Moderation is the key!

We all know that moderation is the key, everyone knows balance is necessary but why is it so hard to do?

GO GO GO!

A big part of anxiety and depression is a sense of meaninglessness. And, as the myth of the holy grail suggests, the hero's journey (the key to meaning, expressed in a million myths around the world) is a matter of gaining one’s power (symbolized by the grail) and then to share ("return" in the myth) and help others with one’s gift/talent/power.

So the hero's journey always begins with their development, seeking personal power. Hence, meaning always begins with the gaining of the "grail", one’s personal potential, talent, gift, bliss, skill, powers, and abilities. You cannot give if there is nothing to give.

First things first - develop yourself, gain competence, then you can help others. This is common sense, like, how can you lend people any money if you have no money?

This line of thinking is so deep in us, that it produces one extreme of our culture: go harder, push harder, use no limit as a limit, don't stop, be unbreakable, develop yourself, if you die you die, man up, go go go!

The result of this line of thinking may be so-called "success", BUT overtraining syndrome is very common (in the future I'll write more about this, I had the first-hand experience with this self-inflicted stupidity) and it results in the destruction of one’s own mind and body. Outside of Martial Arts, burnout syndrome is also very common in the west. Stress is a killer, 82% of all chronic diseases come from stress. Let that sink in.

Underlying this “Go Go Go!” philosophy is a deep sense of never feeling good enough. In Buddhism and the Tao, we call this “the hungry ghost”. No matter how much he eats, it passes through and the hunger cannot be satisfied, the torment will never stop because he's a ghost.

The more you push, the more you achieve, your want is endless, and the dissatisfaction increases, an endless spiral.

For the high achiever, driven personality types, it is important to develop compassion for oneself and learn to slow down, relax, learn contentment, and gratitude - stop killing yourself.

As the Buddha said, "If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.". Luckily, science has recently proven that in just 21 days of proper meditation, both contentment and gratitude can increase gray matter in the brain! You can re-wire your brain through practice!

Learning to let go and relax is a skill that one can do!

TURTLE IN THE MUD

On the other side, is the complete opposite of the overworked, driven type. It's not uncommon to find people that lack the discipline and willpower to achieve their goals. Just look at New Year's resolutions, or the weight loss industry, or martial arts. Most people brag, talk talk talk but do not show up consistently for class, do not practice much at home, cannot show up on time, scared to do anything non-co-operative, just wanna play with techniques.

When I talk with friends who are teachers outside of martial arts, some yoga teachers, English teachers, music teachers, fitness coaches - they all tell me the same problem exist nowadays: people wanna talk, brag, but do not have the discipline to show up and work hard consistently to achieve their goals. This is a serious problem because the lack of incompetence is directly related to low self-esteem and depression.

As we said at the beginning of this article, the hero’s journey for meaning comes from developing oneself, to be useful, to feel useful, to feel needed, and to return to help and share your powers with others.

Discipline is the magic wand of self-development, the key to personal power, the feeling that you can do something, anything.

Personal development gives you self-respect, helping others gives you meaning. It's tribal, we all need a sense of feeling useful, a sense of purpose. This is why the modern blame game of entitlement is so destructive and the cure is to develop personal power.

This we learn on day one in Martial Arts - when someone punches you, kicks you, stabs you, or whatever, you have about 1/10th of a second to respond, it is up to you and only you. It doesn't matter what style you do, who your teacher is. When you get attacked, what happens is 99.9% on you, up to YOU.

It's about YOU. Developing personal power, competence, self-control, discipline is an essential part of growth. The price we pay for being a turtle in the mud is a sense of self-contempt and meaninglessness born from a feeling of weakness and feeling, the voice of " I can't".

We must learn to silence that voice and kick it in the balls with discipline and personal power!

Both the “GO GO GO” and the “Turtle in the Mud” has to balance out. As they say in Buddhism and Zen "the right way is the middle way"  also "Kung Fu and Zen is one " - Shaolin!