A Moment of Clarity

For the last few weeks I’ve been in a bit of a slump. I haven’t had much in the way of motivation. I hadn’t done any training. I was eating garbage (not actual garbage, just junk food). I was frustrated (and still am frustrated) with the lack of balance in my life. I still don’t know how to achieve balance. I don’t know how to be in two places at once. How do you prioritize Mastery over your relationships? And if you prioritize your relationships, your pursuit of Mastery suffers. There are only so many hours in the day.

 Sifu Playter made a comment on my last journal post and one of the things he said was, “When it’s time to work, work hard. When it’s time to play, don't think about working hard and enjoy the moment.” This makes sense to me but it also raises the question, how do you know when it’s time to work and when it’s time to play? For example, if I neglect a practice because I really need to take some personal time to spend with the wife, etc, am I not letting the team down? And what if everyone else on the team needs some personal time too? We end up with nobody showing up for meetings and practices.

I don’t have answers to any of these questions and it was frustrating me to the point where I didn’t want to participate anymore. I thought that if kung fu is creating stress and confusion in my life, maybe I should do something else. I stopped seeing the value in what I was doing. Last night I was helping a friend out with something and we were talking about how things were going in my life. We didn’t talk about anything kung fu related but he said something that really hit home and made me reconsider my attitude. He said that he had noticed a change in me, “ever since you started learning karate”.

 I asked him what he meant and he told me that I seemed to have a “swagger” (his words), and I’ve been more positive and focused. It’s easy to be consumed by negative thought patterns and if you let them take hold of you, they can really dominate your state of mind. I realized that if my friend noticed positive change in me, maybe I was doing something right after all.

I’m definitely open to anyone’s suggestions on how to balance your life with the time commitments of the Horse Team. I just know that it’s going to have to start with a better attitude on my part.