Search Your Feelings…

I spend a lot of time on helping people through their performance issues.

For some, this means getting through the basic pile of excuses that blocks them from doing what they really want. For others, that are past that initial pile of excuses, I spend a lot of time teaching them how to get a handle on their own brains, so that they can really open up the throttle on their personal development.

Sometimes a small road block is just as effective as a major road block at keeping you from getting anywhere.

The rock-solid foundation of you being able to free yourself from limits is as simple as becoming aware of your drives and habits.

Doorway to Super Performance

If there is single, doorway to super performance, it is coming to know why you train in martial arts or qi gong.

I’m not talking about the reason you use to justify training.

For example, you may tell others that you train in Arnis, because it is effective self-defense that can be learned in a short period of time.

Is that true?  Yes, that is a truthful description of Arnis.

You may tell others that you train in Qi Gong, because it keeps you from getting ill when everyone else is sick.

Is that true?  Yes, that is a truthful description of Qi Gong.

These are truthful descriptions of the effects that you gain from training.  They are vitally important effects. You should tell as many people about those effects as you can, in order to benefit them and encourage them to follow the same path.  After all, don’t you want the people around you to be safe and healthy?

The logic easily supports training for these benefits, and developing skills that get you these benefits at their most intense yield.

The logic is completely irrelevant.

Search Your Feelings…

However, the logical benefits of training are not what you feel when you are training. It is  what you feel when you train that is the doorway to super performance, because it’s what’s motivating you at the gut level.

How many times have faced a task that you knew was good for you, maybe even necessary for your day to day living, that you avoided?

Did you avoid it even when you knew all the positive effects that that task could provide to you?

You avoided it because benefits are not as motivating as feeling.

When you know what feeling is motivating your training, you can build your training to favor that feeling, both in your self-training and in the class environment.

Martial arts, taught properly, have a unique ability to trigger the flow of endorphins, keytones, and other reward hormones within the first ten minutes of a work out.

In Water Mountain, classes are deliberately designed to cause this release, because it motivates the training.  The precise combination of activities that taps this feeling varies by the person, and it’s up to the person practicing to determine what part of a training regimen is causing the positive release of emotion.

When a person is having difficulties with excuses or other roadblocks, it is because his or her behavior is either not triggering a release OR THERE IS A COMPETING FEELING.

This competing feeling is not necessarily correct.  From a logical perspective, it is often wrong.  However, it exists, and must be understood.

If you wish to be free, after all, you must understand the chain that is keeping you rooted to the stump.  The understanding makes the struggle manageable and is the first step to breaking away.

Super performance ultimately comes from defeating the roadblocks, and returning constantly to emotional states that motivate intensive training.

Keep Training, Keep Growing!