I’m finally back in town after a harrowing week in Chicago.  I spent several days agonizing about missing classes to fly out, but my decision was clear when I stopped to acknowledge how bad I felt about the possibility of not seeing my dad before such a major surgery.  Even though many people told me bypass surgery is “routine,” sawing open my dad’s chest and rewiring his heart didn’t seem too routine to me.

I’m so relieved I went, for my dad yes, but mostly for my mother to help see her through her worry and fear for my dad’s life.  We had to celebrate her birthday in the hospital waiting room on Wednesday while the nurses watched my dad. Things were touch and go for awhile there but now he seems like he’s on the road to recovery.

This health scare reaffirmed a few things:

1)  Family First (biologic or not).  No matter what is going on, it can wait when your family needs you.

2)  It is a blessing to have a stellar TEAM of Instructors at SMAA who all step up for each other.  Creating, having and appreciating those who support us is one of the keys to a good life.

3)  When you are in surgery is not the time to start thinking about your health.  An ounce of Prevention is worth the proverbial pound of cure.  This is one of the reasons I emphasize the health and fitness aspect of martial arts and why I created the WarriorFit System (you are using this, right?).

I’m glad to be back!

Easter Egg Riots

Saturday we hosted our annual Academy Easter Egg Hunt, and despite the heavy winds, it was a great morning and all the kids had tons of fun. Siena even got to participate in her first egg hunt ever. Thanks to Nathan Ooms for backing off and letting her find some eggs. That was very kind of him and it made her day.

After our Easter Egg Hunt, I witnessed two other Egg Hunts that I just need to contrast to our well-disciplined and courteous egg hunt.

The first was directly following our egg hunt in Boulder.  We went to get Siena’s hair cut for the first time and stumbled across a toy store’s egg hunt in their tiny concrete square outside their store.  Coming right from our hunt in a nice, spacious park to this cramped quarters was striking.

You couldn’t really call this an egg hunt.  It was more like an Easter Egg Scramble because all the eggs were just dumped into this concrete circle and all the kids were unleashed to shove and jostle to collect as many eggs as they could.  It was a frenzy and had none of the FUN of exploring to find hidden Easter Eggs.

Dr. Karla and I were a bit repulsed and both said, in unison, “Siena’s never going to be a part of that.”

On Sunday — with the second Easter Egg Hunt Incident — It got worse!

I happened to catch a TV news report of an “Easter Egg Hunt Gone Wrong” in New Hampshire.  Again, not really a hunt as much as a piranha-like feeding frenzy.

Hundreds of kids were in a field where eggs were dropped from helicopters.  The best efforts of the organizers were to no avail in keeping the ravenous kids under control.  They stormed the field, running each other over, knocking each other done in a mad dash fueled by pure “id” to collect more eggs than they could possibly ever need.

Of course the TV announcer was aghast at how this could happen, but as a martial arts teacher my first response was, “really, what else did you expect”? I sometimes joke that our kids are like locusts at our Easter Egg Hunt, but it’s a joke.  Our SMAA kids were the pinnacle of restraint and just plain NICE as they searched for eggs, even going so far as to help others who didn’t have many eggs find more eggs.

These kids, in such overwhelmingly large numbers, really were like locusts.  File that Easter Egg Riot under “you had to see it to believe it.”

This Easter tale has one last component.  Sunday morning Siena, now 2, had her first Easter Egg Hunt at home.  On Saturday we colored eggs with her, an event in itself.  Watching her face as she helped dunk eggs and see them change color was priceless, as any parent would know.  As fun as that was, guiding her to find the eggs the Easter Bunny had hidden was better.  Seeing her scan the house, then spot an egg on the ledge, then exclaim, “there’s one!”– MAGICAL.

Some things are better in small numbers.

It’s Karate, not Karoshi

This week is St. Vrain’s Spring Break and I invite you to take a break from your martial arts training as well.

What? Heresy, you say! No, I’m serious. We all need a break from even the BEST DISCIPLINES, martial arts included. Of course who would want to be away from the positive influences in your life? After all, if you stop working don’t you backslide? Ever onward and upward as they say.

That sounds good in theory, but in practice it doesn’t play out. We need to put work aside periodically for 5 simple, profound reasons.

First, after awhile we waste time. We lose focus on achievement and become less and less efficient and ineffective in our labors. Practicing is like sloshing through mud, mentally we hit what economists call “diminishing marginal returns”– less return for more effort.

Second, we need a fresh perspective. New experiences and different inputs mesh with our experiences in ways we would never achieve without taking a break. Now, if you just plop in front of the TV for your break you probably won’t get any sort of valuable perspective at all. Shutting off your brain completely isn’t “active recovery” of the sort that I’m talking about. An active lifestyle is what I mean. Keep your body and brain alive with new, unusual challenges and they will help you when you return.

Third, we need to recharge our batteries. When we get emotionally run down, everything gets harder. When daily stresses overwhelm our systems nothing seems to work anymore. See point #1. After a break we return eager for action and primed for accomplishment. We need what’s called “activation energy” to experience flow, or optimal experience. Changing things up with new places and new adventures helps restore this mental energy.

Fourth, is the “reminiscence effect.” When you take a break from training you lose all the small details and retain only the “big picture.” The good news here is that many of the small mistakes you make tend to fall away as well. When you return you may be surprised to find learning easier and be better than before. Trust me, this happened to me with my martial arts training several times. I didn’t know what was going on until I came across the reminiscence effect.

Fifth, there is more to life than training. My martial arts teacher told me that while I was in a fit of obsession with training. Boy, did I need that. Achieving Black Belt and Life Mastery is a LONG process and committing to the path helps us take necessary breaks and still return to the path. Breaks make it easier for us to commit and re-commit to our long-term goals. No one makes it to the top of the highest mountain without regular breaks. Just make sure you weave them into a long-term vision or else breaks will mean stopping altogether.

This is why we have to FORCE ourselves to take a momentary rest before we suffer from “karoshi” the Japanese word for dying from overwork. They have so many people dying from overwork they had to create a word for it.

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