How to take time out to train? By Sensei Neeraj Dhawan
This is a big one.
When I come across students who miss their training sessions and also end up not being able to train on their own …for various reasons, I start to wonder, “Why are they training at all?”
To persue any endeavour, be it the study of Karatedo, a musical instrument, a hot salsa class, cooking dinner, revising the day’s notes and lectures, or even maintaining a personal relationship… there needs to be some sort of commitment.
Where does the commitment come from? Well, more often than others, it comes from a state of the mind called, ‘motivation’. If you are not motivated, you will not be able to keep up to your commitment. And where does the motivation come from?
Motivation comes from two sources: External, and Internal.
Getting inspired by the talks of a politician; the sharp moves of a champion; the suicidal heroics of a patriotic legend; the guidance of a coach; the challenging bet of a friend, the incentives being offered at the end of finishing off a project before its deadline… these would be a few examples of external motivation…. Very effective, but usually suffers from a short life-expectancy… at the most 3 days!!
On the other hand, being disciplined with yourself by training and practicing; reading and writing; revising and reciting; running and skipping; every single day… without fail, because you are at battle with your inner, lazy self….. that is true internal motivation (also known as self-motivation). Life expectancy of this kind of drive: if you can sustain it for 4 weeks… you can expect it to live as long as you live. However, there are some safety measures you might want to take:-
1. You need to constantly feed your self-motivation with external motivation. Initially, perhaps once every week, and then taper it off to once a month.
2. You will have to keep people away from it. i.e. No-one, absolutely no-one will come in between you and your self-motivation driven commitment towards your chosen endeavour.
It is not easy asking my friends and family members to leave you alone when you need to go to bed by 10 p.m., because you have to be up at 4:30 a.m. for your own practice. There would be times when you would turn down invitations and social get-togethers, and people would call you ‘arrogant’, ‘selfish’, ‘inconsiderate’, or even an ‘anti-socialite’. But your personal time is your personal time. You choose what to do with it. As long as you have control over your life, you will never suffer in your work, studies, or relationships.
Control over one’s life comes with discipline and disciplined decisions that are carried out like laws out of the ‘ten commandments’. We tend to get grey at times… we want to be polite and try and make everyone happy… but that is when they get the wrong picture. People feel that they are helping us by offering their well-intended ‘distractions’ to us. However, by staying grey with them… we just drown deeper and deeper in our pool of misery. I always feel that if the person has respect for me, then he/she will understand and honour my commitment towards my endeavours. You will all be relieved to know… most of the time, after a looooooong time, people do start to understand, accept and respect your crazy behaviour.
Finally, we all know that just about anyone can get up and train when he/she feels up to it. But if you want to build your character and progress to higher levels; if you want to develop and indomitable spirit; if you want to never to have to say, "if only I had...", then you will train and find ways of persuing your endeavour even at those moments when you do not feel like doing so. That is what's going to really feed the fire of your self-motivation. Then nothing, no man, no obstacle, no entity will be able to move you...
Then you will always be a victor… For you have learnt to overcome yourself.
May God bless you.
Ossu.
02-Nov-2004