Lurking Rhythmically<\/a> has been doing some soul searching recently.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I reminded of something that happened during one of my Tae Kwon Do testings.<\/p>\nIt was my first testing after my 10 yeah hiatus.\u00a0 I had started over again as a white belt ans was testing for my yellow belt.\u00a0 With this instructor, testings end with everyone that tested that day breaking boards.\u00a0 I thought on what I wanted to break with.\u00a0 It had been a while, so I’d go with something easy… palm strike!<\/p>\n
I get up to break, and the instructor asks what I’m going to break with.\u00a0 I tell her palm strike, and she starts walking to the boards.\u00a0 She tells me two boards… ok… one with each hand… ok… at the same time… urk… “yes, ma’am.”\u00a0 I get set up, all the time trying to figure out how this should work.\u00a0 The board holders set the boards.\u00a0 I do my best, and break the boards without issue on the first try.\u00a0 Not break that a normal white going to yellow belt, but I used to be a red belt years ago.<\/p>\n
Later, a lady that was in her late 70’s and testing for her 2nd black belt came up for her break.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Side kicks are the probably the most powerful kicks in our art when performed properly.\u00a0 She didn’t break it on the first try…<\/p>\n
or the second…<\/p>\n
or the third…<\/p>\n
Honestly, I don’t remember how many tries it took her, but she did finally break the board.\u00a0 She could have given up, and not received her stripe that day, but she did it.\u00a0 The entire room was ecstatic for her.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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?!).<\/p>\n
The first time she failed; ok, that was a fluke.\u00a0 It’s the times after that that doubt and fear of failure start to creep in.\u00a0 Especially on something that should be easy for you.\u00a0 If you fail at something that everyone tells you is hard, no big deal.\u00a0 Fail at something that should be easy?\u00a0 You start worrying about yourself.<\/p>\n
The key thing is to remember that nothing is the same level of difficulty for everyone.\u00a0 We all have our strengths and weaknesses.\u00a0 Trick is knowing which is which.<\/p>\n
I’ll try to make the next post about blowing stuff up or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I swear… this won’t be a regular occurrence. Erin Palette over at Lurking Rhythmically has been doing some soul searching recently.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}