Sunday, December 14, 2008

the power of martial arts: sacrifice...

Sacrifice is the act of forfeiting something of value in exchange of something of greater value. It comes from Latin, sacificium, which means to make sacred. One would make an offering to a deity to make the relationship sacred.

We think of sacrifice as giving up something in the short term to gain more in the long term. Like giving up chocolate cake to lose weight, or studying very hard to become a doctor.

To be able to effectively sacrifice, to make sacred, we must know what we truly want to accomplished. This could be a simple as preparing dinner or complex as creating a career. When I carve a statue out of wood, I must sacrifice the wood to bring forth the status within. We must sacrifice those habits and things that prevent us from shaping our desired life.

In training under Great Grandmaster Tae Yun Kim, I recognize the mental limitations I have created for myself. It is so easy to say that you cannot do something when you never really tried. Jung SuWon gives you an opportunity to push yourself to realize that you can do more then you thought. You sacrifice pre-existing beliefs in yourself like I am weak or I'm too fat. I found that my attitude changed and this carried over into my job. Rather than shy away from jobs in which I had no experience, I would jump at the challenge to learn and grow. Instead of limiting myself to a narrow track of life, I expanded out to try new things. To learn to play guitar, or video editing, or take a class on astronomy. Rather than creating artificial limits in our life, we should explore and learn to find what are those real limits. You would be surprise how far the boundaries go.

What am I willing to sacrifice to discover my potential? What am I willing to sacrifice to live the good life? The greater the reward, the greater the sacrifice.

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