Tuesday 7 April 2009

Self Examination Principles for Martial Arts – By Onder Hassan


When training in the martial arts or life in general, there will come a time where we will feel discontentment at some point in our lives. Whether it’s lack of money, lack of skill or lack of confidence in ourselves to become the person we aspire to be, and what usually causes this is by putting other people on a pedestal or by comparing ourselves with others. There will undoubtedly be someone that will be better than you in some area or another and when you feel that way, chances are, you will always be unhappy. The key to being content is by judging yourself with you only.

I’ve personally found that the easiest way to overcome this is by keeping track of your progress by writing things down. What I usually write in my notes are as follows:

1.Progress reports – These consist of weekly progress of what I’ve learned and my understanding on the techniques and their martial arts applications. The benefits of this is whenever you’re feeling down, you could look back at your progress over the weeks and see how far you’ve come in your development. This would automatically make you feel better about yourself and your training.

2.Short /Long term goals – Write down what you hope to achieve in your training in a short or long term basis. So an example of a short term goal could be to implement and improve your hand and leg coordination. A long term goal would be to take and pass the Siu Nim Tao in a year. I find this beneficial as this would make you focus on your personal goals in Wing Chun.

3.Affirmations – Write down the things you would like to become; your ideal image. They can be positive statements about yourself that you could use to make yourself feel better. The benefit of this is that it could be used to increase your confidence in an upcoming event like a grading or a demonstration. The key however is not to use negative words in an affirmation, for example “I would like to be good at Lok sau” because that would naturally make it seem like you’re constantly striving towards it. Instead what you should say is “I am good at Lok Sau”. What this does at a subconscious level is it reframes your mind into thinking that you’ve already attained that goal. Eventually when you refer back to these notes, you will find that you’re thought processes have naturally pushed you into those ideals.

What this will slowly start to show is how important a person’s frame of mind is towards a goal or task and that it’s a person’s way of thinking that marks the difference between being successful and being ‘ordinary’.

For those of you who are reading this, I challenge anyone to apply these principles in their martial arts or wing chun training and general well being. It will make a difference to the way you view things about yourself and life. You are the person you think you are, and if you think otherwise… Think again!

‘If you think you can or you think you can’t, either way… You’re right!’ – Henry Ford

For more information on Wing Chun see http://www.londonwingchun.co.uk/info.html