MAY 2018
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL STUDENTS AND PARENTS WHO SUPPORTED OUR 33rd ANNUAL BENEFIT TOURNAMENT. Though it was a smaller event, the competition was good, and everyone should feel good about being a part of something that has raised in excess of $200,000 for charity.
We are working to improve our visibility on the internet. Please get a referral card (by the door) and post a review of the dojo.
You’ve heard of the Power of Positive Thinking. There’s no doubt about it…the human mind is an amazingly powerful computer, capable of transforming our lives. However, achieving what you want in life isn’t accomplished by sitting on a comfortable chair and visualizing all day long. Far too many people neglect to ACT in order to bring their dreams to life. As cosmetics company founder and CEO Estée Lauder put it so well, “I didn’t get here by dreaming about it or thinking about it—I got here by doing it.” Author BJ Gallagher has captured the “secret” a few people are talking about – thoughts and attitudes can change by taking positive ACTION, no matter what you are thinking or feeling! She calls it “The Power of Positive DOING”.
What will it take for you to be happy?
Benjamin Franklin said, “The U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up to it yourself.”
Many of us pin our happiness to external factors: if only we had more money, or a better house, or whatever our latest “want” is . . . but your happiness has been and always will be right inside yourself.
• Champions are driven by emotional motivators • The great ones chose discipline over pleasure • Middle class vs. world class • The great ones believe they cannot fail…they can only learn and grow • The great ones take responsibility • Champions have an immense capacity for world class concentration • Common sense is the foundation of high performance • The great ones make the complicated simple • Champions are driven by a world class belief system
It is said that the true purpose of life is the joy of helping others, but there is often a perception that the next generation is not as committed to changing the world as their parents were. From what I have seen working at the high school and the college, young people are committed to change.
We do not know when we will help another individual. In 2005 I was teaching a unit at the end of a semester which would end with the students understanding what the ultimate concept would be if they were to become happy and successful in their future lives. One young woman (about 19) was in the class. After the video entitled “The Secret” the class had a discussion and after much soul searching, they realized that the key element is for each person to experience personal fulfillment in life, uniting – Body, Mind, Family, Society and Finances. They were shocked and relieved with the discovery. The class emptied leaving only the one female student. I noticed she was crying. I talked to her and after a few minutes she said that she hadn’t planned to attend class that day and after coming to school – she was going to go home and commit suicide. NOW after the previous discussions, the video and the realization, she was not going to do so. She said she was going to register in a four-year college and follow her musical career as well. We still communicate several times a year. She lives in Knoxville, has a degree in economics and she is following her musical dreams.
I ended the current semester with the same procedures. Discussions, video and further discussion after the video – ending with the revelation. The first class after the video and discussion a middle-aged woman came to class and said my project, the discussions and the video changed her life. She went home after the class and having Netflix she selected the video and mandated that her entire family experience it with her. She is now working to be a positive individual . . . GO FIGURE! The reaction to the college program about fulfilment, along with the years involvement at the high school, dojo and WCCC, demonstrates that each of us can touch many lives.
One way to understand this concept is to investigate THE SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION is a theory that was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called “Chains.” In the 1950s, Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) set out to prove the theory mathematically. After twenty years they were still unable to solve the problem to their satisfaction. In 1967, American sociologist Stanley Milgram devised a new way to test the theory, which he called “the small-world problem.” Milgram randomly selected people in the Midwest to send packages to a stranger located in Massachusetts. The senders knew the recipient’s name, occupation and general location. Each participant was instructed to send the package to a person he knew on a first-name basis who was most likely, out of all the participant’s friends, to know the target personally. That person would do the same, and so on until the package was personally delivered to its target recipient. Although participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries, it only took (on average) between five and seven intermediaries for each package to be delivered successfully. Milgram’s findings were published in Psychology Today and inspired the phrase “six degrees of separation.”
Ultimately, separation is the theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. What we do with our time, how we approach and connect with others, creates the ability to affect many people positively or negatively. Choose to be positive – CHANGE LIFE FOR THE BETTER.
