Gary Martin Kung-Fu Centre

While our members were smashing their way thru tonight’s workout, upstairs we had an awesome Black Belt grading taking place.

Congratulations to Jeff on achieving level 1 black belt.

Massive congratulations to Andrew, Roy, Richie, Roxanne and Lauren who all progressed higher up the black belt ranks.

Being an authentic Kung fu school, the gradings covered a wide range of skills and knowledge. All included, the grading was over 5 hours long. Great effort, and a massive personal achievement for all of them. Well done!!

I guess all Kufu do members know that our training centre’s external appearance is deliberately kept almost secretive in its appearance. No flashy big signs or brightly lit advertising banners etc. Anyone driving past wouldn’t even know it’s there. Our members do, and that’s who matters.
We aren’t trying to impress anyone with lights, signs and banners- our martial arts skills do the talking for us. Usually, the more commercialised a martial arts school is, big signage etc, the lower the standard it has, as it tries to be everything to everyone with different classes running all day. Scattered focus.

A similar thing can happen in life as well. When you try to get acknowledgment from other people, you can easily lose your own identity as you try to be a different person to all different people. It doesn’t work.
Be well mannered to all people, but always be your authentic self. Work on improving yourself, but never sell yourself out to be acknowledged by others.

On a similar note, how many times have you heard, or said something like this-
“He makes me angry” or
“He presses my buttons” or
“He makes me feel inferior” or
“ He makes me feel like ****”.

Really? He MAKES you feel like something you don’t want to feel like. MAKES! Really?

How can someone MAKE you feel anything. YOU make yourself feel bad by LETTING someone control you. They don’t put their hand in your brain and turn some k***s and dials to change your mood. YOU change your mood - because you took another person’s opinion of you, or their words too seriously. Wake up, weak people are easily controlled by other people. Strong people aren’t.

You should never let other people change how you feel about yourself.

Think about this-
The guy with the big ego probably has a bucket full of issues in life you aren’t aware of.
The person who judges you by the suburb you live in, is probably drowning in mortgage debt.
The person who tries to put you down because of the job you have has no idea of where you will be in 10 years time.

The list goes on and on.

Focus on your own performance in life, and don’t give a thought about what anyone else is thinking or doing.

Go to it.

Have an awesome week.

It’s really interesting in my job observing the different ways that people think.
The really successful ones have a good general knowledge of what is going on in the world, but their focus and energy expenditure is extremely focused ON WHAT THEY CAN CONTROL.
People though who aren’t exactly what you would call successful think differently. They don’t really have a great deal of understanding of what is going on in the world, and their thoughts are scattered. They spend a lot of their energy focusing on things they have absolutely NO control over. They worry over events that may never happen. They get angry thinking over events that happened a while back in their lives. They ‘role-play’ arguments in their minds with people they don’t like, or have had trouble with. They get upset or stressed thinking about things that other people have said or done to them. They spend huge amounts of mental energy ‘fantasising ’ about how they would like to payback someone who they don’t like.
All this wasted energy and they wonder why they aren’t successful.
In the meantime, the successful ones are thinking about how they can improve - their career performance, their ability to get a point across to a work colleague or customer. In other words, how to be a better communicator. They think about maintaining their physical fitness, exercising/training, they think about their food intake, making sure they eat clean and healthy. They work on building good relationships, both professionally and personally. They actively STOP THEMSELVES FROM THINKING as soon as they realise they are thinking negative, time wasting thoughts.

The difference is huge in the way these two groups of people use their brains- so too is the different outcomes in their lives! The success thinking method helps create happy, productive, fulfilling lives. The method of thinking used by the majority of people though creates unhappiness, stress, anger, low mood, and poor success opportunities.

You have a choice starting right now as to how you want your life to go. It starts with the way you choose to think - and then act.

THE QUALITY OF YOU LIFE

IS DETERMINED BY

THE QUALITY OF YOUR THOUGHTS

Have an awesome week,
see you at training.

Here’s a great pic of black belt Dylan driving-in what I call a fight winner!
Massive power and precision to bend one of these new style kick shields. Awesome.

Congratulations to all our members who blitzed their grading on Friday night.

Gradings are an extremely important part of our training, not only do they put us under pressure, they also show us the importance of breaking all complex tasks into manageable sections.

In all major goals in your life, you must break them down into stages. These stages then become smaller goals to achieve on your way to achieving the main goal. The journey to Black Belt, or Red Sash is tackled by reaching each prior belt first. Stages of smaller goals.

Look at you goals in life, and understand how they can be simplified into stages, then go and attack each stage in order, until you have reached the main goal. This is a far more successful way to keep moving forward in life, without feeling overwhelmed by the task of trying to reach big goals.
Identify, and reach a series of smaller objectives that lead to the big goal.

Without goals, your life can bumble along aimlessly, usually being controlled by other people, and circumstances.

People with goals have focus. They have a definite purpose.
They don’t just allow their lives to give them whatever they get, people with goals know want they want, and work on achieving them.

I can assure you that to have a great life, you must decide what that actually means to you. I have met far too many people who have reached a stage in their lives and realised that they wasted it on useless activities - like excessive drinking, drug use, blowing all their money on gambling, ‘partying’.
This can all sound like fun, until it isn’t anymore, and the person realises that their life has gone nowhere, while others they know who had focus, have got good jobs, saved money and genuinely made a great life for themselves.

Don’t leave your life to chance. Be in control. Set goals, then break them into stages, and make your life a meaningful one.

Have an awesome week.

Here’s a fact of life I hope you find interesting.

When a person is feeling- tired, or insecure, or intimidated, or depressed, or inferior, they ’carry’ themselves in a certain manner. Meaning, they let their shoulders slump forward, they look down, they don’t make eye contact, and they generally become more retracted into themselves.

When a person is feeling awesome, a winner, when they have just received great news or when they are ‘going for it’ in life, the opposite happens. They lift their heads, their shoulders are held back, they look straight out, and they do make strong eye contact. They ‘expand’. They feel and look bigger!

This has gone on in your life the whole way thru, without you even being aware of it happening. Our subconscious mind relates slumped shoulders, downward eyesight etc with us feeling week and down.
It also relates upright posture, shoulders back, direct eyesight etc to us feeling strong and confident.

So here’s the point- whenever you do recognise yourself adopting a slumped posture, you can be sure it is during a phase in your life when you are feeling beaten, down, negative. When this happens, you MUST break the mental/physical loop and start standing tall. Shoulders back, head up, eyes ahead not looking down. Immediately, you will feel your mind ramping up into power mode. You will feel yourself looking for solutions, answers to the problem/situation that has made you feel weak.

This is a proven method of changing ourselves from weak to strong.

Self Awareness is needed to recognise we are in the ‘weak posture’, and Self Regulation is needed to shift ourselves into the ‘power posture’.

Being negative, feeling beaten by life, or feeling inadequate to others around you with big egos or big mouths, over time will start to become your normal sense of self. No way! Not on! This is no way to live your life. Power up - let your mind know that you want to feel strong. You matter.

Head up, shoulders back, walk wih purpose, carry on.

Have an awesome week.

To survive and thrive in life, we must be mentally strong. Life isn’t always happy and positive. Sometimes it is a constant stream of setbacks, letdowns, interactions with nasty people, and often just simply a day where things just go wrong.

People who are too sensitive, or have the misbelief that everyday should be great and that everyone you meet will like you, often struggle with the tough realities of life.

Some days are great, and most people you meet will like you, but not always. This is where we need to be mentally strong.

To strengthen our body we exercise hard at Kung fu. The same applies to our mind. It has to be exercised correctly to become stronger also.

If you can identify the areas of your life that make you feel mentally weak, insecure or intimidated, then you have your mental exercise program mapped out for you.

Whenever you are placed in a situation that does make you feel mentally weaker, then this is the time to harden up and deal with it - how you would want to.

It’s important to remember though that people who treat you like garbage, will do so to others as well. They have a problem. They will no doubt have mental problems that make them act in this rude manner. Don’t take it personally. They are the ones that are going through life hating and being hated. Don’t waste your energy thinking about their behaviour- I can assure you, you’ll never change them. But you can change your reaction to them. The more thought you give to them, the more power they have over you. No thought then!

Mental strength has to be practiced. It is practiced when things aren’t going as you would like.

It’s wise to also remember that when you are going through a tough time, things always change. Life will have its great times. But they won’t go on forever. Life also has its bad days, but they don’t go on forever either. It’s ups and downs the whole journey, but having mental toughness smooths out the less good times, until they end, and the good times kick back in again.

Practice behaving in the manner that fits with the person you want to be. Don’t let fools and disappointing events make you behave like someone you don’t want to be. Please read that last paragraph again.

Go to it. Enjoy life.