CONGRATULATIONS to the people who earned promotions since our last newsletter.
Marlie DiPalma – Junior Yellow Belt
Shayne Davies, Jake Brader – Brown Belt #3
Carolyn Kulick, Jesse Micari, Thomas Schroeder – Brown Belt #2
Jay Brader – First Degree Black Belt (Sho Dan) – at least 4 years of adult training
Jeff Adler – Fourth Degree Black Belt (Yon Dan) – at least 11 years of adult training
Joseph Marotta, Thomas Ammermann, Edward Grace – Fifth Degree Black Belt (Go Dan) – at least 15 years of adult training
Many of the above promotions were earned at the conclusion of our June 21st training sessions at our home. Mr. Brader arrived prior to 5:59 AM and was helped throughout the day by many higher ranking black belts. The early arrivals are pictured here. Adults arrived by 9:00 AM and children arrived by 10:30 AM to train in the wooded dojo, areas around our home and also to and from the Pequest River. A demonstration started at 3:30 PM, which was followed by a cookout with food brought by people attending the event.
Personal Abilities and Karate Training
Each person has the ability to see, hear, and feel clearly. However, circumstance of living often causes those abilities to become negatively affected or inactive. Each person has the option to : open the door or close the door to a positive life. Each person decides to live individually or to become a part of the lives of the people chosen as acquaintances and friends. All too often the person, because of previous incidents has established barriers to protect the “self” from future physical or emotional injury. To live fully, one must peel away the layers of protection from past moments, to allow the natural vibration of your to come forward. In a training session years ago with Bob Proctor and Zig Ziglar, each man stressed the need to be positive and look for the good in people. Each man said that one may find positive outcomes in life if one looks for the good in friends and surroundings. The book, THE SECRET, by Ronda Byrne relates countless examples where the search for the positive will find good outcomes and negativity breeds negative results. The possibility of threatening outcomes may be scary, but the situation also has the equal potential to be what one truly is seeking internally.
As we live we do not know our ultimate destination, but we must realize that we must strive to be successful with each aspect of our lives. Every person has experienced disappointment. How we think and react, has a greater capacity to change our lives than any challenges we face. How quickly and responsibly we react to adversity is more important than the adversity itself. Once we discipline ourselves to understand this, we will understand that the great challenge of life is to control the process of our thinking. With these thoughts in mind, what is the best way to approach our training?
Karate training provides many instances where we are challenged. As the student rises above personal doubt, increased abilities are achieved and stresses of life’s challenges are made easier to handle because the individual has already faced the possibility of failure and has found success. With each area of success barriers are removed and one becomes more able to achieve more because of increased inner belief and growth of confidence. Can you remember the joy of a first remembered success in school or in the dojo?
This inner vision leads to inner feelings of harmony within. It is not what happens that determines the quality of one’s life—it is what one chooses to do when we have struggled to determine the course and then discover that the life’s path has changed direction. As in Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” ” . . . two roads diverged in a wood, and I – – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
When life challenges the individual, he or she must adapt or fail to succeed. Choices must be made numerous times each day. Making the right decision is not always an easy decision. Peer and society’s pressures often place road blocks on the path. If knocked down, one must struggle to regain a strong position once more and determine the course to the destination. One must establish a powerful, personal philosophy that will influence in a positive way how one thinks and reacts. Success in any situation will change the course of life and relationships. Keeping a positive outlook when faced by issues in life will dramatically change one’s life.
| “It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt |
