I Am Grateful

I am grateful for my health.

I am grateful for both my legs and arms and hands still work.

I am grateful that my mind still works.

I am grateful that I can see beautiful days.

I am grateful that I can hear happiness.

I am grateful for my parents loving me everyday no matter what I do. 

I am grateful for my friends in life who are there for me when it is rough.

I am grateful for my Kung fu for how it has changed me forever towards the extraordinary.

I am grateful for my fellow team mates in the I Ho Chaun who show me unconditional support.

I am grateful that I am always making progress in every part of my being.

I am grateful that I get to be alive with you all.

Sifu Langner

Staying Consistent

I need to write my blog tonight. The huge importance of how important it is for me to stay consistent. I had a very long day toady. I spent a huge amount of time moving a lot of materials to another house then I spent my time for the rest of my day with my uncle. He came unexpectedly and we had a lot of fun, but the unexpected is something that will happen again. 

I feel truly tired and in times like these I would normally say I will just write tomorrow. I already know that is a lie. It is the start for me of skipping this week then maybe the next week and so on. Mediocrity can easily creep in. To be mediocre requires no effort, to be extraordinary requires hard work and discipline. 

Sifu Langner

Big Steps Vs. Small Steps

Achieving goals. I have been diving deep into what is truly amazing in my life. I have been seeing more clearly the huge impact of taking huge steps to small steps to achieving my goals.  They both have value, but one is sustainable while the other is not. Big steps are most of the time super charged chaotic possibilities, and small steps are methodical slow and understanding to great discoveries.

Big steps have there value in making drastic changes in your life that could have a positive outcome. Sometimes in life you might need a swift kick in the butt to strive for your goals. A huge step might get you started in the right direction, but how long can you run at full speed in a marathon? There is high risk that you could easily fall off track with one little bump in the road, or something could give out, body, mind, and even loved ones around you. Blinded to the extent of losing progress in other areas in life to achieve the one goal. I have experienced and seen the big steps, and every time they start out with great intention, but at the end the same lesson is learned no matter the outcome good or bad It is not maintainable. Even if the goal has been achieved the goal disappears from our lives as fast as we achieved it. 

Small steps are what builds the foundation to sustainable success. It is a way of achieving your goals without disrupting your currently life, but only adding to it. Small steps is takes gratitude in every little thing accomplished and still makes time for other opportunity's in life. You learn more about the goal and the bigger reason for trying to achieve  your goal. It is a simple slow jog that is set by you and easier to maintain and make it to the end of the marathon and continue this progression into your own life forever. Small steps are great because eventually you will succeed, and now everything in life turns into great success. Small steps teaches gratitude for all the small progress that you have made. 

For me Big steps get me started and thinking in the right direction, but the small steps is what lets me accomplish my goals and see the bigger picture. 

Big step: I want to have my balance and strength again. So I should work out all the time and practice as much as you can and push myself to the extremes. It is unacceptable if I don't at least do ten push ups a day. 

Small steps: I will not work out all the time because I am not there yet. I will become dizzy if I push myself to much. I will do certain amounts a day and take gratitude in small achievement to regaining my strength and balance. Today I do one full push on the ground and tomorrow I will do another and then another. Until I can do two on the ground without issue and I will be proud of those two that day. I will some day reach one hundred in time.

Sifu Langner

Open Training Day

 I really enjoyed open training yesterday. It is a day full of wonder and ah; 2 hours of extraordinary possibilities. It is a day were it feels like to me that there is no limits. Open training day has been one of the many things I took for granted. I would say some times I will just go to the next one, but any event could make it disappear. 

  Whenever I go I always have a great time. Whether it is helping others, having profound discussions, or simply working on myself. I realized why I enjoy the open training so much. It is my dedicated time to pursue the extraordinary within myself. My other classes are meant to learn and grow and Saturday is my time to bloom, and my time to fail. It is my moment I am trying to achieve possible mastery and one day I would like this saying to ring true. "A master has failed more times than a beginner has tried" Just a small dash of hard work and consistent action. 

Open training lets me see the great things other have done and accomplished, or even trying something new for the first time. I get to be re-invigorated by seeing other learn and grow in their own journey towards mastery and humbled by those who have worked hard in our martial arts. I always feel amazing after the 2 hours is done. 

 I swear just by re reading my blog it seem as if I seen magic and dragons on that day and I believe I have. 

Sifu Langner   

  

How I Write Blogs

I do not normally know what I am about to blog. Most of the time I am just winging it. I start sometimes with a title, or just start typing and a title develops. I start writing random thoughts and ideas I have, and most of the time it flourish's into something pretty neat. It feels like I have to do a warm up before I really start typing. 

  I would start typing my day, or past current events related to me, or conversations I have had in the past. This is what I do if I have nothing on my mind at the moment. It helps me realize that yes I do have something and then my blog takes off. 

  Once I have established what I am writing about I will constantly edit and re-edit myself as I type. For grammar purposes, but also it helps me to find how to make sure what I am getting across sounds logical vs. "I like tree and I think there pretty cool"  I realize with this sentence for the most part does convey I really like trees, but I try to make it flow better or not repeat myself.  "I like tree's they're pretty cool" or "I think tree's are awesome" I would not say that there is a wrong one of the three, but one does sound better and more effective for me. I know I have left in many less then desirable sentences, but I am always learning how to convey my message out better. Better wording or sentence structure.

  Re-reading all the time also helps me to find if I have included thoughts and ideas that might not fit the theme of the blog. So I delete them and use them again for when I am doing that theme. Example: I like trees and a severed head of a sea slug can grow a whole new body" Now maybe these two things might be relate to the blog, but if the theme was lets get to know Randy then I would delete the slug part. This way I can stay on topic that pertains to my blog.

     I know I like to always play devils advocate. Which is not a bad thing to do, but I find writing a blog that way to be a whole lot more difficult. I try and stay to the point the best I can, but sometimes I still think that I have to show the other side. I would say always showing the other side put less emphasis on the point I could be driving home.  I would say in this very part of the blog I want to put " but looking at both sides can make great blogs too". I did put it in then, I deleted it, then I put it back in as the example. :) Because I Know both statement ring true, but my emphasis is on not looking at both side all the time to make the point. By showing both sides in these different ideas conflicting each other for me loses the importance of what the first part of the sentence was trying to get across. 

These are just some of the things I  go through when making blogs. They can either be simple or complicated. I know most likely even in this blog I have a lot of errors or things I missed when I edit, but that is why I always try to improve. Blogs just has to start somewhere and the easiest way to accomplish that is to just start typing and see what can evolve from it. 

Sifu Langner