Episode 253 - New Year's Resolutions
In this episode, Jeremy talks about how you can improve your martial arts this new year as he shares some of his experiences.
New Year's Resolutions - Episode 253
It’s the time of the year that we think about the things that we want to improve this new year. On today’s episode, Jeremy talks about New Year’s resolutions and how it can be beneficial for us, martial artists. Jeremy discusses his list that can be helpful for you in making your resolution. Listen to this episode and find out more. Happy New Year!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in, whistlekick martial arts radio episode 253 and today were going unscripted. This is Jeremy am the founder of whistlekick, I am your host on the show and I’m recording this the day after Christmas 2017. Of course, you might be listening to in the future. Well, you’re certainly listening to in the future because we don't do these live, well we did for episode 200 but normally we don't do them live, so you are listening to this in the future and I thank you for doing so. Thanks for sharing some of your time with me, with my voice and whether you realize it or not, the rest of the martial arts radio community, the thousands, tens of thousands of people who listen to this show two times every week. Being that this is going to come out just a couple days after Christmas, just a couple days before New Year's, it's a pretty appropriate time to talk about New Year's resolutions. I'm looking to get bogged down with fitness stuff with you or why you should love the year that you've just had or be open to the year that you're going to have. I’m gonna offer you some thoughts on how to approach 2018 to make your martial arts better without getting all swamped in the multitude of options.If you want to check out the rest of the shows we have, you can find them at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com if you want to check out our products they are, at whistlekick.com and we’ve seen a ton of interest in the wholesale program lately. I don’t know what we're doing right, but all of a sudden, were getting blasted with request for wholesale accounts. For those of you might be unaware of that program, no minimum orders, always free shipping and you can find that at wholesale.whistlekick.com or there's a link in the navigation at whistlekick.com so check that out.New Year's resolutions they all come down to one thing trying to improve something, right? We’re trying to make some part of our lives better, here were to talk about martial arts how to make your martial arts better for 2018. The first thing, pick a single goal. Don't set out with dozens of goals and you know this month I’m gonna work on this and this month I'm gonna work on that. Pick a single goal, make sure it has a definable outcome and hammer on it until you've got it. Maybe it's achieving a new rank or maybe it's learning a new weapon or form or going your first competition or winning a particular trophy you know, placing first at the competition. Doesn't matter, I'm not here to judge whether your particular New Year's resolutions are good or bad, that's not for me, that's not my job. My job is to encourage you to help you reach whatever those goals are and the number one thing that deprives people of success is going after too many things at once. Here's how I look at, if you set out a list of three-four 10 things that you're looking to accomplish in 2018, it becomes really hard to work on any one of them and focus and make it happen. So, go ahead pick the one that is most important or the one that you feel is the easiest or whatever method you want to use for choosing one, choose it, make that the only one that you to work on. And then once you've done it, then go to something else. Maybe you got a list right now, that's fine, but don't tell yourself that you're working on a dozen goals at once, it’s silly. Take it from someone who spent 15-20 years trying to hammer on multiple goals all the time. One of the greatest learning experiences I had was the realization that when I choose one thing to work on, it gets done. It gets done well, it gets done fast, it's almost magic.Next up, I want you to be afraid of choosing a goal that maybe isn’t sexy. We all want to pick these big dramatic things, yet time after time in the martial arts we realize that, it is our fundamentals our basics that have the greatest impact on the rest of our martial arts. If you were to go back and choose a goal related to improving your flexibility so you can refine your stances or become stronger so your punches or blocks are more effective. That is going to translate out into everything that you do, whereas learning jump spin whatever kick, don’t get me wrong, I love doing that stuff, that's not gonna have carryover into your more fundamental movements. Learning a jumping 540 sidekick, hook kick, roundhouse kick doesn't make your rising block better. But working on your stances making them stronger, makes both of those better. I may have glossed over it, so I wanna go back. The most important thing about a goal is that it's something that you can decide when you've achieved it. The more subjective any goal is the less likely you are to accomplish it. If you say I want to get better at karate this year, well, if you're going to class you probably can do that but how do you know if you haven't? If you say I'm going to go to at least eight training sessions a month, well, that's definable. You know whether or not you've accomplished that and that's really important with goals the more objective they are, the more likely you are to achieve them. If the goal that you really want to accomplish is big, don't be afraid to break it into smaller pieces. How do you eat elephant? One bite at a time. Most of us have heard that tongue-in-cheek sort of cliché, but it holds true. If your goal is to earn a black belt or to you know, fight in a Full Contact match or with something big something daunting, you gotta break it out you got a look at it as individual pieces otherwise you become overwhelmed and once you're overwhelmed, that's the easiest state to be in to run away from a goal. I don’t want you to do that, I want you to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. And of course, this advice holds true to pretty much everything outside of martial arts, any goals that you have whether their New Year's resolutions are not. And if we connect the idea of the New Year's resolution with some of the advice I’ve offered in the show before, your new year’s resolution should probably be related to the things that you are the weakest at, the worst at. There's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing wrong with admitting where you are fallible, where you’re falling down as it relates your martial arts training.I'll tell you a secret, train as often as I wish I did and that's despite having a training space, a heated training space. Let’s see, hundred feet from where I'm standing? I have to go outside to get to it, but it's right there it's in the whistlekick warehouse but I’m busy and I know I’m busy and you're busy and were all busy which is why I’m gonna leave you with this thought. For the last 10 to 15 year’s, I’ve had a single resolution as it relates to my life and it doesn't sound like it's terribly objective, but for someone like me who is constantly analyzing things, this is what I need to keep myself moving forward. My New Year's resolution is always has been to have a better year than the year before and guess what? That's held true every year since I set it up because of the way I choose to look at my life.I would love to hear what your New Year's resolutions are. Feel free to reach out jeremy@whistlekick.com or you know what I’d love even more, post them publicly, let's share these things. We are an amazing community. I hear from so many of you individually and I would love to see those conversations happen in public so you can lend support to each other, encourage each other. There are so many wonderful martial artists listening to the show and I appreciate every one of you. Thank you for giving this show purpose, for giving me an outlet to talk about the martial arts topics that mean so much to me. Here's to an amazing 2018, we have great guests in store, some of them have already been recorded. You’ll get to listen to their episode soon. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.