Your best ideas now may be better saved for later.
Timing matters.
The right idea executed at the wrong time is the wrong idea.
Be patient, but don’t procrastinate.
Don’t allow fear of failure to hold you back, but also don’t be so hasty that your ideas have no chance of success.
Keep working, trying, and failing.
When the perfect idea is executed with the perfect timing, it feels like magic.
The perfect moment is not coming to find you.
The perfect opportunity is not going to knock on your door and ask you if you are ready.
The perfect circumstances are not going to chase you down while you are headed in the opposite direction and beg you to turn around.
You have to take the risk, you have to make the move, and you have to do so in the face of fear and uncertainty or your life will be wasted on waiting.
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Inspiration is inconvenient.
Inspiration doesn’t wait until we are in front of a canvas, an instrument, a keyboard, or our training partner. It shows up when it shows up. We can set up conditions that give us more opportunity to receive inspiration and to act on it when it arises in us, but we cannot control it.
Inspiration is both inconvenient and fleeting. It doesn’t care if we are ready. It doesn’t care if we don’t have time. It shows up when it is ready and, if we are not prepared to receive it, it will disappear as quickly as it came.
When inspiration, ability, and opportunity all present themselves at exactly the same moment, we must act. The stars may never align like this again. If we hesitate, if we stop to think about it, to try to figure it out, to intellectualize it, or to make excuses as to why we can’t or shouldn’t, it will pass us by.
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
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“The right technique with the wrong timing is the wrong technique.”
—Brazilian jiu-jitsu saying
Kogen Dojo owners Matthew Van Valkenburgh, Dwayne Bowie, and Robert Van Valkenburgh at Kogen Dojo’s 2nd Anniversary. Photo by Haley Arias PhotographyRecently, the martial art school that I own and operate with my brother and our friend celebrated its second anniversary. While these past two years and the potential for the future that they represent are certainly something to be celebrated, what I was struck by was the thought of how much time, energy, and effort preceded even the thought to open our own school. There are so many of little, seemingly unrelated things we each did in our past, leading up to this moment, that may have seemed like failures at the time, but were actually just practice.
Simply because an idea does not manifest the results you hoped for does not mean that it was necessarily a bad idea. Your timing may have been off. Just because something you did for someone else was not received well or appreciated does not mean that it was the wrong intention or action. It may have simply been the wrong recipient. If you fail while doing the right thing, do not lose hope and do not lose heart. Certainly, do not cease to do the right thing. Be patient and do it somewhere else, with someone else, and for someone else.
There is always a need in the world for quality, for caring, and for innovation. If you have thoughtful, generous, and creative ideas, but they are not well received, you simply have not yet found the right audience. This is not an excuse to be snobbish or stubborn with bad ideas. Your ideas must have depth and weight. They must offer positive change for people looking for that kind of change, even if they don’t necessarily know it yet. You must continue to try, to practice until your best ideas, your best work finds the right person or people, the right setting, and the right timing because the right technique with the right timing is magical.
Holistic Budo: 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 and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Do good work, practice, and be patient.
Do not wait for the timing to be right to do good work. Do good work until the timing is right.
Everything prior to the perfect moment is simply practice and preparation for that moment.
If you wait for the perfect moment to arrive, you and your skills will not be ready to take advantage of it and the moment will pass you by.
“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 and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Meditations on God 