The goal is not to have more for the sake of more.
The goal is to have more of what matters.
Decide what is truly of value to you and seek that with all your power.
Protect that with all of your strength.
The rest is merely distraction.
True wealth is not the result of having more possessions, power, or prestige.
True wealth is knowing what matters and having that in abundance.
Simplicity is more complicated than it appears.
It takes a lot of work to get to effectively simple.
You have to try and fail many times over until you get to that which is essential and true.
Simplicity requires discernment.
It requires that you reject the unimportant.
Simplicity is beautiful and precise.
In a world full of so much that is unnecessary, simplicity is its peaceful absence.
There is power in simplicity.
Do not make your life overly complicated.
Complications will find you on their own.
There is no need to seek them out.
Having too many options means never having to commit to anything.
Create limitations for yourself and learn to work within them.
Set boundaries for others and learn to maintain them.
Learn to say no to that which is least important so that you can say yes to that which is most important.
This will allow you to focus.
It will force you to prioritize and it will enable you to do your best work.
In a complex world full of shallow distractions, simplicity allows you to live a life of depth.
As parents, teachers, leaders, or mentors, one of our most important and powerful tools we have at our disposal is the object lesson.
If we are able to point to and extract from a specific incident, a lesson or principle that applies to a variety of situations or circumstances, and if we are able to communicate that lesson or principle to the person or persons we are attempting to help in a way that is heard, understood, and, most importantly, felt, we empower them to make better decisions in the future.
It is difficult to do this if we are caught up in the immediacy of the moment, however. In order to find the greater lesson or principle in a specific incident, we must be able to step back, to distance ourselves psychologically and emotionally from what is happening, to look at the situation objectively, and to consider what single shift in mentality or behavior would either prevent or replicate this occurrence en masse in the future relative to our desired outcome.
Object lessons are a means of pointing out and communicating repeatable patterns, whether good, bad, or neutral, in a way that these patterns become predictable and controllable. In other words, object lessons are a way to teach causality so that it can be used to one’s advantage, ideally in an ethical, productive, and socially contributive way. Simply put, object lessons empower us to see beyond the specifics to the fundamental.
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 & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
If we want to know what works and what does not, if we want to know what matters and makes the most difference in our lives, we must first begin with some degree of consistency.
By establishing a consistent baseline of values, principles, and behaviors, it becomes much easier to determine the causes of our success or failure.
Consistency gives us the ability to add or subtract new ideas, new input, and new actions into our lives in a way that allows us to test their affect on us, on the way we feel, on the way we perform, and on the way we interact with others.
By starting with consistent controls, we can add or subtract variables to or from our lives and produce some relatively reliable data points with regards to efficacy and outcome.
The easiest way to do this is by first with limitations, restrictions, and boundaries on the aspects of our lives we wish to examine and improve.
In other words, if we want to get down to the causes and conditions of our success or failure, we must remove that which is nonessential and then add things back slowly and deliberately.
This is true whether we are talking about diet, exercise, productivity, or even creativity.
By first eliminating all that is not essential from our lives, we are then better able to determine for ourselves what truly matters or does not, what is necessary or is not, and what adds benefit or value to our lives or what causes undesirable negative consequences.
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 & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Meditations on God 