It Was a Good Day
I'll be honest. Earlier this week I went through a complete moment of doubt. I thought there is no way I am ready to walk into that school, in front of my Sifu's and peers and grade. I'm not ready, everything is no where near black belt level and there is no way I am even good enough to walk into the school and pull this off. I have had too much down time and not enough self discipline, this is nothing but blatant disrespect. Then I stopped and thought to myself, "How would you know the answer to any of these questions or if any of those thoughts are true if you don't try? How the heck do you even know what Black Belt level is if you don't show up and do this. How can you possibly advance if you don't put it all on the line and work with what you do have and offer complete exposure? What happened to I'm just going to do this and toss the doubt, your ego is not invited... was that all lip service to your self and others? Your pride will win again and you'll just throw away another abundance of help from others and toss another opportunity of advancement to the wolves out of fear and doubt. Is that how you roll?" Absolutely not. So I picked all of that up, squashed it into a ball, gave it a few hulk smashes, and off the side of the bridge it went. Where the heck did that come from? Geez!
I can't really explain in a few words about what transpired yesterday. In some ways it was a complete fog and in other way's it was in HD. The whole time I was at the school, I could feel every move I made, every mistake I made, even when people where talking or moving, I could hear my heart beating, air into and out of my lungs, my feet walking on the mats. I could feel every single person's presence in the room. It was kind of weird really. It's the most in touch I have ever been with my senses, which was cool. But the coolest part about yesterday was it was probably the happiest I have been in a very long time. I'm still wearing a smile on my dial, and even if I wasn't smiling at times yesterday, and I felt a huge abundance of emotions it all reverted back to happiness. I could be wrong but I never felt my ego coming in at all, I felt balanced, almost in a neutral state. I went through several stages of emotions such as pride, anger, doubt, confidence, determination, humility, success, fails, intimidation and a few times even fear, but in the end nothing could have taken away how I felt when I left the school yesterday. I felt like I picked up a huge weight off my shoulders and smashed it on the ground. I felt like this is all a new beginning. It was one of the greatest day's of my life. I left all my personal stuff at home and didn't carry around my fails. I stored them and moved on and when you can say you had a day like that, you should definitely write it down. So I did.
Now the hardest part is about to come. Keeping the momentum moving and staying on the quest for mastery. Polishing my strong points and elevating my weaknesses. Good thing there is still 10 months left of the year of the sheep. From my stand point at this time I am going to need it, all of it. I have laid out and completely exposed what I have and what I need to throw away. I know have a new arsenal of tools to use and new issues to sort out. I really feel good about things and am going to use and act on the valuable advice I was given yesterday. I have to renovate my pyramid a bit and give a few things a good polish. Overall this is going to be my greatest year if I can stick to the plan and hit up people for help when I need it. That's the tough part. I have trouble asking people for help, I have trouble approaching others and I don't want anything to come easy. What can I say, I'm a bull and I'm stubborn as heck. Something else to work on I guess.
I just wanted to mention I could not have gone into it with a better bunch of fellow students than Sihing Fuhr and Sihing Krebbs. You guy's did awesome and I couldn't be more proud of what I witnessed and what we went through together yesterday. Good job fellas and thanks for being there. See you at the kwoon.
Brian Chervenka
