A Short Instruction:
The purpose of this article is to practice and validate the Ki principles (Mind moves body) which are the foundation of Ki-Aikido in your daily life. Therefore, it has no meaning if you just read it without practicing it.
The fundamental method of mastering anything is practice. However, not just practice, but it is also important to validate how one has changed as a result of the practice.
It is easy to lose what you have learned without practice. On the other hand, you will never lose what you have learned through practice and validation. Therefore, please read, practice, and validate the contents of my article at least a month.
Make up your mind
When your mind is made up, you can exert the best of your mental strength.
We sometimes worry when having to make one single choice from several choices. This worry causes mental weakness, and indecision. For example, please imagine that you get up in the morning. If you make up your mind to “get up!”, you can get up without any bother. But if you are very slow to push your blanket aside and get up from the bed in an indecisive manner, you will even feel tired. It is effective to make up your mind before going to sleep at night. Say to yourself “Get up at __ o’clock tomorrow!” If your decision is not firm and you have a choice of “sleeping a little more”, you will bother yourself whether to get up or stay in bed, which will weaken the power of your mind.
It is also important to make up our mind when deciding our future career. After the graduation of the Ki-Aikido Institute, aspiring persons take the examination to become Uchideshi. In the interview, I always ask one thing, that is ”whether they can get rid of all choices other than Uchideshi or not”. How these people spend their time during their teens and twenties, is very important in preparing to act as a professional instructor. The training period of Uchideshi is for 10 years, so, to become an Uchideshi means to throw aside all other choices. Therefore, I will accept only the person who is firmly determined to train as Uchideshi. Because the training of Uchideshi is very hard, if the person has other choices than being an Uchideshi, it will weaken his willpower and in the end he cannot overcome the challenges of the Uchideshi training period.
It is important to make up our mind that “we have no other choice than what we have decided to do”.
People say that young people’s possibilities are limitless. However, some people misunderstand the true meaning of this statement. In this favorable time, many people can select their career on their own. From this point of view, we can say that the possibilities are indeed limitless. However, to select one means to get rid of the others. At the moment of selection, the other possibilities are all gone. Thus, our selection has to be done carefully and prudently. To examine in advance and have various experiences are also necessary. To chase other possibilities even after having made one choice is not the true meaning of “limitless possibilities”. It is the worst thing to regret that you think you might have another life “if you had made another decision in the past”. As a result, our mind becomes full of worries, and it is not possible to overcome the difficulties you face.
On the other hand, if the mind is made up, we can overcome any difficulties. Making up your mind means that the mind faces 100% to the direction of the target, that is, the state of “unification of mind and body”. In this case, we can perform to the best of our ability.
Making up our mind can be practiced throughout our usual daily life rather than through unusual big events. “Do it” or “don’t do it” are also examples of our worries causing weakness of our mind. In any case, we have to do the particular thing in our daily life, so better to make up our mind to “do it!”, and get rid of other choices.
We can train to “make up our mind” through usual activities ie; getting up in the morning, cleaning the house, and tidying up, etc. Then, we can also make up our mind for the big events such as school entrance and marriage, etc.
The person who can accomplish something is always the person who has learned about “making up his mind” somewhere and putting it into practice.
In this new year, how have you made up your mind?
The following is the practice and validation for this month:
[Point of practice]
・Make up your mind in the daily small matters (ex: getting up, reading and cleaning, etc)
・Get rid of all choices other than “doing it” from your mind.
[Point of validation]
・Experience the difference between the case that you have made up your mind when doing something and the case that you have not made up your mind when doing something.