What You Really Want in the Martial Arts

[headline_arial_large_left color=”#000000″]What You Really Want in the Martial Arts[/headline_arial_large_left]

by Keith Pascal

It’s fun to dream, wouldn’t you agree? And sometimes, we wrap our minds around various martial-arts objectives.

Did you know that sometimes, subscribers wish for the wrong martial goal? Let’s take a look at what happens and how you can shape your desires into something more achievable….

When you first dream of some objective, whether it be skill or school, I encourage you to imagine some pie-in-the-sky desires. In this case, a sky’s-the-limit attitude is a good thing.

The fact that your mind can’t stop fantasizing about a super-cool ability or a chain of martial arts schools can work in our favor. I see a similarity between positive daydreaming and directed brainstorming. In the beginning stages of the creativity process, avoid negative thinking … let your mind wander.

Unfortunately, we run into snags in the process of shaping our martial-arts goals to something achievable. We don’t want to dummy down our objective into something anemic, but we don’t want the disappointment of not obtaining the impossible.

Of equal importance, we don’t want to achieve some high ideal, only to find out that we just made an aspect of our life miserable.

Let me give you a few examples:

1. You want to own a chain of martial-arts schools, but once you do, you find that 90% of your day revolves around boring administration and putting out fires created by your various managers and underlings.

For you, the headaches outweigh the benefits. What you really wanted was one, big school that made almost as much as the chain, without the hassles.

2. You want to be the most known teacher at the school where you teach. You work very hard for the fame and recognition. The result: The owner makes you responsible for more classes than you want or have time for. Some jealousy develops among the other teachers; they wonder why you get all the accolades.

What you really wanted was to be known for acquiring fame for the entire school and to be liked by your peers, and to teach a reasonable number of classes, not the lion’s share.

3. You and your friend have a friendly rivalry going on. The two of you decide to compete against each other in one year’s time. You practice katas and one-step sparring diligently.

In fact, you eat, breathe, and drink “kata.”

Your friend and competitor decides to pursue a different route: He spends all of his time working against a training partner with controlled sparring that spokes into a limited number of techniques (See Secrets of Teaching Martial Arts More Effectively) and working on distance drills (The Punch eCourse).

When the two of you get together, he wipes the floor with your face, over and over.

You emphasized the wrong training for your goal.

Examining and tailoring your goal goes a long way toward preventing regret later on. This makes obvious sense, right?

When you’ve finished the brainstorming and daydreaming stage of your goal-pursuit process, then it’s time for research. Discover the negatives that go along with the positives. Decide whether or not the goal would work for you.

Also, think “tweakability.” Could the goal be modified to eliminate the headaches and negatives?

[headline_arial_small_left color=”#000000″]Last Thoughts[/headline_arial_small_left]

Do you wonder why I have been thinking about shaping goals, lately? Well, my new ebook just appeared on Amazon.com — The Dream Wizard: Defining Rich and Achieving Your Goals By Working For Yourself.

It’s more of an entrepreneurial story than anything else, but it does help you shape what you really want, from businesses to mansions. I suppose you could apply the advice to some of your martial goals.

Oh, and if you like fantasy knives and swords, there’s a good scene in the book and also an interesting look at a software company making a computer game.

Sorry, for the digression … we’ll talk more martial arts … tomorrow,

Keith