You can avoid risks for your whole life and still fail.
In fact, by making the decision to not put yourself out there, to not take a chance, and to not go after whatever dreams you have, you are guaranteeing that you cannot succeed.
If you know what you want, the only thing stopping you is fear.
If you are waiting for the fear to go away, it never does.
If you are waiting for the perfect time or opportunity, it will never come.
The fact that you have a dream is a gift in itself.
Do not trade your dreams for the illusion of safety.
Self defense starts with taking care of ourselves and our partners on the mats so that everyone gets stronger through training, not weaker through injury.
It is good to train hard, to push ourselves, and test ourselves in practice, but it must always be remembered that it is just practice. The goal of practice is to improve, to get stronger, to get faster, and to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. Beyond that, the goal is to do this for a long time, so that our progress, and that of our training partners, never stops.
If we train to the point of injury, either our own or our partners’, progress is halted. The saying ‘pain is weakness leaving the body’ may be true, but the opposite is also true. That is to say, injury is weakness entering the body.
Injuries do not make us stronger, nor do injured training partners. In any martial art, we need to stay healthy and strong in order to continue training and in order to improve. Likewise, we need strong, healthy training partners who will push us, but who will also take care of us and us them, so that we can continue training together long into the future.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Courage, by definition, is impractical (and practicality is not courageous).
Doing what is safe and practical keeps us moving in the same direction, at the same speed. The problem with this strategy is that life is moving faster than whatever speed we feel is safe and practical. For this reason, instead of getting us ahead, doing that which is safe and practical actually keeps us in a constant state of falling behind.
Doing that which is risky and impractical requires courage. Risk is not the same as recklessness, however. There is nothing reckless about risking safety and security for something we believe in, for a truth that pumps through our veins and nags at us from the backs of our minds in all of our waking hours.
The only way to get ahead is to take a chance, to unshackle ourselves from fear and what often seems like logic, but is actually just our insecurities and doubts masking themselves as explanations and excuses as to why what we truly want can not and will not ever succeed. We cannot think our way into following our hearts, our instincts, and our inspiration. They live beneath our fears and thrive through our actions, not our intellects.
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 