Rollercoaster

Life has it's ups and downs - few of us, if any, feel great all of the time. We have good times, then bad, invariably followed by good again. This happens in most areas of our lives - in the sharemarket, with our health, in our relationships, and on the mat. Sometimes, we are down, other times we are up - the thing to keep in mind, especially when times are not as good as we would have them be, is that EVERYTHING has a 'use by' date - even bad times. When we are ill - it's hard to remember what it feels like to be in full health - but most of the time, we come back to full health - eventually. When the stock-market crashes - everyone panics and sells - forgetting that, the on tens of thousands of other occasions, it came good again. When we are having a hard time in our personal life - it can seem like we are getting nowhere and are cursed by bad luck (as if such a thing had a life of it's own and was out to get us) - and we can find it hard to imagine that good times are waiting, often just around the corner. On the mat, (and in martial arts training in general) there are times when we all feel we are not making improvements - and at times like these it is important to push on, because invariably, improvements are right around the corner. There is NO SUCH THING as STEADY UPWARD IMPROVEMENT - at least not in my experience - training and life are both a bit of a roller-coaster ride. And, in actual fact, we need those downturns, so we can appreciate what it's like to head upward a moment later. Take the temporary downturn with upturn, the loss with the gain, the rainy days with sunny ones - it's all temporary - nothing is forever: JBW