What Does it Take to Bring People Together?

Commitment, hard work and a willingness to surrender yourself. The group that is going to be testing for their black belts at our school in three weeks is going down to Niagara on the Lake for a weekend of team building.

While the idea that the black belt test at our school is more than an individual assessment of your performance as a martial artist is long entrenched at DeSantos, the time we take to help the group that is testing together bond has definitely taken on a different quality in the last few years.

Partly this is just the chance brought by opportunity -- our master now has access to a property down in NOTL that works really well as a retreat for the group for the weekend. We do all kinds of fun things to help them get to know each other, and to de-stress them. But still help them to develop the focus and mental strength necessary for what they are about to do.

more on this later...

Simple Things

I often tell my students that what I teach them is simple, but not easy. Often, martial arts is about a quest for simplicity, but this is actually quite hard.

One of the first things a student at our school learns is how to bow, then how to tie their belt, then how to line up for the start of class. Each of these things is simple, but often executing them properly (especially under stress) can be the hardest thing in the world.

Too often I find that the world confuses simple and easy. People want to change their lives, but want it to be easy. Change is hard, but it is actually quite simple. It starts with a decision to change, and follows with a commitment to do the work necessary. And then it often requires the frighteningly simple, yet utterly terrifying step of asking for help.

I try not to proselytize about the effect of martial arts on your life, but identifying the difference between simple and easy is one of the best things I've learned from my years of training.