Your Comfort is Killing You

If you value your own personal comfort, over your personal health and growth. You have a very big problem on your hands. I know that in our society, we truly value are comfort, but it might just be the one thing that is holding us back from living as our best self.

Comfort, I have found, stems from two factors:

Fear, fear is a biggie, that is hidden in comfort. For example, we fear going to the gym because we don’t like our own bodies and we fear what others might think of us. So we don’t go to the gym, we don’t break a sweat and most of us just end up back on the couch.

Which then leads into the second factor: Laziness, we all struggle with this. It’s easier to stay  in bed longer, it’s easy not to choose the right foods, its easier to skip the workout and its easier to do the things we know we should do.

What does that result in?

It results in us not growing, getting out of our comfort zones or learning anything about ourselves. The negative sides of our comfort far out weight the positive. This is exactly why we never see results in our over all health and personal goals, because we never step out onto the water so to speak.

So how to we break out of the comfort? How do we began to ditch the fear and laziness?

In the simplest terms, you and I have to do things you don’t want to do every single day. Do the pushups you don’t want to do, go for that run, apply for that job, go after that dream you have always wanted to go after. Talk to that person you have always wanted to talk to.

When we do that, we grow and are much more satisfied with the direction of our lives. I encourage everyone who reads this, to write down a list of goals that you want to accomplish.

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The Inner Struggle of A Martial Arts Instructor

Martial arts has been a huge part of my life for nearly thirty-two years, I’ve always been a student and gleaned from what other systems had to offer. I’ve gotten to train and earn certifications of instructorship for some of Bruce Lee’s original students. I’ll always be a student of the game.

I have also loved being able to teach others, and see a joy appear their faces from being able to learn a new skill or do something they never thought they could do before with their bodies. Being a teacher has given me a great sense of accomplishment and a sense of purpose.

Throughout my teaching journey, however, I have seen students come and come. I’m sure that this is most common among many schools and instructors. What burdens my heart though is that I can never keep me anyone around. I have gone from having almost twenty students in my college self-defense class to only three or four. Watching the flux of students from a close vantage point has caused me to look inward.

Am I doing something wrong?

What could I be doing better?

Is there something in me that people don’t like?

Or the tougher question: Am I meant to be an instructor?

All of these questions have moved through the landscape of my emotions. I have envisioned my owning my own school someday, but if I can’t even keep one student what good is it? I’d hate to close down a school because of a mass drop out rate. I honestly am starting to wonder if this passion inside me is the worth the risk.

Seasoned instructors would tell me to keep pushing forward no matter what, and knowing myself, that’s what I’ll do. I just don’t know when things will start looking up and stay steady for once.

 

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