Plan to Succeed

   The black belt success cycle has never made more sense than it does right now. 

- Have a goal, make a plan, have a success coach, take CONSISTENT action, review your progress, review your goal.

   Sound easy enough, child's play right? Actually it is. So why am I only now realizing this?

   The reason I bring this up is simple, I have wasted the year of the Rat with excuses and inaction, waiting for opportunity instead of creating opportunity. I should have tested for my Black Belt this year, instead I have squandered away the year of the Rat, hoping that someone else would tell me when I was ready, tell me what to do and how to do it. I needed to make a choice, time was running out.

    The decision not to grade this year was heartbreaking. But it was the right thing to do. If I had chosen to grade this year, it would have been a disaster, an insult and waste of time to not just the grading board and the school, but to what being a black belt actually means. Luckily, Master Brinker and the other Sifus, through his and their guidance, managed to open my eyes to just where I was on my journey. I was stagnant, I was complacent. My attitude towards grading was "there is always next year so I'll give it a try and see what happens". Wrong wrong wrong!! I was missing the point of what grading is all about. I was coasting, my passion for a black belt was an ember in a far away fire. Not any more. 

   As of today, I have started preparing for next years grading. Master Brinker always tells us, be ready to grade by September 1, I never got that till now. That is only 11 months from now!! So I don't have a year to train, I have 11 months! I've already lost a month, poof gone. So now is the time to pour jet fuel on that ember and turn it into an inferno, seize every opportunity I can to train and when the time comes next year, there will be no try, there will only be do. 

   With so much knowledge and passion for Kung Fu all around us at Silent River Kung Fu, the path to mastery is RIGHT THERE, laid out in front of us, begging us to just believe in ourselves, that we are all black belts, we just need to find and embrace that person in ourselves, to be the best we can be. 

I'm all in.