Worry does nothing to improve the situation about which you are worried.
Worry does not help you think more clearly, it does not help you formulate a plan, and it certainly does not help you take decisive action towards a solution for your worry.
Worry just keeps you stuck, trapped in a cycle of inaction and rumination.
But worrying is merely misdirected energy, and energy is neither bad nor good; it just is.
Once you accept this fact, you have a decision to make.
You can either remain trapped in your cycle of worry and inaction, a victim of the energy that overtakes you.
Or you can harness and channel that energy into something positive, productive, and useful.
If you chose the latter, if you redirect this energy outward into constructive action, you have discovered a superpower.
We often hear that if we win the morning, we will win the day.
As a general rule, this is certainly true.
How we wake up, the time we wake up, and what we do upon awakening and in the first few hours of our day sets the tone for everything that will happen after.
If we give ourselves time to think, time to reflect, and time to work on our goals, ourselves, and our creative projects first thing in the morning, we start the day with a win.
If, on the other hand, we start our day with resistance, fighting off the need to wake up, procrastinating on the things that must be done, and delaying the inevitable, we will find ourselves constantly on our back foot, irritable and hurried, and struggling to catch up while other people’s priorities take over our time, energy, and attention.
We get to decide, every day, what kind of day we will have based on what kind of morning we give ourselves.
This decision is not easily made in the morning hours, however.
Nor should it be.
This is a decision we should and often do make many hours before, the night before in fact.
In reality, how we wake up, the time we wake up, and the energy and attitude we wake up with are largely determined by how, when, and in what way we go to sleep.
Winning the morning might win the day, but winning the evening wins the morning.
Success and failure are largely determined by preparation.
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.
We can talk about what we want forever, but no one will take us seriously until we actually take action.
Basing our lives on shoulds, oughts, and wants does nothing to move us in the direction of our actual desires. In fact, quite often, we find ourselves saying the things we want as a way of excusing us from actually doing anything about them. It is as if simply speaking our wishes out loud makes them real enough in our minds that we can go back to procrastination, distraction, and postponing our desires without the responsibility of regret.
In spite of how much we hope that it does, saying something enough times does not make it manifest in our lives. In reality, saying it enough times, without taking action on it, only dulls the edge of our intention, making it less and less true over time. When we say we want something, but do not follow through on it, we make ourselves out to be liars by default, even if unintentionally and only to ourselves.
This does not mean that we should keep all of our wishes and wants to ourselves. On the contrary, we should share our ideas and desires with those we love and respect, and especially with those who support us and who want the best for us. What we do not want to do, however, is to use up our credibility, with ourselves or with others, by being all talk and no action because a single decisive action has more value than a thousand shoulds, oughts, and wants put together.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
There is a tendency when overwhelmed with too many tasks, demands, or responsibilities to speed up in order to catch up or get ahead. An increase in quantity of output tends to lead to a lower quality result. When we rush, we make mistakes.
Mistakes have a tendency to double our workload. We already did the job once, but now, as the result of our haste, we have to start over and redo or repair the work we thought was in the past.
In a world where it is nearly impossible to simply reduce the frontend day-to-day demands placed on us by our jobs, family, and life in general, we must find a way to minimize our need to repeat tasks unnecessarily on the backend. We must do quality work that does not cause us more work down the road.
When we feel rushed by outside forces, we must hurry up while also slowing down. Instead of being reactionary, which is itself a chaotic state, we should instead take a deep breath, assess the situation, create a plan of attack, and then execute that plan in a calm, organized manner. In the long run, calm and organized is always faster than hurried and confused.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Meditations on God 