Winning is a Divine Gift

Born2Win

Depending on which book you read or whom you talk to, you’ll get, about 111 different tips on how to become successful or how to be a winner; however, the snag with these tips is that they tend to causes us more distress than we’d like and make us feel like failures, because what they propose is (are) outside our circle of influence (that is, what we can do from our present situation), for example, they’d advise, to take a course on ‘online trading’, do a web course, get a life coach, or some other rubbish that will only make someone else richer. Whereas in essence, everything that you need to become rich and successful resides within you. How, you may ask?

Well, because when you were born, again, when you were born, you were born with the seeds of greatness in side you. You were given, gifted with the ability (talent, force, miraculous power) to accomplish all and any of your desires. But then you may ask, why don’t I live a life of success, a life of peace, joy, and prosperity, a life of happiness? Why did I abandon my dreams? I don’t know, maybe we have forgotten how, maybe we have disconnected from our inner self for far too long, maybe we’ve lost the faith, or maybe we plain just don’t want to succeed! Because it is Too Hard.

Everybody! Wants to be successful, however, teachings from the scriptures tells us that not everybody will become successful; nonetheless, for the like minded readers, those that want real and fullness of success in any and everything that they do, cultivating the Will2Win is key; The Will2Win, that Inner Will (decree, purpose, determination) Power to forge ahead with your true purpose and goal in life in the face of seemly over bearing challenges and obstacles.
Someone once said “True Victory is Self Victory a day of Swift Victory”. What this statement says to me, is that, everyday of our lives we face our own private win or loss competition (life experiences, lesson), be it at work, school, marital life or intra personal relationship etc. At these times, it is highly imperative that in these personal nail-biting moments that we adopt a Will2Win attitude. The Will2Win says “Get through it and Move On!” or asks me during stern time, ‘Do I have it in me, better still, is the Spirit within me Stirred Up! To keep me! Keeping On?’
When we practise the Martial Arts we do a lot more than just kicking & punching the pads, we’re polishing our Spirit, training up the Inner Man.

O! I wish I had more space & time to continue; we’ll finish this off in the next issue. Better still hear the Motivational Talk.

Bullying

What is bullying?

‘Bullying, the act of violating or interfering either, physically, mentally or emotionally with another person’s right to be happy and avoid suffering’

Some scenarios
You’re at work and a colleague sends a caricature of you via email; is this bullying?

1. 
   You’re in a boardroom meeting, and the chairperson intentionally undermines & physically intimidates you; is this bullying?
2. 
   You’re child is teased on the playing ground; is this bullying?
3. 
   You’re child is behaving in ways that’s not within his/her character in order to fit in; are they being bullied?
4. 
   You’re partner shouts you down whenever you have a major difference of opinions on a jugular (emotionally heated) issue; is this bullying?

The fact of the matter is that bullying can take many forms and can happen in the most unsuspecting of environment, from school, the office to the home environment.

The psychological reasoning behind why some people bully and others get bullied is many and varied; also, there is a lot of talk on how to handle bullies, however only one way works effectively, and that is to stand up to bullies and be prepared to fight.

Some of you might be outraged by this, I’m not advocating out right violence; yet the truth of the matter is, Bullies, understand, respect & fear one thing; someone who’s got the courage to stand up to them.

Understand this, there are 3 groups of people; those that bully; those that get bullied; and those that neither bully nor get bullied.

This third group learnt very early on that you can suffer the pain of standing up to a bully once or experience the tyranny of bullying everyday for a life time.

It’s interesting to note that this 3rd group of people engage in some form of physical, sporting or martial activity, exercising their body to, condition, expand & control their mind and emotion. They have:

1. Self Mastery & Character
2. Self Confidence
3. Self Assuredness
4. Self Discipline
5. Self Control
6. Assertiveness
7. A Strong Body & A Strong Mind

Let’s be honest, bullies only bully us when we are most vulnerable, for example when we are by ourselves, in an alien environment, physically weaker, mentally and/or emotionally disadvantaged; the annoying thing, is that facing up to a bully is one of those fights that mum, dad, our teacher, or the system can’t fight for us; we either deal with it once or suffer it everyday in some other way by some other bully, because our persona gives us away.

The ball is in your court.

Find out about The Samurai Way
Combat Workshop Aligning Martial Arts & Personal देवेलोप्मेंट

Pयास Peace

Staying Motivated

How do you stay motivated during stern times? How do you stay motivated when the wolf man is at the door? How do you stay motivated when life challenges keeps push you down the rungs on the ladder of life? In fact, how do you stay motivated when you’re constantly fire fighting?

A Motivational Speaker, and/or Life Coach may be tempted to say, use auto suggestion to change your mind set, picture yourself happy, in a happy place, or they may give you a pep talk to bust you up for 30 minutes before you come crashing down again.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes we are so battle fatigued, battle scared, battle smashed that we exist in a state of numbness, which if not addressed will lead us into Victim Thinking and we start hating those whom we believe have it good.

Friedrich Nietzsche, said “even the strongest have their moments of fatigue”; Sun Tzu, in the Art of War says, “the finest weapons, if repeatedly used will be dulled”; the point being made is that sometimes we have to stop our current activity and take a rest, stop our current activity and enjoy what we have at the moment, stop our current activity and engage in some regenerative exercise.

Yes, I know, the mortgage has to be paid, the kids have to be taken care of, the deadline for that report is looming; yes, they must be taking care of, 1 Timothy 5:8 makes it Biblically clear; Yet finding time to have a Private Moment, to recharge your batteries, so to say, ensure that you are always Battle Ready.

What does it mean to have a Private Moment? Time set aside for you, for you to:

Remember who you are
Do some of the things you use to do before you became, mum, dad, project manager etc।
Review and reflect on why you are doing what you are doing
Reward yourself for those small victories; it helps to fuel you and builds momentum
Experience beauty in the little pleasures; you’d be surprised how an unrushed cup of tea, can change one physiology, which helps to re- script the mindset

These activities in your private moments will help ignite your intrinsic motives and give you that internal motivational spark that you need to help you stay focused and motivated.

Peace Peace

It’s more than Just Kicks & Punches

When you, your son or your daughter learn Karate, Kung Fu or any other Martial Arts system, you ought to be learning more than just the art of fighting;
The by product of any complete Martial Arts System and the duty of the Teacher (Sensei) is to see and use the Martial Arts as a vehicle for helping their student’s cultivate The Will to Win, with the view to redevelop (notice is used the word Redevelop and not develop) their belief system.

There is a Japanese saying that translates to, “True Victory is Self Victory a day of Swift Victory”. What this statement says to me, is that, in every waking day we face our own private win or loss competition also known as life experiences & lessons, be it at work, school, marital life or intra personal relationship etc. and that in these personal nail-biting moments that we adopt an attitude (Will) of wanting to win. The Will to get through our Challenges and Move On, the will to Keep on Keeping On in stern time, i.e. when our home life, work life or school life is kicking us where it hurt.

To cultivate this type of mind-set necessitates that we first gain control and integrate our body. By training in the Martial Arts we exercise our body to condition the mind to redevelop and build on our confidence level, our self esteem, and our self assuredness, which in turn helps us develop success traits such as, heighten concentration, determination, self discipline, personal integrity and going the extra mile in any task that we undertake.

The Martial Arts is more than just learning self defense, more than just competition, more than just kicks & punches; the Martial Arts is a vehicle for Life Leadership & Life Management.

The weak; the strong; the meek

The weak of our world must be protected; from first principle one would think that the duty to protect the weak would befall the strong? Yes! Yet in-fact it is the strong that terrorise the weak and subjugates them to a life of unhappiness and suffering.

The job of protecting the weak fall squarely on the shoulder of the meek; but wait! The meek I hear you cry, ‘aren’t the weak and the meek the same?’ you ask. No, the two groups are different, however it is a misconception and ill-understanding held by the majority.


The meek are a class of people supremely strong that have no desire to show or prove how invincible they are; the meek are extremely strong that they can with hold their own needs for a time to empower someone else; the meek are totally strong that they are capable of standing alone to fight injustice. Humans and human nature is such that when someone shows kindness, we mistake it as weakness; to such, the meek are not weak, and they will teach you an unforgettable lesson if you make that mistake with them. The film ‘Superman’ exemplifies the nature of meekness.

The Scriptures, say that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’; an interesting observation to make about the characters portrayed in these writing, is that these ‘Meek’ people, were individuals of Devine strength and strong in the truest sense of the work.

Transaction vs. Transformation

Transactional Relationship vs. Transformational Relationship


An observation that I’ve made, is that people, in both their business and personal lives are engaging in transactional relationship as opposed to activities that would lead to a transformation in the relationship. The problem with transactional association is that although we might perform the required tasks and check off the necessary boxes, it does not lift the spirit within our.

There’s a feeling of being undervalued, when we walk into a shop expecting to be serviced or we go to our boss, guardians, teacher or spouse expecting to engage in conversation, only to be processed; they said all the right things, had the correct facial expressions and body language, however for some strange reason we don’t quite feel right with what just happened; we’ve just we transacted; we were involved in an activity devoid of both spiritual and emotional connection.

Transactionalism happens a lot in interpersonal relationship, where we try to be efficient and wonder why we are with our partner, families and living separate lives.

In all people to people dynamics constant evolution is the key to sustaining quality and substance. To establish a relationship that is constantly evolving we have to engage in transformational connection. To engage in Transformational type relationships, our spirit within needs to acknowledge the spirit within the person that we are dealing with; if we use this as our premise, then we must also accept that, the spirit we acknowledge today will not be the same spirit tomorrow, in that it would have learned and evolved from the activity of yesterday.

Transformational relationship necessitates that we treat each person in the way that their spirit dictates, which means that we need to connect with them mentally, emotional and spiritually, also that we create the space and time for the interaction with them. Creating the space and time is important, because, if it is inconvenient to talk at the moment, we can request that a new time be made; however, it is worth noting that some things have to be dealt with in the moment; you need to have the wisdom to decide on that.

As an example, if your son wants to talk with you (dad) just before you leave for work, what do you do? Your choices are: transact with him in an efficient manner, by being the consummate 1 minute manager, you say to him ‘we’ll talk later’, or be late for work.

Leadership and headship

Leadership & Headship

Leadership and Headship, theoretically speaking, not only are they similarly sounding words, what's more, if you were to look up there definitions in the thesaurus they’ll be similar too. Yet the fact of the matter is that in practicality, they both have different orientation.

Leadership is like Mother Nature, flexible and adaptable, always changing to suite the needs of the four seasons (winter, autumn, spring, & summer). Headship is like the shelter built for protection against the elements of the four seasons.

Leadership is like the ocean on which the ship travels, the ocean can either aid the ship on its journey or it can sink it. Headship is like the ship sailing on the ocean, correctly navigated, the ocean will aid the ship on its journey, incorrectly navigated then the ocean will sink the ship.

Headship, we can say exists for the purpose of maximising the needs of the entity (the company, organisation, and committee); Leadership exists for the purpose of helping individuals maximise on their potential, which will in turn leverage the cause of the Headship.


Francis