Developing Awareness

"Remember... you are expressing the technique, not doing the technique."

~ Bruce Lee

In many endeavors, there are always people who seek to become the best in their craft. They train and train, practice and practice, day in and day out. Some of us may believe the 10,000 hour rule to attain some mastery over our art. However, even devoting all of our time available to our chosen art can lead to nothing if we don't do it with deliberation. In the above quote, Bruce Lee put it aptly: though the mechanics of any particular technique are important in the beginning, we must always strive to express what we perceive the technique to be, from a place of awareness and understanding.Through constant refinement or fine-tuning of a technique, we can begin to shed the very technique and manifest something uniquely our own.

Without being aware of ourselves, and our action on the space around us, we lose the gift that is our unique expression of an art. This being said, mental awareness requires two elements to develop the proper foundation:   focus and intention. These two elements alone could take up multiple volumes, and even then it likely is not enough. Focus itself is rather self-explanatory: to focus is to hold one's attention on something like meditation or work, without distraction or falter. However, this doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to what may be occurring outside our inside of ourselves. Rather, this means that we learn to acknowledge, and then let go. Meaning, when we begin to think about what we want at the grocery store, or what Suzie said to you at work earlier today, we acknowledge the thought or feeling, but move no further. We acknowledge, and let go. Once we learn this through practice, we can come back to our point of focus (meditation, work, blog, etc.) Through this process,  we develop our focus and are then able to be present and open. 

Without moving too much further into focus, I want to touch on intention.In reality, focus and intention are interconnected and inseparable. As intellectual concepts, yes we may separate them. As living functions of our life, they are not separable. That being said (without too much elaboration), all of the terms I threw at you above, like letting go and being present and open, lead to a basic understanding of letting our intention guide us. When we learn to move with intention, or in other words with deliberation, we learn to act unquestionably. We stop questioning whether our decision was right or wrong, what Suzie said to you, what your grocery list is going to be. Through our focus our intention is then developed further. With confidence we move through our world, able to change with the change, without falter or question.


It's all great stuff to write about and contemplate, but until you begin to develop your own practice focus and intention will never be developed. I once had a teacher tell me, "It doesn't matter what your practice is, just practice." If we don't practice, we never learn what our intention was or is in the first place.

Though this is an elementary description of developing awareness, nonetheless it can be a starter for those of you who may have never reflected upon the concepts presented. I urge you to find something in your life you enjoy, and practice it! If we have nothing else in this world or the next, we have our passions and our chosen art.


For those of you reading my blogs, I ask that you comment and give me feedback or suggestions on the material if at all possible! It is always greatly appreciated. If you have further questions about meditation, awareness, or my practice, you can always email me at firstgenfighter@gmail.com


Many blessings to you all!

I Give To You

“It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is not an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment” -Elie Wiesel

 We're often apt to resign ourselves to fate, or fate as we see it. Resigning to our own opinion that, through all the strife and struggle we've experienced, fate's hand is simply all too powerful for us to overcome. If we look closely at this line, and think deeply on our own individual resignations, we may see that our opinion influences this decision. You may ask yourself, what is your opinion, then?

Perhaps our opinions are so intangible that through resigning, we feel some sense of a reality that we've always hoped to feel. Our sadness and despair frees us from the responsibility of having control. Perhaps it's more complex than that. Perhaps we don't fear responsibility, we fear failure. However, failure itself is nothing but another opinion that we've developed to give our lives some kind of a framework to operate within.

Life is short, much like this post. We're consistently caught up in yesterday's failure and tomorrow's shortcomings. As humans, we know no better. However, take a look at something I frequently tell my clients as I train them, push them, and ask them to look deep inside of themselves to move further.

 Perseverance is our foundation. Failure is our fuel. Failure is nothing but a way to create fire inside of our hearts to pursue what we've always dreamed of pursuing.

Perhaps this can evoke more than an opinion in you, my reader. Perhaps this can evoke something deeper.


Comment on my posts! Give me feedback! Live life, friends, and remember to persevere.

A New Beginning

"All glory comes from daring to begin." - Eugene F. Ware

             Daring to begin, as Mr. Ware once said, is one of the most difficult decisions we all must make. Be it waking up in the morning to get ready for the job that you despise (or conversely, love) or starting anew after mourning the death of a dear loved one. The broad spectrum of beginning is a fundamental awareness achieved through experience, trial, failure, and ultimately success. Thus, the connection we may draw from this is: to dare to begin, we must first stop. However, in order to stop, we may have to fail. When we have developed the courage to accept failure, we have (with or without our own knowing) developed the courage to begin! But... If I have to fail to discover a new beginning, then what is beginning, really?
             Without sounding too archaic and mysterious, the latter question is a question only you can answer for yourself. Often, we only need a push in a specific direction to realize what our beginning is, which can require the help from a very specific teacher or friend. However, whether we realize this or not, that is the end of it! The teacher or friend who led us to the doorway no longer has any bearing upon the decision that we must make as we approach said doorway. An important distinction upon reaching the doorway of our dreams is that our teacher or friend is no longer above us, as a mentor or guide, but is a comrade walking a similar path as ourselves. This is of extreme importance! Often, we move into our own knowing, or wisdom (e.g. the doorway), and find ourselves looking back for  help from our mentor who helped us for so long. Inevitably, this happens, and we must realize that this is the end, and thus the beginning, and is the first among many failures that we must learn from in order to progress further.

            As a future personal trainer and current soul coach and reflexologist, I'm consistently presented with situations that display all of these important stepping stones. The key to our success is indeed this failure that I brought up so frequently. However, there is one key concept (among the above) that we may want to reflect on that moves along the same wavelength: perseverance. Without perseverance, our failures can all be for nothing. With perseverance as our foundation, and failure as our fuel, our success is guaranteed in this world and the next.