May 15, 2013 3 Comments

Losing for the win

At the dojo

Last night at the Boston Martial Arts Center I had an interesting experience while coaching one of the green belt students on some avoidance techniques. The drill was simple: I swung at the student with a foam-padded bopper and after avoiding a relatively slow swing, they had to hit a padded target. It’s a drill of avoidance and footwork on one hand, and accuracy on the other. The drill encourages not only good technique, but presence of mind – you can’t just wildly avoid or you’ll be out of position for the target hitting.

What was interesting to me wasn’t the drill itself but two insights I had. The first insight was that I had to strongly resist my own urge to “win”, to hit the student with the foam stick. That wasn’t the point of the drill, and initially, my own ego and desire to “win” by the conventional definition (hit them with the bopper) was quite strong. It took me a good minute or two before we started to put myself in the right frame of mind, that I was there to help the student first and foremost, and to appropriately move at a speed that insured more success than failure, while not eliminating the chance for failure.

The second insight, which was part of that reframing, was that “winning” in this case wasn’t hitting the student with the bopper. Winning was actually “losing” the majority of the time for my role as the attacker. If I was not able to hit them the majority of the time, if I was able to have them succeed first and foremost, that was the true win, the win in the bigger picture. They’d walk away with more skill, more insight of their own, and more happiness rather than walk away demoralized or ashamed of their performance. In this case a narrow-minded personal “win” would have been a failure on my part as a coach and a failure on the part of the student.

When I look over my career, this is a pattern writ large. Those times that have been the most fruitful and the most successful were when I put a bigger picture win ahead of a narrow-minded personal win. When you help create success in others, they root for your success and actively look for ways to help you achieve it. Those times that have been the most stressful and unpleasant were because I created selfish success at the expense of others. In a world where you are the platform, creating situations where people don’t want to see you succeed is tantamount to career suicide, while creating situations where people are actively and eagerly supporting you is a rocketship to the top.

The challenge I continue to face is whether my ego is willing to lose small for the big win.

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Filed Under: Awakening, Buddhism, Business, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin
February 11, 2013 1 Comment

Welcoming the yin water snake

Black Snake

For those who follow such things, yesterday marked the new year for billions of people as the year of the Yin Water Snake, exiting the year of the Yang Water Dragon. The year of the Yang Water Dragon was to have been marked by the dragon’s energy shaking itself out in our world, and we certainly saw that, as some of the largest storms (Hurricane Sandy) struck the United States, along with manmade ones such as the political election cycle and the Newtown shooting. On the flip side, the energy of the water dragon propelled the markets to new heights and brought bountiful opportunities for those prepared to take advantage of them.

What does astrology portend for the year of the Yin Water Snake? Yin years are contracting in energy. Water as an element in the wu xing can either be expanding or contracting, creating or destroying. This year’s signs and portents are for the destructive influence of the element, which puts out the fire element. These are, of course, metaphors for how energy moves through us and the world around us, and are based in pre-industrial legends from agrarian times. In the old days, a yin water snake year would have cautioned farmers to prepare for a lean year, with disease, accidents, calamity, and natural disasters (yin water). Farmers would have needed to be prepared for a lot of travel over long distances (black snake).

Does this have any relevance to the modern day? That depends on how much faith you place in pre-industrial long-term forecasting. I enjoy these forms of divining as more ideas to think about, rather than literal warnings or to-do lists. In a yin water snake year, to ward off the energies involved, spend time being more introspective and cautious. This is opposed to the previous yang dragon year, where you jump at opportunities that present themselves and figure out the details later. In yin water years and in snake years, it’s a good time to think about defending what you have, investing safely where you can, making sure that you stand on a firm foundation. The countering element in the wu xing for water is earth, which is symbolic of foundations, earthen berms that stop floods and channel water’s destructive potential.

More than anything, these sorts of belief systems are excellent for enhancing our focus on particular areas of our lives. If you spent all of the past year leaping at opportunities and it’s worn you out, the concept of the yin water snake year, with its retreating energy and focus on rebirth, compromise, and patience might be an appealing change of pace for you. If you’ve taken lots of risks in the past year, this year might be a good time to take a break and evaluate the choices you’ve made to determine which ones need to be pruned and which ones you should keep. The idea of the snake is that it’s a long-traveling creature in Chinese astrology. If you’ve been thinking about doing some traveling to change your pace, this might be the inspiration you need to go do it.

Looking around at my friends, my colleagues, my coworkers, I do see ample evidence that we’re all burned out from the year of the yang water dragon. We surfed the surges of opportunities, some of us wiped out, but people around me definitely feel fatigued, stressed out, and fried. Thus, the yin water snake, while it might have ominous portents, also might just be the right prescription to get us all to slow down a bit, be a bit more introspective, and restore balance in our lives.

May your new year be filled with health, happiness, and prosperity!

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Filed Under: On ko chi shin
December 12, 2012 Leave a Comment

The ninja mind control method

Still frame from Everybody Needs a Ninja

In class last night, one of the white belt students asked me about whether the ninja mind control stories he’s heard were real or not, what the secrets to ninja mind control were. I laughed a bit and explained that the ninja mind control method is fairly straightforward: gain control over your own mind and other people lose the ability to control you.

For example, let’s say you’re deeply offended by a particular political position or idea. If you reflexively get angry when you hear that, then someone can make you angry, get you to behave irrationally, and take advantage of you. Maybe they goad you into a fight at the local watering hole that you had no intention of being in. Maybe they convince you to give them money in support of a cause that you’d never rationally support. Whatever the case may be, your buttons got pushed and you reacted.

The ninja mind control method is designed to help you find out what buttons you have and reduce or remove their effects. Through lots of physical training, meditation, study, and practice, you can eventually figure out how to become less angry or scared or enthralled by other people, places, or events. Remove or reduce your weaknesses, give people fewer buttons to push, and you win.

This doesn’t just apply to the individual. Corporations, organizations, and groups are just as susceptible to having their buttons pushed as individual people. Have you ever worked for someone who was obsessed with the competition? Have you ever seen a company chase another competitor, copying every product or service fruitlessly? (look no further than all of the iPad clones in the marketplace) If these companies focused more on mitigating their own weaknesses and strengthening their products and services, they’d be far better off than chasing the tail of the pack leader – and they might even figure out a different path to take that would let them be a leader, rather than myopically following.

Even as marketers, we fall prey to the same human foibles. We allow envy and jealousy of someone else’s brilliant campaign to cloud our minds, forcing ourselves to imitate them rather than fix what’s wrong in our own shops and build our own unique campaigns.

The actual ninja mind control method – gaining control over your own mind – lacks the sexiness and coolness of what you see in comic books and movies, but if you get good at it, it sure does make for a better life. If you’re interested in getting started, I’d recommend these two audio meditations from Stephen K. Hayes in the iTunes store:

http://cspenn.com/skh1

http://cspenn.com/skh2

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Filed Under: Awakening, Ninjutsu, On ko chi shin
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