Blood and Kindness

After over half a year since my last plasma donation, I finally had the opportunity to donate blood again tonight! Between the plasma incident that occurred earlier this year that resulted in me accidentally losing a sizable portion of blood and my tenure in middle-of-nowhere Saskatchewan that began right as I was able to donate again, it has been quite some time since my last donation. To be honest, as my last ten-ish donations have all been plasma, it has actually been a little over a year since my last whole blood donation. 

When I stop to think about the actual donation process, I believe some may consider it an act of kindness; you are going out of your way to do something which is beneficial to another human being with no guarantee or desire of recompense. It made me reflect on my motivations behind donation and whether or not mindsets can affect the legitimacy of an act of kindness. 

To start with, I have no physical deterrence from donation. I am consistently eligible, I have no physical or psychological  issues with needles or blood, I have O- blood (I like to brag about that), so on and so forth. I believe these factors contribute to a person's desire NOT to donate, however. Being eligible to donate or being unphased by needles is not something which drives a person towards donation, but it can definitely drive them away from it. As such, I believe these “neutral values” simply contribute to making it easier to attend.

As for my actual motivation to attend, the easy answer I state is that I do it for my mother. I strongly believe in paying things forward and as she is unable to pay forward the generosity of the many donations she's received herself, it is my responsibility as her son to do so in her stead. On a more personal level, those donations she received are the reason she is here today in the capacity she is. I have the mother I have because of those donations. If my donations can allow another child and parent the opportunity to experience that, how can I turn my back?

Another factor I believe in is, as Spider-Man would say, with great power comes great responsibility. I have the ability to donate and I do not lose anything. It is within my power. And as such, is it not my responsibility? The third point in the Black Belt Code of Ethics states that one shall “undertake and accept responsibility only for tasks in which they are qualified for and in which they believe”. I believe in the tasks of sustaining life where it is needed yet I am not qualified to save lives as a doctor or a medic could. However, if I can provide the material necessary for these experts to perform their responsibilities, that is a responsibility which I can and should undertake. 

Ultimately, however, I also strongly believe in karma (which sort of falls under the same category as my belief in paying it forward). As mentioned a few blogs ago, I am a person who is afraid of progress, afraid of the future, and afraid of what I do not know. As such, I fear that the struggles my mother has undergone will one day become my own. I fear that I may be struck with illness or disease, as illness and disease are such ruthless and defining characteristics of all living things. I fear that, when the day comes when I am subject to all of these fears, I will be left in a state where I am unable to live on my own terms.

That, I think, is my biggest fear in life. To not be able to live on my own terms.

When I donate, I donate for all the reasons above. But the last I mentioned, which I recognize as selfish and somewhat paranoid, feels like the little beating heart at the core of it all. I need to build my karma. I need to do it for me. I need to make sure I am okay. Do not get me wrong, every reason stated is still dearly important to me. It is why I contributed to organizing the blood drive, and why I will do so again in the future. But I cannot help but feel that everything is built on selfish grounds.

With all of that said and my heart on my sleeve, do my donations count as an act of kindness? Ultimately, I personally do not believe so. I believe blood donation is not something I willingly choose to do, yet is something that my personal beliefs require me to do. All of my reasons- the selfless, the selfish, the caring, the self-sufficient, the seemingly nonsensical, they all lead me to believe that my actions are done not out of kindness for others nor for the sake of myself, but it is something that simply needs to be done. 

I could keep going on about whether or not the mindset of “something needing to be done” automatically negates the qualification of an act of kindness, but this blog has already run longer than I wanted (sorry guys).

If you made it this far, cheers!

PREP - Monthly Mini Challenge - November

Hey team,

For next months MMC, I have decided to do a group event again, as that seems to garner the most engagement. This months challenge will be…

A Partner Punch-a-thon!!

For this challenge, I will randomize a list for everyone partaking and partner people up completely accordingly (which as mentioned, will be completely random). It will then be up to you and your partner to find a day that works the best for the two of you. The challenge itself will be to achieve as many punches as possible between the two of you in a 24 hour timeframe. Ideally, the sooner you can accomplish this, the better.

Given the “do as much as you can” format of this challenge, I believe it is worth mentioning that this is not designed to be competitive, although if competition is what spurs you forward, go ahead. As such, if you and your partner do not wish to be competitive and decide not to share your final numbers with the team, you do not need to do so. However, I will ask that you send them to me as a way of keeping yourselves accountable. For those who want to have a little fun and friendly competition, you may share your numbers with the team all the same.

Similar to last time, everyone will have until Friday, November 3rd, to interact with this post as a way of entering yourself into the challenge. I strongly encourage everyone to partake as a way to work with someone potentially new, and to have some fun in a day.

I will formally issue the challenge, along with the partner pairs, sometime Friday evening. If there are any questions until then, please feel free to reach out. 

Board Breaking: An Analysis of Simon, By Simon

Break-a-thon. Breaking boards. Pretty cool.

For me, it is pretty cool. I like breaking boards. I remember when I was dreading them in my grading year, but right now? They’re so much fun. I believe I have a blend of technique, power, confidence, and youthful springy-ness to get through boards with a variety of techniques (maybe a little foolishness, too). In fact, of the 13 breaks I did, I only messed up two. 

The first technique mess-up I managed to do again on my first re-attempt (albeit with a rebreakable board) a little while later. I came up with a plan, I tried the plan, and it worked. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The second was a double inside-outside hammer fist (both strikes going in opposite directions at the same time) I messed up while attempting it for a second time. The first time I did it, I nailed it. It was awesome. Then my mom wanted a video and there was all this pressure and I messed up the second one. Oh well. It was still cool.

How have I managed to move from apprehension and anxiety about board breaking towards sheer enjoyment? The short answer would probably be “I grew up”. Not really a great answer, but it does summarize it. As I’ve grown up, several things have changed.

The first is confidence. I’ve broken boards in the past. Lots of boards. Do I know exactly what it feels like? Not really, since I kinda just whabam-shapow-kabloom it once I think everything is where it should be, and I don’t think I register the exact feeling of going through a board. I realize that’s probably not very helpful, but that’s exactly what happens. On this same note, something I have been working on is to not trial run my break combo more than three times. I set up the boards where I want them, run through it once or twice to make sure my heights are roughly where I need them to be, and then I just go. I tried this approach a few times tonight, and I think it worked very well.

Another aspect is my intent. I have reached a point where I believe I have great control over my intent. My VKR (Visualization to Kinetic Reprsentation) is an axe going through a tree. I become the axe, and the tree falls. Mroom, pow, whachaw. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

The last thing I believe worth mentioning is my mindset. Keep in mind, this is different from intent. My mindset during breaks (my breaks, at the very least) is not strict or serious. It’s fun. I’m having SO much fun.

 Don’t get me wrong, I am not discarding the learning opportunity’s over having fun. I believe I need to focus on using less brute force and more technique, although this is something I think I am working toward on as a whole in my martial arts. Overall, I believe my fun-having, stress free mindset enables me to absorb more criticism and operate smoother.

Great work to everyone who broke over the last few days, lots of learning opportunities!

When The Leaves Blow With Reason

I can confidently say, I am not a fan of Autumn. It’s funny, because I enjoy winter and Autumn is the first step. Ultimately, it’s because I’m not a fan of “spooky season”. I don’t like it being darker for longer, I don’t like the Halloween decorations, I don’t like the chill in the wind, and I don’t like the sound the crispy leaves make as they blow against the ground. 

It tends to put me on edge. It seems like the world brings in dark and spooky things without a good reason. I don’t enjoy it. Not one bit, not at all. However, I have slowly stopped believing in things happening for “good reason”, because that implies things happen for “bad reason”, which is not something I need to have in my head. Instead, things simply happen for a reason. 

So, under that logic, the world is scary for a simply neutral reason. I don’t think it’s my role to know what that reason is. For all I care, it could be that I would be too powerful otherwise (mwehehe). So when the leaves blow and scratch the ground and make my skin crawl and my heart rate quicken, it also comes with reason. 

We develop and grow as humans, as a process of enduring the “reason” in which events occur. As such, everything does happen for a reason. That reason might simply be so that you can be better tomorrow than today. I think there’s merit in this; it can be applied to handling injuries, mental slumps, frustration, etc. 

All in all, it’s a fancy way to say “if it’s not okay, it’s not over”. But I think I needed to tell myself that tonight and what better way to organize thoughts than with a blog.

My I Ho Chuan

Hey folks, this is kind of a really long one, so I’m sorry. But I think it’s pretty good, so I’m hoping it is still manageable.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I have been on the IHC team for many years. In fact, I have been on the team for approximately 1/3 of my lifetime. During those years, I definitely had some requirements I believe I was strong at, but there are some that I have always struggled with. Numbers, for one.

The six years (outside of this year) that I was on the team for were done consecutively through the ages of roughly 13-19. In that time, I had a lot of opportunity to grow and mature, but some things didn’t really become easier. It wasn’t so much the numbers I struggled with, but the recording of them that was my Achilles heel.

I was (and truthfully, maybe still am) someone who is extremely insecure about progress. In fact, I am just someone who is very insecure in general. I have come a long ways since and there are many things about myself that I have grown to be comfortable with, but there are still many things I am afraid of. 

When I speak of being afraid of progress, I am afraid I cannot do it. I have a very, VERY easy time losing track of the “where am I, what am I doing” mindset and focusing on the big picture and how much bigger than me it is. As much as I like to flaunt and talk about how great I am, I do not see myself that way. I see a small, frightened human, who is insignificant in the face of time and progress. So when I missed a day of recording or my numbers fell behind and it showed on paper, it was able to flawlessly destroy my motivation. Not just to record, but to do numbers altogether.

This is something that caused me to take a break from the IHC for two years, as I was dealing with the overwhelming guilt that I was unable to keep up to the Mastery I had signed up for. That I was unable to keep myself accountable. 

Over those two years, I believe I matured a lot. I went through a lot of maturing opportunities, after all. I felt refreshed and prepared to join the IHC again. However, I knew if I just came into the year and hoped a little bit of maturity would fix my problems, I would end up in the same slump in no time. So I made some plans.

The first was my intent. All of my IHC years have “themes”, if you would. This years theme is Intent, in all forms. While I have blogged about and discussed some of the manifestations of my personal intent, my intent for the entire year has been one thing; to reach a point where, during the start of next years IHC, I will be ready to grade for my second degree, at any point throughout the year. I decided that striving for my second degree this year would not be beneficial to me. Instead, I would aim for the level of a second degree and use what I built to create a foundation for next year, a foundation in which I was consistently ready. 

Once I established this intent, I created a plan to help me get around one my most deadly poisons; my numbers. The issue in the past has been this; seeing my numbers had taken a drastic toll on my mental well-being and overall broke my weak willpower, which affected my ability to do numbers at all. At the beginning of  this year, I made a decision.

I will not be recording a single number down.

But do not get me wrong; I AM STILL DOING MY NUMBERS.

My plan is to develop my numbers routine first, without the pressure of recording them. And I am proud to say that my numbers are better than they have ever been. There are days I missed and days I have done extra, so I do not know where I am at, but I know I am comfortable with it. To keep myself accountable, I made the following system.

For push up’s and sit up’s, I would aim for roughly 170-200 a day. I missed them on some days, for sure. On those days I missed, it would have ruined my routine had I been physically recording (historically proven, after all). But I kept doing them. 

For Acts of Kindess, before I go to bed every night, I think of what I have done throughout the day. I have not written any of them down, but I am conscious of them. I am still doing them.

For my kilometres, I used the fitness app on my phone and eventually a Fitbit to keep track of my movement, aiming for approximately 5-7km a day. If I was low by the end of the day, I would take a walk or do other cardio excercises. With some of my respiratory struggles, there are days where it sucks, and days I do not do a lot. But it gets done.

My numbers are here. They exist. They have become a core part of my day. My plan is working. So what is the next step?

I have begun to setup an online system so that when I begin recording my numbers again, I will be able to do it easy and quickly. More importantly, I will only be checking the spreadsheet when I need to share my numbers. My aim is to continue developing a mindset in which the numbers do not matter to me, and I believe I am already well on my way.

This is not a method I encourage people to view and believe that they can do it themselves just because it is working for me. I have spoken with Sifu Brinker and explained all of this to him (which is why I am writing this blog), 

and clarified that I will be recording again come the new IHC year. But for the time being, I am playing the long game and believe this personal plan is one that will help me grow.

Ultimately, maturity is another topic I am insecure about. I like to believe I have matured a lot over the last several years (and I genuinely believe I have), but I still struggle to think I have genuinely been growing up. Do I wish I was more quiet, more modest, more serious, more sincere, less goofy, less obnoxious, less arrogant, less prideful? Yeah, sometimes I do. But I do not think Mastery is something I can gain by changing who I fundamentally am. So why fight it? After all, I think the world could use a little bit more silly.

With all of this said (and with my own discussion with Sifu Brinker), I will not be posting my numbers at the ends of my blogs during this IHC year, as I will be sticking to my plan. The plan is working, after all. Next year, though? Oh man. Next year is going to be even more awesome. Because you know what? I am having SO much fun. 

Power and Control

 I am sure many of us, if not all of us, are familiar with the significance behind the bow that coloured belts use and the bow that black belts use (to be specific, I am talking about the bow we use when entering/leaving the mats, addressing someone, etc. Not the opening bow). With the hand placement in the black belt bow representing the balance and coexistence of both power and control, this was a concept I understood but did not fully comprehend for quite some time. Or atleast, I thought I completely comprehended it, but it turns out it was only at a surface level.

 When conducting my sparring reps this summer, I would often use a tree (as I was in the middle of the woods and had nothing better available) as a target to work on my centering and movement around a focal point. When doing this, I eventually realized that despite using most of my strength and speed in my strikes, I would consistently stop roughly an inch or so from the tree. Obviously I was not striking the tree for a reason; I am not Tigress from Kung Fu Panda. I would break my hand. But something I did not realize is that I was not thinking about not hitting the tree. I was simply striking and automatically stopping at the last second. Yet when working with soft targets, I make solid contact.

On this same note, something I realized after sparring with everyone present during class a month ago in the Level 2 Adult Class is that I do not actively adjust my power levels when I am sparring people of various experience and abilities. Again, it happens somewhat subconsciously. When adjusting my levels to my opponents, it is something that just happens. I do not consciously assess the level at which my opponent is sparring; I subconsciously do both the assessment and my own readjustment. 

I believe now that this is a better representation of what the "control and power" balance signifies. They work in harmony and exist in tandem and as you practice and experience them, you get better and more accustomed to using the two together (does that make sense?). At some point, you stop thinking about it. When discussing mastery, I believe this balance is one that you are always in pursuit of, even when it feels like you have a proper handle on it. As I continue my personal journey into intent, I believe I will continue to develop this balance and strive even further along the path to this fascinating balance.

Monthly Mini Challenge - October

Hey team,

For this months Mini Challenge, I decided to change things up just a little bit. Instead of focusing on a physical requirement, Octobers challenge will be related to acts of kindness!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I challenge everyone to identify three things they are thankful for and over the course of the weekend, try to conduct an act of kindness around each of those three things. 

For example, if you are thankful for your family, do something to help your family out. This is something that will take a little bit of thinking, so I encourage people to put some thought into it. You can also think of it as a sort of “paying it back”, if that makes it easier to understand.

Additionally, while these AoK should still be recorded, this is something that will relate to you personally and as such, I understand if you do not feel comfortable sharing. If you are comfortable, however, I encourage everyone to share their thankfulness and corresponding AoK when complete.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Happy Thanksgiving!!