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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] 34 Cultivate These Key Traits You must hold yourself accountable to someone. Now, before you object that this is exactly what we re trying to get away from in a book about personal freedom, I m not talking about subservience to some teacher or system. When we set off on our own, my training partner and I pledged to be accountable to each other and to our larger training group. We didn t make a single claim without backing it up through physical example on the mats. If one of us thought the other was positing an unwarranted idea or conclusion, we tested it on the mats. In fact, we tested everything. Nothing brushes away the cobwebs of wishful thinking like having a bat swung at your head, especially when faulty reasoning causes it to connect! We still went down a few false paths and launched on a few unproductive tangents, but we were able to expose those dead ends very quickly and get ourselves back on track. The pace even increased over time as we got better at analyzing without having to go weeks and weeks into an idea. Bad ideas became obvious quicker, and promising paths shone like beacons. If I had to assess my past with a bright light and magnifying glass and identify exactly which traits provided the greatest keys to my success, these would be it. Brutal honesty with myself and my partner along with a willingness to assess the holes in my game clearly and accurately. If it weren t for those specific experiences with my martial arts training partner, I never would have bought an open-jaw ticket to Central America and gone on the road alone. My life would have taken it s predictable small town course. And I have no doubt that it would have ended in frustration and dissatisfaction. None of these doors would have opened to me if I hadn t cultivated the ability to face up to my weaknesses and to go ahead anyway. SELF-DISCIPLINE A part of me doesn t like the term self-discipline because it s been so overused. But I can t think of a better one, so we re stuck with it for now. 35 Cultivate These Key Traits I think I learned discipline from my ninjutsu training. But then again, I was always a rather disciplined person, so maybe i just approached my training that way from the start. It was easy to immerse myself in ninjutsu at that time, because it was what fascinated me the most. And I found it just as easy to immerse myself in my writing as well, once I finally stopped running away from it. Those experiences taught me the most important thing I ever learned about self-discipline: No matter how disciplined you are, if you set up a regime that goes against your basic nature you re setting yourself up for failure. I ll give you an example. I wrote in the previous section about all the training I was doing in my early ninjutsu days after school with my friend Jim and in the evening with my teachers. Well, we were pretty energetic back then, so we also came up with a scheme to train before school each morning. Jim lived right around the corner, and we walked to school together most days anyway. Just think what we could do with another hour a day! And so I asked my dad to wake me up at 6am, before he left for work. And more often than not, Jim ended up having a coffee with him before turning around and trudging home. It sounded like such a good idea the night before, but when morning came I refused to get out of bed. It was a great lesson in not trying to be something you re not. My key time was the evening that s when I did my best work and when I made the most progress. But in the morning I m a zombie. I learned to arrange my life so I did the important creative work at the time of day when I m most focused. And I never tried to be a morning person again. Cultivate self-discipline, but don t try to bludgeon yourself with it. You have to be motivated to follow through. And if you align your efforts with your natural daily cycle, you ll reap incredible rewards and it ll feel almost effortless. 36 Cultivate These Key Traits CURIOSITY There s one final trait that I d like to discuss. And in hindsight it s the one that fueled everything I ve done. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it opened up the world for me... Curiosity opened so many doors and forged so many connections. And it gave me a way to overcome my normal introversion and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |