulder.  Within a couple of weeks, my ego agreed to the necessary decreased weight.  But with every gym session I added 2.5 pounds to my bench.  Eventually, I lost track of how much weight I benched and focused on keeping healthy, writing, working, etc.

Several months later, I noticed I was benching a lot more weight than I’d had in my life.  And I workout by myself.  I can’t find a training partner that has a similar schedule to mine.  This taught me something.

Small adjustments can add up.

Writing theEpisodeshasn’t yielded the audience I was expecting.  That was my first mistake, expecting.  But the audience has grown little by little, even though not all vote.  Despite my desire to bring fame and fortune to my book, I realized something.  My disappointment always vanished when I sat down to write.  My heartbreak wilted when I went to the gym.  My love for story, my love for writing, my love and gratitude for the imagination given to me is precious.

Every day I take steps toward my wants and desires.  Every day I do my best to release my expectations by doing the things I love, andexpressing myself honestly.Every day I go to my day job knowing that I’m providing for my ability to live my night job (job is totally the wrong word here).  Every day small adjustments will be made because small adjustments make a huge difference towardsuccess.

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People are always concerned with the ‘how’. How’re you going to do that? How are you going to lose all that weight? How are you going to be a big time movie star? How are you going to afford that expensive home? I’m struggling with this as I look to buy a house in CA. Yikes!

There’s nothing wrong with wondering how anything is going to happen. But most people are afraid to take the first step because they can’t envision every step of the way. A lot of personal growth guru’s say don’t worry about how to attain something. I never understood it until I researched J.K. Rowling. She’s always wanted to be a writer, to publish a book. Simple enough, right? From all the interviews I’ve read and heard, the one thing that she didn’t concern herself was the ‘how’. She had an inspiration, a vision of Harry Potter. From there, she took steps to develop the wizardry world. She wanted to build a foundation of what magic could and couldn’t do. Then she focused on the plot, focused on the goals of each character, thought out the massive back stories. What’d she do next? She began writing. Not rocket science.

For most writers, published or not, the publishing world is a mystery. Even literary agents who’ve worked in the industry for decades still don’t know exactly what makes a book a bestseller. But if you want to be a best selling author, then you must first write. Once you’re done, the next step is revise. Get outside help. Then revise again. Send out query letters, and so on and so forth.

Look at it from Tom Tom’s view, or any other GPS. Enter the starting point. Enter the destination. Tom Tom takes you from the starting point, tells you to drive a couple of miles. Once you get there, make a right at Main St. Drive three hundred yards, then turn left. It does this until you reach your destination.

Life works in the same manner. Know where you are. Know where you want to go. And proceed. The how will present itself. You’ll never see the whole map. It can be detrimental. You might miss a turn. You’ll never see more than a couple hundred yards in front of you. Don’t need to. Stay the course and know you’ll get there.

Most important of all, enjoy the ride. Why do anything if it’s not fun?

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