02/01/2024
How are those New Year’s resolutions going? Don’t be bothered by the statistics about failing resolutions. There’s nothing magic about the month of January that makes it the only moment for you to succeed. All you’re experiencing is a moment of pause after the madness, overeating, and overspending of the holidays when it makes sense to realign your values. It just so happens that the year flips over to the next right now as well. In Cuong Nhu we have a checklist to help us find the leak in our training boat so that we can patch it up and keep moving forward.
With these lists, we break down the various touch points on the path so that we can see where we need the most work. With the “ten C’s for successful training,” we break down the elements of starting and continuing primarily a physical practice.
The first stage is Commitment where we first make it clear that we are making a change. It’s important to be firm since your mind will do everything it can to resist change. Coaching jumps right to involving someone with more experience. This one is huge. We would all rather get the credit for getting better on our own efforts, and also don’t want to be seen as a beginner. Involving a coach brings in a level of accountability that can be intimidating, but is much more likely to succeed.
Consistency is easy at first. When we’re on a high for getting started and making the first progress, we’re likely to overdo, burn out, or injure ourselves. Slow and steady is much more likely to get us to our goals. Courage allows us to break through boundaries. Sometimes those are about giving up things we’ve grown comfortable with in our lives, and sometimes we have to face breaking entrenched rituals with our family or friends. Conditioning is about supplemental activities that help you succeed. If you were taking Jiu Jitsu, for example, in addition to showing up for your classes, you might also take on a strengthening regimen directed towards the muscle groups that will help you move forward or keep safe.
Camaraderie is a powerful addition, as joining into a goal with friends or making friends with others on the same path increases the joy of showing up and also the accountability. Concentration refers to how study, planning and mental focus increase even our progress with a physical goal. Communication adds to the socializing of the effort by reminding us not to work, strive, or test in isolation.
Finally, we have a Competition with ourselves, focusing on our own progress rather than measuring others, and playing the experience like a game instead of taking ourselves too seriously. Control over your body becomes the process and the reward, allowing the ongoing effort to become the destination. Remember that the reason most people fail to achieve their goals is that the goals become meaningless unless the process of reaching for them merges with the end to become the true goal.