What Would Senpai Do: Anger Management

Dear Senpai,

I feel that as a karate student you should be able to remain calm(er) in difficult situations.  Yet every time I’m at work that goes out the window, and once I leave the office I become ‘me’ again.  I’ve read about other martial artists who have had this problem but with different triggers, thus I’m asking:  how do you deal with this?

I just received an email from a co-worker that used language that, while I’m sure they think is “normal” in our industry to use, and they may even see it as a tool to get things done faster, outside of this office would be totally unacceptable.  I am fighting the urge to become very angry and am trying to find the best means of handling this where I can still feel good about myself at the end of the day.

Senpai, how do you stay calm when your first instinct is anger and frustration?  How do you find the line between being peaceful and strong vs. too timid and taken advantage of?

 

Sincerely,

-Alisa

 

http://www.etobicokekarate.com

 

 

Not another karate post: Chi and teen bullying

It has been three days since I first started heavily researching teen bullying and teen suicides as a consequence thereof.  I’ve felt so sick over it for the past few days that I had to write it down and put it out there for fear that keeping it in might swallow me whole.  It’s a karate blog, yes, but I see the way we threat others and the energy we put out and take in from others as a part of karate, and a part of life.  This is my disclosure that this is not a typical karate post so read on if you choose to.

I have been in many crowds where you could feel the energy in the air as if it was tangible.  Positivity, unity, humanity.  This is the kind of energy I think is always around me and it drives me to be better and do what I can to help others.  I have always felt that “we’re all in this together” and when I think of bullying, child abuse, or any kind of abuse really, I’ve always concentrated on the victim and ways I could educate myself to have enough power to help these people.  I decided pursuing law was the best way to get me to that place and as I get closer to actually starting law school I feel like I’m that much closer to helping them.  All of these are my positive thoughts, however a few days ago when I was researching teen bullying I think it was the first time I had chosen to really focus on the bullies themselves.

I have never been so disgusted in my life.

My belief that everyone has some good in them, and us “being in this together”, was shattered as I read comments that people made about a teenage girl who took her life because she could not stand to be bullied any longer.  This girl lost her life over this.  She will never be a parent, or a sister, she will never grow up and see that there’s another side to this life.  She’s gone, forever, that’s it.  For someone to say that they are happy about that… I just don’t know what you could ever do to fix someone like that.  I was left with the thought, “you could fight to help one person at a time, but this will just keep occurring and reoccurring, maybe even at the hands of the same perpetrator”.  This feeling of helplessness was so overwhelming the sky seemed darker for the last few days, and I couldn’t find my way out of bed yesterday, just thinking about how people could blatantly hurt others this way.

Social media is a tool for marketers, that’s what I was taught in school.  Now though, I am now seeing many videos of teenagers on their last hope just looking for someone to relate to them, someone to help them, and this is where they were driven to share their message.  “I have nobody…  I need someone =(” is one of the last things she wrote in her video.  And now she, and many like her, are gone.

Maybe I’m just too sensitive.  Maybe I can only hope to accomplish what I can and have to be satisfied with that.  But if I really believe that there is an electric energy just coursing over us, and that we can affect other people’s energy, then these people out there, who would put a Clorox bottle as their profile picture to make fun of someone who committed suicide by drinking bleach, can influence people just the same as you and I can.  I could not help but feel like I was fighting a useless battle, because a dozen negative voice against you are always louder than hundreds who are telling you to live.

Please just live.  I don’t know you but I know there are many others out there who are just as sensitive to what you’re going through as I am.

Live.  

We’re coming.

Mind Over Body ?

It is hard to watch videos of men pulling planes with their teeth and not believe that there is a certain amount of power that humans possess when they set their mind on a goal.

Recently, I was told that I may have to do 50 push-ups for a grading.  My eyes bulged out of my head!  I’ve been at it ever since and every time I get down there I fail to reach 40 let alone 50.  I told my best friend about my anxiousness and he said me that it is in my mind…  In my mind.  When he said this it brought up a battle between the mind and the body and being that this is a blog about my daily three battles I had to write it down.

Lately, I have moved away from focusing on ‘spirit’ in favor of focusing on the ‘body’ so  push-ups are completely applicable.  50 push-ups!  I give myself a good pep talk each time before I start.  I put on some good music and when I get down there I think to myself: “this is the time that you’re going to break through”.  I actually have to laugh at the whole thing after when I fail, once again.  As much as I believe that we as humans can do anything if we really, truly believe we can, every time I push myself back up for the 20^th time I feel like my arms are going to collapse on the way down for the next one.  So now I have to ask myself, is it that my body is too weak to do the  push-ups or that my mind is too weak to get me there?  How do you know when it’s your mind and when it’s your body?

I am definitely not qualified enough to know the answer to this but I’m putting it out there in case someone has an answer, and so later I can look back and answer myself.

Zen in the Office – Extend Your Ki

I am at a stage in my life where I don’t have to take my work home with me.  I am able to separate my work from the rest of my life and this gives me the advantage of being able to shed the stress of my daily grind once I leave the office and move on to, to me, the more important things in my life.  However, there is a downside to separating the two.  When I’m at work and I start to feel that stress or I see someone being treated unfairly I forget about all that I am working for outside of work and I feel anger or despair that goes against my goal of a 24/7 Zen mentality.

When I am happy, as I usually am, I am outwardly happy and talkative.  Once something goes wrong I tend to keep to myself so it is apparent, though I try to hide it, when I am not myself.  Today at work I discovered something though.  I can’t recall what had happened but I was working quietly when a co-worker said something offhandedly to me about ‘finding moments within moments’.  Something about the way he said it made me turn around and give him 100% of my attention.  I asked him to explain what he meant and we and ended up in an elaborate conversation about ones ki (or chi).

In ‘Zen in the Martial Arts’ one thing I really took to heart, and read and re-read several times over the course of a year, was a lesson on extending your ki.  Joe Hyams explains that we have a certain amount of energy at any given time.  If you are working and are distracted you are not using all your energy toward your work and are therefore not performing at 100% of your capacity.