How Have Your Goals Changed?
- Thread starter K31
- Start date
Well, they've kind of changed and they kind of haven't... it's hard to explain.
I started TKD because I was talked into it by someone else. Something what what I was being taught just "clicked", and I've never left. My goal was to learn and perfect as much as I could... and it still is. How I determine my progress toward that goal has, however, changed over time.
When I was in the color belt ranks, my goal was, like many others, to reach black belt - what I perceived to be the pinnacle of all achievement in TKD. Once I got there, however, I discovered how much I had left to learn, that black belt is the beginning, not the ending, not the ultimate goal - and now I want, purely and simply, to learn and improve - if rank comes with that, or is necessary to learn more, so be it - but attaining rank for the sake of rank is no longer a motivating factor for me. Knowing more, being better able to demonstrate what I know than I did before - that is what motivates me now - but at its root, that is the same motivation I had previously, just better understood and therefore renamed.
Last Fearner
2nd Black Belt
My early goal (ages 5 - 15) was to learn a unique skill that not many around me knew. I learned wrestling, Judo, and some Karate, and Kung-fu. I just enjoyed it, and had no particular long term goals.
In my younger days (ages 16 - 18), I began Taekwondo with the goal of being able to stop bullies, and even get revenge on those who had specifically assaulted me in the past. In time, those faces faded from priority, and I used them a motivating factors to prevent future incidents. My short term goal became to reach the coveted "First Degree Black Belt!"
My young adulthood (19 - 25) was more about teaching. I was thrust into an early career, having my first school at the age of 18. My rank goals shifted to each degree, and eventually was focused on becoming a 4th Dan, and to attain the "Master's" level. My other goal was to run a very successful school, and be known as a highly respected and knowledgeable teacher of the Martial Art. By the mid 1990s, I was running two, very large, very successful Dojang and traveling to many national and international events. My Goal of visiting Korea, training and even teaching there came to fruition in 1996.
I've had interim goals of being a top ranked competitor, going to the Olympics, becoming a skilled referee, and a few others along the way.
Twenty years ago, I began to focus more on gaining experience, training, and proper certification in teaching, refereeing, and other areas of education. In the past 10 years, my goals have focused on family, raising by kids, and running a good school. I am still considering Olympic competition (as a competitor), and then some area of helping to run the events. My biggest goal (left unfulfilled as of yet) is to make a Martial Art movie, or be cast in a major film, and to write a book or two.
Ah well, perhaps some day!
In my younger days (ages 16 - 18), I began Taekwondo with the goal of being able to stop bullies, and even get revenge on those who had specifically assaulted me in the past. In time, those faces faded from priority, and I used them a motivating factors to prevent future incidents. My short term goal became to reach the coveted "First Degree Black Belt!"
My young adulthood (19 - 25) was more about teaching. I was thrust into an early career, having my first school at the age of 18. My rank goals shifted to each degree, and eventually was focused on becoming a 4th Dan, and to attain the "Master's" level. My other goal was to run a very successful school, and be known as a highly respected and knowledgeable teacher of the Martial Art. By the mid 1990s, I was running two, very large, very successful Dojang and traveling to many national and international events. My Goal of visiting Korea, training and even teaching there came to fruition in 1996.
I've had interim goals of being a top ranked competitor, going to the Olympics, becoming a skilled referee, and a few others along the way.
Twenty years ago, I began to focus more on gaining experience, training, and proper certification in teaching, refereeing, and other areas of education. In the past 10 years, my goals have focused on family, raising by kids, and running a good school. I am still considering Olympic competition (as a competitor), and then some area of helping to run the events. My biggest goal (left unfulfilled as of yet) is to make a Martial Art movie, or be cast in a major film, and to write a book or two.
Ah well, perhaps some day!
aplonis
Orange Belt
My initial goal when I started, back in 1972, was to get out from under the intimdation of the obnoxious jocks in high school. Kind of a Columbine sort of motivation but to a lesser and more specific degree.
But funny thing is that no sooner did I start than those jerks started leaving me pretty much alone. Silly of them since at that time I did not yet know anything useful at all for self-defense. So that motivation began, almost immediately, to wear thin.
I then began, instead of seeking relief from those outside the class, to seek the respect of those within. I also began to see my own body as more of a tool for my purposes than as myself in itself. If there was something I could not do then it was only because I had let that tool set go without proper maintenace and my knowledge of it go without training. Situations began to appear as something more and more within my own control. Having control meant I could change them if I so wished and was willing to make the effort.
In this way my original narrow goals for MA expanded into wider, all-encompassing ones. Along with that, and very gradually, MA began to change for me from something I could only draw out from to something into which I too could also contribute and share with others.
That is how my goals have changed since I first took up MA. The process has taken somewhat more than 30 years. I came to it by fits and starts, with some long intervals in between.
I started out with TSD. Then the school to which I belonged changed over to TKD. Then I joined the Navy and did not get back to it for some time. I came back to the same TKD school after I got out, until they lost the lease on their building. Another long interval passed until I took up Hakko Ryu for a year, taking a break when continually sprained wrists began to affect me at my job. In the interim that teacher moved away. A couple years passed until I took up TSD once again. A few months into that a sparring mishap got me two broken ribs which also interfered with my new job in its first two weeks. I set MA aside again, supposedly for a little while. But more years passed as I found my time fully occupied first with girlfriend, then wife, then a kid.
My son got me back into MA again when I started taking him to a kid's MA class. I took up Jujutsu first at that school for about a year, until the instructor switched the style over to something, as he explained it, more true (read warriorlike) to its roots. The absurdist posturing was something I could not much identify with but I carried on for a while anyway, about a year.
Then one day cleaning out some old photos I came upon one that identified the 2nd of my former TKD instructors by full name, the one under whom I'd trained for just a few months upon leaving the navy. I had not been able to recall the correct spelling of his last name as it had been some 20 years. On a lark I Googled for it, and got a hit. I emailed him and found he was still teaching TKD, under the same original GM, but in a program offered by a local health club run by a hospital, one with no sign by the road and no add in the yellow pages.
So in the end I have come back to my roots, training under a 6th dan instructor who had been a brown belt in the class where I'd started those several decades ago. Under him I have earned my 1st dan and am now his assistant instructor in that same class. My own son has joined us there and is now a 5th gup at age 16. Full circle.
Just think... What if only I had managed to stick with it all this time instead of hopping and skipping through my MA these past 30 years? Despite its interrupted span the journey has been entirely worthwile.
I recommend to anyone and everyone currently in their MA to stick with it however they can. If they feel they must change styles, or take a short break for whatever reasons, then that may be as may be. But come back to it just as soon as they can. Don't let years go by in the interim as I have done. Or even if they do, come back to it anyway. You cannot help but find it worthwhile.
But funny thing is that no sooner did I start than those jerks started leaving me pretty much alone. Silly of them since at that time I did not yet know anything useful at all for self-defense. So that motivation began, almost immediately, to wear thin.
I then began, instead of seeking relief from those outside the class, to seek the respect of those within. I also began to see my own body as more of a tool for my purposes than as myself in itself. If there was something I could not do then it was only because I had let that tool set go without proper maintenace and my knowledge of it go without training. Situations began to appear as something more and more within my own control. Having control meant I could change them if I so wished and was willing to make the effort.
In this way my original narrow goals for MA expanded into wider, all-encompassing ones. Along with that, and very gradually, MA began to change for me from something I could only draw out from to something into which I too could also contribute and share with others.
That is how my goals have changed since I first took up MA. The process has taken somewhat more than 30 years. I came to it by fits and starts, with some long intervals in between.
I started out with TSD. Then the school to which I belonged changed over to TKD. Then I joined the Navy and did not get back to it for some time. I came back to the same TKD school after I got out, until they lost the lease on their building. Another long interval passed until I took up Hakko Ryu for a year, taking a break when continually sprained wrists began to affect me at my job. In the interim that teacher moved away. A couple years passed until I took up TSD once again. A few months into that a sparring mishap got me two broken ribs which also interfered with my new job in its first two weeks. I set MA aside again, supposedly for a little while. But more years passed as I found my time fully occupied first with girlfriend, then wife, then a kid.
My son got me back into MA again when I started taking him to a kid's MA class. I took up Jujutsu first at that school for about a year, until the instructor switched the style over to something, as he explained it, more true (read warriorlike) to its roots. The absurdist posturing was something I could not much identify with but I carried on for a while anyway, about a year.
Then one day cleaning out some old photos I came upon one that identified the 2nd of my former TKD instructors by full name, the one under whom I'd trained for just a few months upon leaving the navy. I had not been able to recall the correct spelling of his last name as it had been some 20 years. On a lark I Googled for it, and got a hit. I emailed him and found he was still teaching TKD, under the same original GM, but in a program offered by a local health club run by a hospital, one with no sign by the road and no add in the yellow pages.
So in the end I have come back to my roots, training under a 6th dan instructor who had been a brown belt in the class where I'd started those several decades ago. Under him I have earned my 1st dan and am now his assistant instructor in that same class. My own son has joined us there and is now a 5th gup at age 16. Full circle.
Just think... What if only I had managed to stick with it all this time instead of hopping and skipping through my MA these past 30 years? Despite its interrupted span the journey has been entirely worthwile.
I recommend to anyone and everyone currently in their MA to stick with it however they can. If they feel they must change styles, or take a short break for whatever reasons, then that may be as may be. But come back to it just as soon as they can. Don't let years go by in the interim as I have done. Or even if they do, come back to it anyway. You cannot help but find it worthwhile.
