WOD 8 and Some General Comments

November 16, 2007 by jleeger.

I’m going to give you all a couple of days off…I’m heading out of town for a little vacation this weekend, and won’t have access to my computer Saturday or Sunday.

For today’s workout, PRACTICE.

It’s hard to dedicate oneself to practice sometimes.  For me, this mostly occurs when I don’t have clarity about why I’m doing it.  If I’m going back and forth in my head about my reasons for practicing, the deliberation stops me from doing anything.

Take the time to list the reasons you practice Bagua.  Really look at those reasons and get to know them.  See if there’s anything you missed.  Then, rate how fully you’ve realized those reasons in substantive form.  I mean, if you like Bagua for self-defense, how good are you really at self-defense?  Can you use Bagua to defend yourself?

Whatever the reasons, break them down.  Rate yourself on a 1-10 scale.  Then, write out what it would be like to be at a 10.  How would it look, feel, sound, taste, smell?  Go through all the senses.

Finally, what would it take for you to get to that place?  Make a plan.

Now you have a goal and motivation, not just for your daily practice, but for the effort you put into classes as well.

George always says “Have a GOAL for class.”  And it took me a while to understand that.  At first, I’d assign an arbitrary goal, like “be smoother,” or “be connected with whole-body power.”  While those goals were ok, what we did in class didn’t always lend itself to me realizing whatever particular goal I’d set for myself.

The process above approaches the idea of goal from a larger sense, but it can get just as specific once you break it down into the smaller steps needed to get to the big goal.  For me, this helped a lot.

Have a great weekend!

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