Hello Friends,
Practice something daily better than the day before, and mastery becomes inevitable. Nothing can resist this self-evident law of conditioning. Not even imperfect practice can withstand that maxim, fortunately for me. Swimming upstream from the shallow end of the gene pool, I am no accident. I’m not gifted, advantaged or privileged. I was forged out of tenacious resistance to quitting, and the fortune of brilliant coaching.
I may be a good fighter and a great grappler, but there are those better than me. However, I am a master of intelligent human performance. It’s really what has allowed us to thrive above all other species. We’re relatively weak for our bodyweight, and small in stature, lack any ostensible weapon advantage (no claws, fangs or horns), lack any protective covering (no scales, plates or even fur). We’re just naked, weak, short and unarmed. Except for our brain: that beautiful paradox which on one hand makes us painfully aware of our short existence, but on the other hand lends rise to our incredible use of tools, both obvious and abstract.
And yet, facing my physical and learning disabilities as a child, I relied upon our greatest gift, our mind, to condition the limitless excellence within us… to both unlock and refine the greatest power on the planet: our capacity for increased sophistication, beyond the snail’s pace trudge of genetic evolution. We evolve at the speed of our imagination…
And I’ve always dreamed BIG. I’ve always been the one who’s annoyed the status quo, the people who believe that I’m too big for my britches, that I think I’m better than they are. They’re right in a way: I think I’m better than myself (my current self). I think I’m bigger than the restrictive definitions I currently hold for myself. And I believe the status quo is the stagnant genetic cesspool of complacent mediocrity.
As I continue to refine with age, I continually rediscover that personal development isn’t a matter of more (of bigger, faster, stronger), but a matter of tighter discipline and deepening practice. The former dreams of our knuckle-dragging ancestry thumping through adversity; where the latter intuits that greater mental agility, more focused emotional control and supple physical grace outmaneuver, out-cycle and out-live any would-be competitors who remain gilded with the ever-obsolete game of “catch-up.”
Fitness is no different. Fitness is the gateway to personal development through physical exercise. This is why I was drawn to martial art; Fitness and martial art are in essence absolutely no different: they both serve the goal of increased sophistication through physical exercise.
Yet, as always there are those who seek to dumb-down the lightning speed of our conscious evolution by begging to our Stone age roots: to live primitive, primal and feral. But again… what advantage have we held over predators to our species, but our mind. And through romantic notions of long-lost gladiatorial eras, we regress.
Win the Battle – Lose the War Fitness
If you’re fit to face the next challenge, but then through emotional erosion and mental fatigue cannot recover, you’ve won the battle but lost the war. You should be better prepared than the challenges you’ll face, not merely fit to face them. That requires increased sophistication, not mere increased attributes. Bigger isn’t better, neither faster nor stronger. Only better is better.
Very Respectfully,
Scott B. Sonnon