RESPONSE-ABILITY

I would like to share with everyone something I have learned that has impacted my life greatly, as well as the lives of my most senior students.

Responsibility has become a cliché term in the martial arts world. Drive around and look at the store fronts of most martial arts schools, and you will probably find this word in big vinyl letters glued to the windows. But what does it really mean to be responsible? Talking about the word does not give it life. It must become an action-philosophy. This simply means that we give purpose and meaning to a philosophy by putting it into action.

Let’s start by identifying what responsibility IS NOT. Someone once said that “irresponsibility is not honoring the best version of yourself.” This is important because it suggests that we have to be accountable to ourselves first. People may never know some of the things that you do, BUT YOU WILL. You’re the one who has to sleep with it at night.

Being responsible for yourself and others has a lot to do with your ability to not react when something happens to you that you normally would react to. If you break down the word responsibility, you get two new words: RESPONSE and ABILITY. Your ability to respond to situations in a proactive manner determines the outcome. Reacting to a situation is not a conscious effort and therefore leads to no transformation for you or the issue you are trying to resolve.

Remember that becoming the best version of yourself means BEING the best version of yourself. To accomplish this, learn to transform from a reactive being to a proactive being, one moment at a time. That is what it truly means to be responsible.
What is your response-ability?

All the best,
David Alvas