About the Bruises on My Arms

The Desert of Arizona
Rain 51 Degrees

So I’ve been studying Filipino martial arts for a few years now. This particular art is a bit brutal. It’s not a sport, it’s combat. That means there aren’t any rules.

No referees, no points, no padding, no boundaries, no nothin’.

So on any given week, you might experience locks, compressions, getting whacked in the head with a stick… you know, stuff like that. So if we ever meet in person and you wonder why my arms are all bruised… that’s the reason. Really puts my problems from my “normal life” in perspective.

Pretty much by the end of every class, you have some bruises, cuts or scrapes somewhere. My wife doesn’t understand why such an otherwise intelligent individual would subject himself to this, but for some reason, I really like it.

In music, the best teachers didn’t work to make you a clone of them, they worked to help you figure out how to play like you were meant to play. That’s what a great teacher who has his ego in check does.

It’s the same with my martial arts experience. I’m fortunate enough to study with someone who doesn’t approach this with some rigid system to make me like him or else. There’s no 45 step system to follow.

In fact, it’s a running joke about the folks who are looking for a system like that. They are looking for rules to follow, which end up fencing them in. Taking the principle based approach breaks all the walls down.

There are PRINCIPLES to learn and master. And once you learn those principles, then you become your own teacher. You are only limited by your own creativity in terms of how you combine all of the principles in order to achieve a result.

This means you have the raw materials to actually transcend those who came before you. You do this by combining your unique perspective on things with their principles. You wind up with stuff that is unique to you.

This is how you can approach your business as well. Don’t copy someone else’s 45 step system for success.

It won’t work for you. Not like it worked for them. What WILL work for you is to take the key principles they applied to create that success and then overlay them onto your world.

Become your own teacher. Once you do that, your entire perspective shifts. You go from trying to “do it right” to focusing on being effective. Those two things are totally different.