The Little Voices

“You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.”

This saying comes to us from Leroy Satchel Paige, an American baseball pitcher. I chose it as my lead-in for the article below.

The Little Voices. Everyone has them. Everyone hears them. They tell you that you aren’t fast enough, strong enough, mean enough, good enough, talented enough and so on.

They tell you that your opponent is tougher, stronger, faster, a better technician, he/she knows more than you, he/she is basically better than you.

They tell you its okay to miss class tonight, because, well, you’ll practice twice as long next time.

They tell you that you don’t need to do this, or that, or the other thing (that you really do need to do) that you’ll get by somehow, don’t worry.

Sometimes when I would be teaching class, I would get a call from a student saying they really didn’t feel like working out, or they felt “out-of-sorts”, or they needed to do something else that didn’t get done because they didn’t manage their time well.

The voices impact all of us.

Some folks fight hard and learn to not listen to the voices.

Others are overwhelmed by them and end up not training, not studying, not graduating, not getting the job, not getting the promotion, simply not achieving their potential.

Some folks are more introspective and in examining the little voices deeply, learn to understand what their fears or uncertainties are.

The human tendency in comparing ourselves to others, is to compare ourselves negatively. It’s the weirdest thing. We look at someone else and all sorts of comparisons come out of us and become concrete barriers to our achieving what we want or need. And yet they were just thoughts moments before.

Okinawan karate master Shoshin Nagamine of the Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu had many sayings. One of them was about an opponent:

“I must remember that he is human, and so am I.”

How do you defeat the little voices?

Prepare. Train. Study. Learn.

If it’s a fight that you afraid of, get into the best shape you can. Train hard, with discipline and consistency. Practice your combinations over and over until they are like you skin which is with you always, and not like your clothes which you can take off whenever.

If it is a test, either in karate or in school or wherever, prepare. Memorize as much as you can and learn to use mnemonics to aid in your memory.

Study with music and then remember to hum the music when you are in the test, so as to bring to mind the subject matter you were studying with that music.

Mao Tze Dong, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party once said, “The preparation for the task, is the doing of the task.” He and his gang of “reds” completely changed China, although not in a good way.

Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao's enemy and the leader of the Nationalists, fled China during Mao’s time and went to Taiwan, and essentially did the same thing to Taiwan with his “greens”. The reds and the greens were nicknames for the Tongs that these men belonged to.

The little voices can be tamed, and even defeated, and eventually ignored. But you have to prepare and train and practice and remember to laugh at yourself every so often.

I leave you with the following:

Remember the first two laws of Bushido:

1) Never tell a lie; and

2) Never give up!