Resist the temptation to settle for less than you are truly capable of.
Life will give you an infinite number of excuses, obstacles, and distractions to take you off course.
You have to learn to see these for the diversions that they are.
Living up to your potential will require discipline, focus, and dedication.
Your journey will be lonely, frustrating, and even boring at times, but these feelings are nothing compared to the regret you will feel if you settle for being someone you are not.
You have a purpose and a calling; you need only find out what it is and pursue it like your life depends on it because it does.
As we walk our path, from time to time, we will be get distracted.
Sometimes these distractions will cause us to stray off course.
This is an inevitability.
In fact, one could say that this, too, is part of the path.
But, our goal should be to ensure that, when go astray, we recognize it as quickly as possible, learn whatever lessons we were meant to learn, right whatever wrongs we are meant to right, and then get back on track before it is too late to do so.
After all, it is possible to go too far in the wrong direction, so far, in fact, that we never find our way back.
We do not want what could have been a mere detour to become a dead end.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
If we have goals we want to achieve and the means by which to achieve them, the greatest battle we face from day to day is the battle against distraction.
Quite often, what stands between us and our goals is clarity, time, and resources. That is, our goals are not clearly defined, measurable, and realistic, we have too many other commitments and, therefore, have no time to work toward what we want to achieve, and/or we do not have enough money or support to do the things we want to do.
When this is the case, it is easy to be a disappointed daydreamer, hoping and wishing things were different, telling ourselves that, if only our circumstances changed for the better, we would do great things. Or, maybe we use these undesirable conditions as fuel for our internal fire, as the thing that drives us to improve, to set goals, and to work toward them a little bit at a time until we are in a better position to achieve them.
Regardless of how we get there, once we are in the clear, however, once our circumstances change in our favor and we gain clarity, we find the time, and our financial or community resources fall into place, we face an entirely new challenge. Our previous excuses no longer bear weight and we must face ourselves and the possibility of success in whatever goal, dream, or aspiration we once claimed to have.
With nothing stopping us from the outside, now we have to make a decision. We can either follow our hearts toward that which we having been pining over or we can forget what once seemed to matter so much and take on a new set of of excuses and distractions that will keep us from going after what we desire.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Bodyand Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Meditations on God 