Winners and Losers *Tournament Edition*

With our upcoming Spring Championship fast approaching, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the spirit of competition in Tang Soo Do, as it relates to winning and losing in life.

Everyone, either currently or at some point in their lives, likes to win medals and trophies.  They are a symbol of accomplishment.  They are ornamental representations of hard work, determination, skill, and countless other adjectives that describe success.  On the other side of the token, I don’t think I have ever met anyone that does back flips when they lose.  That’s not to say I haven’t seen people take losing with a good attitude, but it still hurts.

Why is it that human beings, for the most part, care when we win or lose?  It’s because we are all striving for peace in our lives.  We are looking for that injection of good feelings that will last a long, long time.  Winning provides that feeling, and it can last a while – even a few days or weeks.  But it doesn’t last long enough.  That’s why next time there is an opportunity for success, we will go after it, even if we have already won.

I have seen people walk away from competitions with gold medals around their neck, sometimes even more than one, and find no peace within themselves.  Winners can be losers when you win with the wrong attitude or perception.  If you win first place, and walk away thinking ‘I’m the best’ or ‘no one can beat me’ or even ‘I have nothing left to learn’, then you are walking away a loser and have won nothing and found no peace.  You will not achieve a feeling of humble accomplishment that will stay with you for the rest of your life.  The only thing you will find is an insatiable quest for boosting your ego.  You will never find peace.

I have also witnessed people who win nothing in a competition – not even a participation ribbon – walk over to the winners and shake their hand and say ‘I learned a lot watching you today.  Thank you for being an inspiration for me to do better.’

This person really won the competition.  They went home peacefully and with a good feeling to strive to improve.

The highest form of winning is to walk away from a competition, with or without a medal, and understand the things you did wrong and right, and have the courage to continue to work on it.  A true sign of courage is to continue to walk the path even after bearing defeat.

These are all virtues that can only be learned by experience. There are WORLD lessons in life, and there are WORD lessons.  The concept of winning and losing can only be learned in worldly experience.  And it takes a lot of experience.  This is why the tournament is a required exercise at USK Karate Academy.

For parents, this is a painful thing to watch your children learn.  Our natural instinct as parents is to protect our children from any kind of pain, but WE MUST realize that this is impossible to do all the time and may actually hurt the child greatly in the big picture.   For children to grow up balanced, they must learn how to accept victory with great humility, and defeat with great courage. This is the spirit of Tang Soo Do that we try to instill in all of our students, young and old.

So how, as parents, can we help children learn these things?  You have to start by talking to them about the concepts, and then making them accountable for their actions.  When they do well, praise them, and tell them how proud you are.  Ask them how they feel.  Ask them what they thought was the best part of the accomplishment.  Ask them what they thought they could improve on.  Then tell them one more time how proud you are.

The tough one is when children, especially younger children, fail at something or don’t get the outcome they expected.  This is hard to watch as a parent.  However, we must be their strength in this time and help them get back up.  They will learn more from picking themselves up than you can imagine.  As long as you are there to encourage them and not make excuses for them, they will get better.  Making excuses when your child fails, and telling them that it was someone else’s fault, will set them up for monumental failure later in life.

To my adult students, when you compete this week, release your ego and compete to learn more about yourself.  More knowledge and understanding of yourself will help bring you more peace.
To the parents of the young students in the school, please share this lesson with your children so they can begin the process of finding peace in their lives.  It is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child.

All the best,
David Alvas

Judgment

People can be brilliant. People can be amazing. People can change the world.

The one thing standing in our way of our own brilliance and seeing the true essence of others is judgment. Judgment acts like blinders that blur our vision of people’s true character and potential. Judgment also removes humility, thus making it harder to learn from our mistakes and the teachings of others. And we all have something to learn from everyone else.

Love is the only cure for removing judgment. No one is perfect, and I’m not suggesting that by loving someone that all of their faults will go away, but it will make accepting people easier. When we accept someone, we take in the good and the bad. Loving someone means we treat others the way we want to be treated. And we all want to be treated lovingly, even when we are ‘being bad’. Think about it. By loving others, we love and respect ourselves.

This week, find the good in others. Look past their faults to their strengths and use that vision to help overcome conflict. Remember that people mirror back to you your own faults. That’s the negative power of judgment, but also the opportunity. People help to show us what we need to work on, if only we can get past our judgment.

All the best,

David Alvas

This is Going to Hurt Me More Than it is Going To Hurt You

I think we all heard that line for the first time somewhere between four and six years old.  It made no sense to us, back then.  As a parent today, it carries some more weight.

Having to discipline our children is a tough one, for sure.  It can feel like it is physically hurting us to have to hold our ground with them when they step out of line or make a poor decision.  You get that knot in your stomach, you start questioning yourself, you ask yourself if you are being mean, you get anxious, and so on.  You may even wonder what they will think of you after it’s over.  So what do we do in this situation when you must be the disciplinarian?

The first and most important question to ask ourselves when we have to discipline our children is:
“Am I doing this in the highest and best interest of the child?”
This is so important to really ask yourself, because it takes away what I call reactive or compulsive disciplining.  Reactive discipline comes from a place of anger, confusion, frustration, and fear.  When we act from these places, we are not addressing the problem at hand, we are satisfying OUR feelings, and it’s not about us.  It is critical that we do not discipline children to satisfy our feelings!  Discipline is a tool, one that must be used neutrally and appropriately.  When we discipline a child to satisfy our anger with them, we are being selfish and not focused on sending a corrective message, but rather a message that tells the children to react to mistakes with anger.  Avoid exercising discipline when angry.  This is not the message we want to deliver.

The next question:
“Does the discipline fit the mistake?”
Learn to appropriately match disciplinary action to mistakes.  Grounding a child for 6 months because they did not set the dinner table on time is not an appropriate discipline.  A basic rule of thumb when putting a young child in time out, for example, is to have them in time out for the number of minutes equal to their age.  For example, a five year old that talks back may get 5 minutes in time out, followed by a required apology, and a hug and kiss.  As the children get older, and their mistakes get bigger, you have to use your discretion.  For example, when disciplining a teenager for breaking curfew, taking the car away for the rest of the weekend or the next time they go out is appropriate.  It is also a good idea to have older children and teenagers do something constructive around the house when they step out of line that they normally don’t do.  This channels their energy (they will be frustrated when you discipline them) in to something productive and will give them time to reflect on their mistake.  Manual labor is usually good.

“Does the child understand clearly what they did wrong?”
The pre-framing for this should take place before the child makes a mistake.  One of the biggest errors I see parents make today is that they don’t take the time to effectively explain all of the rules and boundaries of success to a child. I often tell parents that running a household is somewhat like running a business.  If you went to work tomorrow and the boss changed all of the rules and expectations and didn’t tell you, and then proceeds to scold you for making a mistake, you would probably be angry and confused.  A household works the same way.  If a child doesn’t clearly understand how to succeed and what the consequences are for failure or disobedience, they too will be confused when disciplined.  This will cause the child to rebel harder against your authority.

Here are a few more tips to think about:

1) Try not to do discipline in the heat of the moment.  We tend to not speak clearly and thoughtfully when we are angry.  You don’t want to say something you don’t mean and can’t back up.

2)  The younger the child, the more crucial it is to connect the discipline to the mistake quickly. As time passes, the child will have a harder time understanding the correlation between discipline and mistake

3) NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, issue a warning that that you are not prepared to back up IMMEDIATLEY.  This is crucial.  The other side of this is to think very hard before you issue a warning, because once you issue it, you must follow through.  Not doing so will damage your authority and the child will not take you seriously.  Then you will run in to a new set of problems.

4) Do not give them three attempts to follow your directions.  Do not count to three.  All you are doing is programing the child that they get three shots at everything, including your authority.  Life does not work this way, and children will benefit from learning this lesson early in life.  Children must learn to follow directions the first time.

5) Praise.  It is so vital to show love and praise when a child fixes a mistake or does the right thing.  They need to know that you love them, and that you are proud of them for making the right decisions.  Children enjoy the feeling of pleasing, and they will work hard to replicate that feeling.

Finally, it is important to remember that all good parents feel hurt when they have to discipline their child, but you must remind yourself that you are the custodian of their future.  Nothing should stand in the way of you educating and positively molding your children into self-sufficient, model citizens who will be productive role models one day.  Not even those uncomfortable feelings you get.

All the best,

David Alvas

Be Your Own Hero

Living with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty can be miserable. It robs us of opportunities to seize the special moments in our lives. It leads us to regrettable decisions, and even worse, to not make a decision when one must be made. Negative emotions are as powerful as injecting a toxin into your body. It can shut down your immune system. It can alter your body chemistry. It can cause you to get sick. So it is important that we study how to combat negative emotions by curing them, not brushing them under the rug.

Most of our basic fears sprung roots when we were small, most likely between the ages of two and six. We have carried them with us our entire lives, most of the time subconsciously. So every time something happens that strikes that old root, we respond the same way we did when we were young. We run and hide. We don’t act. We wait for someone to do it for us.

Here is a quick example: Jimmy is 5 years old and playing on a baseball team. In a big game, Jimmy is playing in the outfield, and suddenly, with the crack of a bat, a pop fly enters his territory. Jimmy focuses very hard on catching the ball, but to no avail. The ball hits his glove, and bounces to the floor. The runners score, the game is over, and Jimmy feels as though he is to blame. Even worse, one or two of his teammates tell Jimmy that he blew the game for them.

In this example, it is easy to see that Jimmy is upset, but what Jimmy doesn’t realize is that his subconscious has now made a decision to never be responsible for the big “stuff” in life again because he already failed once at it, and he hated how that felt. To protect himself from that awful feeling, Jimmy will avoid those opportunities for the rest of his life so he doesn’t have to feel that kind of pain again.

Do you really want to spend your life reacting to a fear that was created decades ago? Probably not. The first step is to identify what it is that scares you. What is it that keeps you from reaching your dreams? It’s not the fear of dropping the baseball; it’s the fear of letting others down. The next step is to sit with it for a while. It might make you mad, it might make you cry, but you must sit with it. The final step is to dig your heels in the ground and take some kind of an action that will directly connect you with that fear and give you the opportunity to let it go. Remember, it is not the action that scares us, it’s how we feel. The action is nothing more than a vehicle of opportunity to shift what must be shifted.

When you accomplish this, you set yourself free. You are your own hero. You save yourself.
Tang Soo Do is a great way to address this process because it consistently gives students an opportunity to practice awareness, to overcome fears using courage, and to practice the self-discipline necessary to change.

You have that super power; you just have to choose to use it, no matter how scared you are.

All the best,
David Alvas

Midnight Blue Bash Videos

Hello!

I wanted to make sure that readers of the blog weren't left out on the videos I've been putting together of the Midnight Blue Bash we held last December.  The first five have been released, and I've placed them all below.  I hope everyone enjoys them!  I'll post the rest as soon as they're available.

Part 1: the choreographed form

Care, Don’t Coerce

I read a great little quote from Yehuda Berg, someone whose messages I subscribe to.  I felt it was worth passing along.  It speaks to the importance of helping others along with a genuine intention of benevolence.  Sometimes we find ourselves asking others to change because WE need them to change.  This is not the best place to come from if we want to truly help people for their own good, not ours:

“You cannot change another human being. Think how hard it is to change yourself! And even if you could, you would only bring them away from their purpose – changing themselves.

We can, however, provide help on physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual levels. We can attempt to influence others in ways we think would benefit them. We can try to act in a manner and make decisions that would serve as a positive role model.

But we must navigate the razor’s edge between teaching and preaching. Teachings means sharing your wisdom out of love and care, not because you want to convert or convince or coerce.”
All the best,
David Alvas

Coming to Terms

If we are to be successful in life and achieve our goals and dreams, we have to come to grips with a key concept: we must embrace the hardships and challenges that come our way on our journey to fulfillment and prosperity.  These hurdles present us with an opportunity to climb higher and realize what we are truly made of.  Discovering what we are truly made of is discovering our essence.  When you know your essence, you will know others better.  When you know yourself and others better, you will better know peace.

Come to terms with the conflicts, and face them like a warrior.

All the best,
David Alvas