The Distance Between your Dreams and Reality is Called Action

When it comes to success in martial arts it isn’t just taking the right action, that might lead to your success, but taking enough action on a consistent basis. Often people get so bogged down with starting a task that they rarely do enough to accomplish the goal that they set out. Others love to start but can't finish because once they get going, they realize the amount of work required is going to be more than they expected. This can set them off course and intimidate them from ever really getting a start. When it comes to action there are four that might make your life a little easier or more difficult. 

  1. The right action. If you're lucky enough to know what to do ahead of time and you take the right action, you can shortcut your mistakes and get to your goals sooner. 
  1. The wrong action. This can seem like a huge setback, but it could be an important education on what not to do. Sure, it is frustrating when you put a lot of effort into something only to come up short, but if the goal is to achieve then a truly driven student will know that this is just par for the course. 
  1. No action. No action equals no results. When you do nothing not only do you come up short you hurt your self-confidence when it comes to tackling new and different things. Confidence can be a big driving force in one's journey to success. In karate class, we will sometimes see a student highly motivated, and then suddenly something happens, and they miss a session or two. This sometimes turns into a repeated habit and suddenly, a once thriving student starts to become inactive. The result is they lose their motivation, their drive, and ultimately their skills start to diminish. The motivation wasn’t the issue inaction was! 
  1. Massive action. This should be the only action a student should take. Doing too many push-ups, too many sit-ups, too many kicks, and too many practice sessions is never going to hurt you. The only thing that you might notice is suddenly you will have a new challenge in front of you. Think about it if you're coming to class, working harder than everybody in the lesson, and getting better you're going to see that it takes more and more effort to achieve the same results. This is not a bad thing, this means that you're doing the right thing, and the fact that it is harder and harder to make smaller gains is a true testament that you're at the highest level and caliber. This is exactly what we want to see in FCMA students as they target their journey to black belt excellence.

Although there is no magic recipe for success the one thing, I know for sure, is doing too much is never a bad thing. I'm sure if we could all do it over again, we would look back and say why didn't we do more. Fortunately, the present is a new opportunity and what you do with it now can only lead to bigger and better things.

Remember, the distance between your dreams and reality is called action!

Sensei Chris

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