The Rich Experience

We are at the core of it all - experiential beings.

Life is a series of experiences for each of us; a trail perhaps, consisting of mundane experiences, unpleasant experiences, interesting experiences, exciting experiences, etc.

How we experience our training will ultimately determine how long we stick at it and how good be get at it. As a coach, I always do my best to give my students a rich experience on the mat … by ‘rich’, I mean a mixture of meaningful and exciting. I think that a good life is one filled with ‘rich’ experience – the kind of experience that resonates deeply within us – the kind of experience that ‘sticks’ and leaves it’s imprint on who we are.

The ‘rich’ experience needs to be authentic; it needs to be apart from the ordinary; it’s needs to be these things and more because ultimately, it’s quality can impact on how we define our lives.

When I step onto the mat – I want it to be a rich experience, not only for my students, but for myself as well. I am engaging with other human beings; each of whom is there to, in some way or other, improve their lives; and I am very aware of that. Each time we train, we are faced with a unique opportunity to lift ourselves to a higher place – and perhaps even deepen our understanding of who we are and how we fit into this mosaic of experience we call life.

To be rich has nothing to do with fiscal health – and everything to do with how we experience our lives …

JBW

The Collective Experience

A group of people, overly populated with self-interested people, with not ‘cohere’ – and without coherence, no great developments are likely to occur.

Most mats (gyms or martial arts schools) have their fare share of ‘free riders’. By free-rider, I mean that type of individual that is so overly concerned with himself that he cannot, even temporarily, morph into the type of training partner who will benefit and help others. I have had to put up with these sorts of people on my own mat, and when they have eventually been asked to leave, or have left of their own accord, the mat culture breathes a sigh of relief.

Everyone begins their martial arts journey out of ‘self interest’, but eventually (sooner rather the later hopefully) they realize they are part of a ‘tribe’; a tribe of people all seeking similar goals. The more each member of the tribe tries to help his or her fellow members, the more the tribe collectively achieves. At the end of the day, growth and development is a collaborative effort – even in an individualistic activity like combat.

Bing the best possible partner we can be for our class-mates – will ultimately raise their level and ours right alongside them. As the old saying goes – ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’

JBW

Inner Black Belt

We are different people – different beings – at different times. When we are really hungry, the neurons in our brain conspire to fire and stimulate particular emotions and particular behaviors – the same goes when we are in a state of learning – or in the presence of a threat – or in love, etc.

When I am teaching – I do feel as though I am in a different ‘state’ – and when the student is really ‘present’, they are also in a different ‘state’.

So, when on the mat, get in touch with your inner black belt; the black belt that cannot be fully satisfied with the status quo, the black belt who is always looking to ‘raise the bar’, the black belt who wants to try new ideas or improve old ideas, the black belt who wants to turn over more rocks and see what lives under them; the kind of black belt who is as curious now, as amazed and impassioned now as he/she was when they first began training.

When you are on the mat – you are a different kind of person – recognize the kind of ;state’ you are experiencing, and try to nudge it, try to shape it, into something even more special ….

Get in touch with your inner black belt … the very next time you are on the mat.

JBW

55 laps around the sun ...

… and what have I learned. Among other things …

-       - focus on the small steps, the process not the goals

-      -  to build trust, make small promises … and keep them

-       - true love is not a myth

-      -  passion and purpose are life's true driving forces

-       - going deep builds understanding

-       - going broad builds adaptability

-       - failing is learning in an ugly disguise

-       - problem-solving is often about the 5% improvement

-      - the extraordinary life is made by doing extraordinary things

-       - a ‘good enough to get by’ attitude leads to mediocrity

-      -  life is about living

-       - being overly attached to stuff and outcomes causes unhappiness

-       - risk-taking is how increase the square footage of adventure in our lives

-      -  people are more interesting that what they first appear

-       - the universe won’t manifest anything for you, taking action will

-      - ‘loyalty’ when it’s inconvenient to be so, is true loyalty

-       - ‘generosity’ when there is no hope of ‘payback’ is true generosity

-       - possibilities are endless; our fears are the real limiting factor

-       - ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ is a question worth asking

-       - investing in ourselves is the best investment of all

-       - everything comes to an end; even pain, sorrow or unhappy moments

-       - there is much more to everything that what we initially think

-       - time goes by whether we want it to or not

-       - each day is an opportunity to re-invent ourselves

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- - Best wishes all: JBW

STUFF THAT SUCKS THE LIFE FORCE OUT OF ME ...

My least favourite thing is the need, every now and then, to come up against the beaurocracy and the need to engage in hoop-jumping and paper-wading. My latest round of hoop-jumping due to new rules by the Australian BJJ Federation's requirement that every athlete/competitor and coach (that's me) needs to get (meaning: pay through the nose for) an ID card. Think about that: they need people to pay for an ID card, that gives them ONE - just ONE privilege, and that is the privilege of being able to pay them more to enter their tournaments. Disgusting! And same goes for the International BJJ federation - if Australian athletes are wanting to compete in the world championships in the USA. So, lots of forms to fill in and of course, money to pay (again, just for the privilege of being able to pay even more money to compete - absolutely nothing coming back for the money - but the latest is that I have to prove that I am a legitimate BJJ black belt to the Australian federation before I can get even my ID card. Can I prove that I am a BJJ Black Belt? Yikes.
I hate that this sort of shite that more and more foten, finds it's way onto the martial arts landscape ... but then it occurred to me, some people really live for this stuff. It IS their entire world!
Politicians and political parties exist everywhere - and they all seem to be occupied by the same sorts of people. How many of us can put our hands up and say this is a good thing for martial arts? No wonder there is more and more talk from various quarters about boycotting these 'official' types of events. Personally, I prefer a 'grass roots' approach - wholesome networking - and real martial arts training - along with a healthy balance of all the other things that make up a well-rounded life.  JBW

Shifting the Bell-Curve

There are things we are all great at – there are things we are all bad at.

There are people on the mat who are enthusiastic advocates for what we do – there are people on the mat who are (oft times unknowingly) chipping away at the culture we are trying to establish.

There are parts of our game that we have the most confidence in – there are parts of our games that we have the least confidence in.

For everything that sits far on the right of the bell-curve – there exists it’s counterpart on the far left side of the bell-curve. For every 'greatest strength; we have a 'greatest weakness' - etc.

A great way of making our whole game/life/situation better is to shift the entire bell-curve to the right. For example, by working on the weakest part of our game and improving it – we will soon find that it is no longer the weakest part – then we repeat the process for our ‘new’ weakest part, and so on. By doing this, we shift the entire bell-curve to right. Eventually, what was perhaps once our greatest strength, eventually becomes the weakest part of our game – and we have a whole new set of strengths. This, I call, shifting the Bell-curve.

JBW

Time … for Easter

My father had a long fascination with the concept of time … and if we ponder on it for a bit, we cannot deny it is indeed a complex, hard to grasp and interesting phenomenon.

In talking about time … one can come across as a bit of a nut-job. But that’s largely because most of us don’t spent time considering it – we rather just ‘experience’ it and take it for granted. But I enjoy thinking about things – so here’s my one-minute opinion on the concept of ‘time’ – as per the last conversation I had with my dad about it …

The concept of TIME raises some obvious yet interesting questions … Why does it only seem to move in one direction? Why does it seem to have continuity? What is a MOMENT? These are easy ones … there are more difficult ones as well ….

Many of us measure TIME by the device we call a CLOCK. And we measure it at the rate of one second, for every second that passes. Let’s put the concept of the SECOND, aside for a moment – (pun) – and call it that – a MOMENT. And this in turn, this MOMENT, can be thought of as a convenient name for the packet of information that we perceive … NOW.

Now, (second pun) in quantum theory, one very popular notion is that there are, (in any given moment) an infinite number of possibilities actually occurring (but we, as individuals are only capable of perceiving one at a time – the one we are in) – in other words, the universe (if you want to call it that) SPLITS, at every moment, onto an infinite number of possible paths – and the one we are all in NOW, is the MOMENT or PACKET OF INFORMATION we conveniently refer to as the PRESENT.

This is an interesting idea – because if true, it means there are infinite versions of each of us, all experiencing different realities – and further, even more interesting to me … the same moments exist, endlessly … but we (the we that are reading this blog) cannot perceive that, as we exist in the split-off reality/universe that has split-off from the previous one, etc, etc – that we can trace back to that aforementioned moment – in the so-called past.

Get it? Something in any case, to ponder on as you munch through your collection of easter eggs this weekend.

I miss my conversations with my father ...

JBW