Even with the best ideas and the passion to back them up, we will make very little progress without support from others.
None of us gets very far alone. We need others in order to do our best work. We do not necessarily need them for the work itself, but we need them to witness our work, to hear it, to see it, to experience it, and to decide whether or not it holds any meaning, truth, or value to them.
If our work is to have an affect on the world, it must be experienced by others. It must touch them and create change in their lives. If this change is to take, however, if it is to stick, it must do so with their consent, permission, and support.
This means that if we want to do good work that affects the change we want, we must make ourselves vulnerable. We must share our ideas and we must prepare ourselves for criticism, rejection, and disapproval because, without the risk of these, there is very little likelihood that our idea was worth having in the first place. Support succeeds, it does not precede, sharing.
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, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Street art photo taken by Robert Van Valkenburgh, artist unknown unless otherwise noted.
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A consensus tends to round off the the edges, but the edges are what cut through convention and lead to innovation.
There is a fine line between brilliance and insanity, as the saying goes, between a great idea and a crazy one. The problem is that great ideas often sound crazy to the people around us, even to our biggest supporters. For this reason, asking for permission or waiting for consensus tends to shut down great, but crazy sounding ideas before they ever see the light of day.
Obviously, not all crazy-sounding ideas are good ones. In fact, most are not. However, often the only way to know if something is worth doing is to do it, to try it, to experiment, execute, and then evaluate the results to adjust, pivot, and re-execute with better information.
Crazy ideas are only great ideas if they work, but there is only one way to know if they will work or not. This does not start with permission or consensus, but with risk, action, and even failure, maybe a lot of failure before our idea reaches its true potential. In order to know if our ideas are crazy or great, we have to take a chance, make our art, build our dream, and see what happens.
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, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Street art photo taken by Robert Van Valkenburgh, artist unknown unless otherwise noted.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
“Part of my job is moving forward without permission.” —James Victore
If you wait until other people approve of your idea before you act on it, it will already be too late.
The best ideas do not have an audience yet because the best ideas are something that no one else has imagined yet.
Changing the culture requires doing that which is not popular, cool, or even normal… yet.
“As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”
-Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Meditations on God 