昨日より良い
Kino yori yoi
Better than yesterday
“Strive to be better today than you were yesterday.” - James Gordon
The warrior’s mindset is insatiable. A person who studies a martial art is supposed to be the type of person who is akunaki (飽く無き) or is “insatiable.” Warriors hate complacency and thus their thirst for self-discovery should never be quenched. When talking about personal development, Furuya Sensei used to say, “I do __ as part of my training.” Or when Sensei would admonish us, he’d say, “You should do this as part of your own training.” As a martial artist, we are supposed to be constantly doing things to develop ourselves and push our boundaries. The best students know that training doesn’t begin or end at the edge of the mat - they know that training is an all the time thing. Sometimes, I used to drive Sensei on errands and driving him could be very stressful because he would always comment on how carelessly I drove. Once we were driving up this long street that had a lot of streetlights and out of nowhere, he yells out, “Drive faster!” It caught me off guard because he was always telling me to drive slower so I froze and slowed for a yellow light. Sensei groaned, “Ugh, now we’re going to have to stop for every light!” He chastised me, “If you would have driven faster, you could have timed the lights and we we could have gotten home faster.” At every light when we stopped, I would look at him and he would just glare at me and shake his head. Years later, I overheard Sensei telling someone how he always tries to time the lights on San Pedro “as part of his training.” Training teaches us that we should never be content with what we have attained and that there is always something else that we can learn or improve upon regardless of age, ability, or rank. Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.” The best warriors are always working on something. The warrior’s mindset isn’t about perfection but rather to simply be “Better than yesterday.”
Today’s goal: What can you work on as part of your own training?