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All of us are emotional beings. The better you are able to control your emotions, the healthier and happier you’ll be, and the better you will perform in the Martial Arts and in life. This includes how you handle stress. “Master your emotions, or your emotions will become your master.”  Often times, our emotions are affected in a negative way by feeling overwhelmed, lacking energy or paying too much attention to the negative news of the day. God knows there is plenty of it these days. This can and often leads to a build-up of harmful stress and negative thoughts that can destroy health, wealth, and happiness.

Martial Arts training forces the negatives out of your mind, body, and spirit and allows you to breathe in the positives. Another great way to influence your best emotions is to purposely feed your mind and body the best information you can. Listen, read, and watch things that motivate and inspire you. This helps to bring out your best emotions. If you are feeling down, watch something funny. I often resort to old episodes of M.A.S.H. and most recently the best of Johnny Carson. I guess I am dating myself. If you allow yourself to constantly absorb negatives, it’s like junk food for the brain. It can and will cause long term damage to your emotional well being, your mood, and your overall state of mind.

Champions strive to master their emotions, by purposely programming themselves for success and achievement. Everything you think, see, say, hear, and do, influences your thoughts and emotions. Once you understand this, you may decide to be more aggressive on programming your thoughts every day, by watching, listening and doing things that influence your emotions in a positive and empowering direction. Positive programming leads you toward positive thoughts and emotions. Just as you wash your body each day, take time to do a positive brain wash. Positive emotions and energy will bring you greater health, happiness, and optimism toward life and better prepare you to face your challenges head on. Developing positive emotional control is similar to developing your confidence: it requires daily attention and regular conditioning.

Here are a few things you can do immediately to become 10 Feet Tall and Bulletproof from life’s challenges and trying times.

• Train or Exercise Daily to energize your body and keep yourself fit and strong.
• Read & Study and/or Watch & Listen to positive, funny or inspirational information.
• Spend more time with people that encourage you and bring out your best.
• Spend less or no time with people that bring you down or put you down.
• Get up earlier & get a strong start on your day by taking action.
• Regularly read, review & re-write your goals and keep them in front of you often.
• Allow sufficient rest. Too much sleep causes as much damage as too little.
• Follow a healthy & balanced nutrition plan, with frequent moderate sized meals.
• Drink more water and reduce or avoid too much caffeine and/or alcohol.
• Smile more and talk more about all the things you are grateful for in your life.

The better you think and feel, the better actions you will take and the better results you will see in all areas of your life…

What keeps a Champion so motivated? The answer is “Action”. Action creates Motivation! Too often, people are waiting to get motivated, before they take any action. That’s not how motivation works. Once you take action, motivation follows. The more action you take, the more motivated you will become. Once you decide what you want in your Martial Arts, in your education, in your life, you must take action.

“You don’t need to be great to get started, but you do need to get started to be great!” 

Les Brown.

It’s true in anything. If you want to become a confident, capable and well conditioned Black Belt Leader & Champion, you must take action to get to class and train. No action, no results! Massive action, massive results! If you want to become smarter, you must take action to read and study more. If you want to become successful, you must take action to become successful. The more action you take, and the better actions you take, the better results you will achieve. Motion intensifies emotion once you get up and get moving, you’ll feel better, think better and take better actions. Anytime you take action and get in motion you improve your emotion. Doing nothing and thinking negative thoughts causes great harm to your mind, body and spirit, and can destroy valuable opportunities. To get to the top, start by getting off your bottom!  Our Moo Do philosophy is an action philosophy. Tang Soo Do is an action philosophy. It teaches us to step out of our comfort zone even when we don’t feel like it. Then and only then, through focused energy and action, will be motivated to be all that we can be!

Bill is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!” He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Bill was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” He replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or … You can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood.” Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or… I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life. “Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” he said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life.” I reflected on what he said.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.  After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.  I saw him about six months after the accident.  When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins…Want to see my scars?”  I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,” he replied. “Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or…I could choose to die. I chose to live.” “Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. He continued, “the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.” “What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Bill. “She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity’.” Over their laughter, I told them, “I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”  He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34.

After all today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

This week we are reminding you to seek progress versus perfection in your fitness goals. Perhaps you’re trying to drop weight, reduce your body fat %, improve your speed or increase your flexibility. All are very good goals at any level of training. Seek positive progress versus expecting perfection. Anyone that seeks perfection is rarely going to find it and will usually be unhappy with their results. Striving for excellence and celebrating excellent results is different. You may drop 5 lbs of fat, increase your muscle mass and see better tone in your body…that’s excellent. It may not be perfect, but it is progress in the right direction. Celebrate it. You may see a 10% improvement in your flexibility and greater speed in your kicking skills because of it. That’s excellent. Celebrate it. Again, it may not be the perfect splits you want, but you are closer to it. This is the idea behind this week’s tip: Recognize and reward positive progress versus seeking perfection.