Year of the Tiger - Final Numbers

It was always my plan to do one big final showcase of my numbers as the year came to a close. Looking back though I realize that this unconsciously was a way of me trying to hide what I was behind on, constantly convincing myself that I would catch up, that I could catch up, that I would make up everything I missed in time for Chinese New Year's eve and then I could present them like I had it all under control this whole time. But I didn't, and you'll see that below. I wanted to put everything on display, even the parts I'm really ashamed of because it is the truth. 

For this upcoming Year of the Rabbit I plan to put out my progress monthly to both keep me accountable and keep myself consciously and fully aware of my progress. 

I am incredibly proud of everything I was able to accomplish this year, but I also acknowledge there are many areas where I know I need to do better, so in true yin-yang philosophical style I'm going to be showing my final numbers and saying one way I succeeded and one way I can improve for the next year. 

No Quitting: check 

52 658/50 000 push-ups

    I am incredibly proud of myself for getting to and beyond the 50 000, I feel like I really beat back    mediocrity in one corner of my life my not ever allowing myself to not achieve my daily 180, even if it meant doing them at midnight.

    I definitely need to work on my tracking, I didn't think I would make it to the benchmark because of missing during injuries or when I was sick this year so I was honestly shocked when I saw how much I surpassed it.

50 392/ 50 000 sit-ups

    Again, very proud of this one!

    For me sit-ups are easier than pushups so I let myself fall behind way more on these because I would always think, "I can just do some extra tomorrow" I was constantly under the delusion that a few missed days wasn't the end of the world, instead of pushing myself to always get them done like I did with my push-ups. This new year I want to make sure I'm taking them seriously. 

???/ 1000 rounds of sparring

    Writing this out I realized I never made an effort to actively track this requirement. However, I did spar every single opportunity I got this year, and even pushed myself to enter point sparring in the tournament (even though it's not my cup of tea) and I definitely feel I improved this year. (but I still need Sihing Lindstrom to punch me in the head a few more times to get better ha ha)

259ish/ 1609 km

    This is one of the requirements I struggled with the most this year. Working from home definitely contributed to my abysmal numbers, but I think going into it I never took this requirement seriously. For some reason it never registered to me I was so far behind, I would always think, yea, this one will kinda just take care of itself eventually. The main reason the number is so low was I didn't track my steps for a large portion of the beginning of the year, and what I did track came from my phone, which isn't always on me so those numbers I do have aren't even accurate. I am going to make sure I work extra hard to put conscious effort into this requirement for next year. 

    Silver lining? Although my recorded numbers were very low for this one, I did try to carry the spirit of this requirement with me, always taking the stairs (even the 200+ flights I climbed at the university), and choosing to park further away and take the trails rather than driving closer, so I don't want to look back at this as a 100% failure.

555/ 1000 AOK

    This is another requirement I really struggled with. The problem comes in two parts: one, again working from home really limited the number of people I was interacting with on a day-today basis so I sometimes found it challenging to find opportunities to perform acts of kindness; two, I really struggled to track this one, I would try to make a conscious effort to try to do random acts of kindness, but I would often forget to write them down at the end of the day. I want to make sure I'm giving myself time for reflection this year so hopefully this won't continue to happen. 

Mend a relationship:

    Obviously this one is more nuanced than saying, "yes" or "no", but I think I made good progress, and I unexpectedly took some steps to repair a different relationship I wasn't even trying to, so 2 steps in the right direction on this one. 

44/ 51 Journal postings:

    I really wanted to try to catch up on all the missed blogs and to my credit I got semi-close, but I realized I didn't want to just write a bunch of blogs in rapid succession just to reach 51, because that felt like it was taking away from any steps towards sustainability and also purely focusing on the numbers rather than the spirit of the requirement as a tool. Journaling has felt like one of the most valuable tools in our requirements, and I'm very proud of every blog I've written so far.

Online Presence

    Similar to the blogging I definitely struggled with this in the beginning of the year. I think I felt like an outsider since it was my first year on the team, and I didn't think people would want to read my comments, or that there would be any value in leaving them. But now I've been much better about being connected to the team through kwoon talk and it really helps to stay motivated when everyone is cheering each other on, and offering understanding. I want to do my best this year to welcome everyone who's new on the team this year so they don't fall into the same mindset I did. 

3/ 3 Public Performances

Canada Day Demo, Tiger Challenge, Chinese New Year Banquet, these already have blogs detailing them so I won't reiterate those points here. 

Compete in the Tiger Challenge: check

Zero unexcused absences: check

Maintain attendance in regular classes: check

Memorize Mastery

    I put this requirement off for a while this year, and it feels pretty detrimental that I did for so long. This piece of writing has so many insights into mastery put in a way that is clear, eloquent, and inspiring. I worked on approximately memorizing it, paraphrasing some sections so that I forced my brain to understand the meaning and not just the exact order of the words regurgitated. That being said this year I want to try to get the whole thing exactly memorized and try to revisit it more often through the year.

Personal Requirements: 

- Train an extra 2 hours/week outside of class

    As embarrassing as it is to admit, I never really trained outside of class before this year. Thankfully that has changed, free afternoons, evenings and open training are all spent exploring new questions and refining existing skills. I don't have any explicitly tracked numbers on this one because I realized in the beginning if I was exceeding 2 hours, then I was less likely to train in subsequent days because I had already reached my quota. I also realized that 15 minutes of well- spent and focused training were more valuable than an hour of trying to kill time just to spend longer, so it became less about the numbers and more about how many times could I get up and start. 

- learn everyone's name in class

    At one point I think I had everyone's names and then a huge influx of green belts and fluctuating attendance made me more unsure. I know writing this our right now, I don't know everyone's names, but this is something I am going to continue to work at, and I want to extend it to the young dragons class, and then eventually to the whole school. I have a really hard time learning names but I want to make sure I learn who everyone is.   

-Make 20 changes in my life to reduce my environmental impact/carbon footprint 

This is a personal requirement I am going to carry forward into the new year too. I had lots of ideas for this but only a few of them actually got integrated into my life. I wanted to grow a garden this year, I had lots of places I wanted to try to reduce plastic in my life, but these ideas were left at just that, an idea. I need to take steps to make them a reality, and I need to continually search for more ways I can reduce my impact, even if I reach all twenty I want to surpass that. 

- build a lion head

    This is the only requirement that I feel like I really failed at this year. Not only did I quickly get overwhelmed by the amount of work a project like this would actually take, I let those overwhelming feelings spiral and I got in my own head about the whole thing. I was so worried bout making a mistake in the beginning that would affect the rest of the build I let that fear of screwing up prevent me from ever really getting past the first stages of this project. Writing this all out I know it was all very silly excuses, but in the moments those feelings made me paralyzed with inaction. While I could try to cushion my ego by saying, this project would take more than a year to do anyway, the reason I failed was I did not set a realistic goal, but I know that I wasted a lot of time this year, and I could have made lots of progress even if I didn't completely finish it. I still want to build one, using what little progress I made last year as a jumping off point, but I didn't want to list this as an official requirement for myself for next year because all the guilt associated with it worked to deter me, rather than motivate me. One good thing to come out of this dumpster fire of a requirement is I know for this year I need to build more frequent check in points for my goals, break things down into steps and make smaller and more manageable progress rather than thinking about the big picture all at once. 

Writing all of this out, I feel proud of what I was able to accomplish and regret that I wasn't able to accomplish more, but most of all it brings into focus how these requirements are all tools for kung fu and mastery. So many parallels that can be applied to my training, whether it's obvious and direct like acknowledging I need to log more hours of sparring, or more indirect like understanding how everything that happened with my lion head project is just one big metaphor for learning martial arts. Having come out the other side of all of these requirements I have a greater appreciation for these tools given to us, and I'm going to try my best this next year to utilize them all to their fullest.