and now for a randomly inspirational post…

I swear… this won’t be a regular occurrence.

Erin Palette over at Lurking Rhythmically has been doing some soul searching recently.  I’ll let her speak for herself as to why and on what, but she raised the question of why folks thought that she was brave for doing something she thinks should be easy.  I reminded of something that happened during one of my Tae Kwon Do testings.

It was my first testing after my 10 yeah hiatus.  I had started over again as a white belt ans was testing for my yellow belt.  With this instructor, testings end with everyone that tested that day breaking boards.  I thought on what I wanted to break with.  It had been a while, so I’d go with something easy… palm strike!

I get up to break, and the instructor asks what I’m going to break with.  I tell her palm strike, and she starts walking to the boards.  She tells me two boards… ok… one with each hand… ok… at the same time… urk… “yes, ma’am.”  I get set up, all the time trying to figure out how this should work.  The board holders set the boards.  I do my best, and break the boards without issue on the first try.  Not break that a normal white going to yellow belt, but I used to be a red belt years ago.

Later, a lady that was in her late 70’s and testing for her 2nd black belt came up for her break.  her best days physically were obviously behind her, and she was starting to have some serious health issues (she would pass away less than two years after this).  Our instructor new this, and instead of asking the normal amount of breaking for that rank, she just had to break one… with a side kick.  Side kicks are the probably the most powerful kicks in our art when performed properly.  She didn’t break it on the first try…

or the second…

or the third…

Honestly, I don’t remember how many tries it took her, but she did finally break the board.  She could have given up, and not received her stripe that day, but she did it.  The entire room was ecstatic for her.

Here’s the thing.  I’m pretty sure most of the folks in the room assumed I was going to fail at least once or twice with my break, and were surprised when I didn’t.  Similarly, everyone assumed that this lady was going to succeed without issue, and was shocked when she didn’t (a black belt failing to break one board?!).

The first time she failed; ok, that was a fluke.  It’s the times after that that doubt and fear of failure start to creep in.  Especially on something that should be easy for you.  If you fail at something that everyone tells you is hard, no big deal.  Fail at something that should be easy?  You start worrying about yourself.

The key thing is to remember that nothing is the same level of difficulty for everyone.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  Trick is knowing which is which.

I’ll try to make the next post about blowing stuff up or something.