Push through the Pain of the things you don’t like.

How we can push through what we do not like to do it over and over and learn it and get used to it then you can be liberated from it.

When I was a very young child my parents enrolled me in a martial art school. My memories of that

school consisted of a huge amount of fun but I don’t recall it being the fun that we look at these days. In other words, within my schools we disguise repetition through fun drills and exercises that capture the child’s imagination and creative learning. We even do this with teens and youth as well. It is more of a science than anything else and as teachers we have to understand the way the mind works.

I do admit, we live in a totally different time then when I was a child and we have to adapt to the times. What I remember as fun, really was hard work, exercise and repetition. I remember even at 3 and 4 years old, my goal was to be amazing. I don’t know if it was my mindset, but I was very competitive and I always wanted to strive to be the best at all I could do and even be the best in the class. I also remember classes being extremely difficult and the tone would change. My teachers would put me through the class and it seemed they were mad at me. I never let them see me demotivated but I always wondered why Sensei was mad at me. I would later find out, my mom has spoken to him about me talking back to her, or not doing my chores or being disrespectful. In fact, they never mentioned it to me in class, however they showed me. I would ask my mom why Sensei was mean today and she would say because I spoke to him about being disrespectful. I am not sure now, if the lesson would be as well received with our generation of parents and children. However for me, it taught me many valuable lessons:

1) Life is not fair.

2) Life has its ebbs and flows. Sometimes things don’t go my way.

3) Life inevitably will beat you up at times.

4) Life is not always about getting what you want, sometimes you have to suck it up and deal with it.

5) Life is not a big fluffy place. Sometimes the world could be cruel.

I realized at a very young age, that life is not about getting everything my way. In fact a great lesson that I learned was even though I am not getting my way, I have to find a way to make it suit me. In others words, I need to find the good in every situation as difficult as it may be and ask myself “how does this situation suit me?” Since I was a 3 years old, I was brought up in the martial arts. I learned to deal with life through an esoteric philosophy and Eastern mindset. I was taught that failure was a good thing. In fact, without it, I could never succeed. If I did succeed without failing then it was far too easy to learn and do.

I learned early on, that if I expected of felt the world, people, instructors, bosses or teachers owed me something I was in for a rude awakening. However, in public school, I did an awful lot of blaming others for my lack of success. Until I realized all the whining in the world wasn’t going to save me and I needed to take my success in my own hands, I basically struggled. I was continually looking for others to change my outcome. I know now, there are many people that may assist on my journey however not as many people will be there taking me through it. I am responsible for it.

The other day I had a few very interesting conversations with parents of students in my school. Interestingly enough, they both had the same theme. The theme was, I was urging the parents to push the children past their comfort zone or stumbling blocks. Their response was “I know my child and that is not the way things work with them.” What this leads me to believe is they have accepted their behavior as who they are, not looking at their potential. Everyone has a god given potential. Some use it while others don’t even recognize it. Sadly, some of the most talented people don’t recognize their potential. I can say from experience that some of my best students were not those that had recognized their god given potential and a natural ability. It was those that recognized their potential and pushed hard to become the best they could be.

The reason why I wrote this article was from a comment that my Yoga instructor said during one of our sessions and it is very similar to what I say as a martial art teacher. We have to push through the pain, expand our comfort zone, so that the things we do not like, become easy and we can do them without any stress or ill feelings. Even though they still may not be our favorite activities, they are still activities that we do not try to avoid. We have to push through the pain, through the boredom, through the repetitiveness. We have to inspire ourselves to do it because it is good for us, not because we love it and enjoy it so much. We do it because it is what we need, no matter who difficult it is.