I got a very interesting response to my last blog on maturity and I'm glad it got people thinking. So this is kind of a part two for me. A friend of mine once said to me "I give advice to people, not because I think I am better than everyone else. It is because I want them to be better than me!" I very much have that view myself when I speak. I don't share my lessons just because I call them as I see them, or because I have it all figured out, it's also because many if not most of the times I have discovered them through my own struggles or I STILL currently struggle with them. Whether it be embracing the lesson itself, or putting into action.
Randy Pausch said "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." And truth be told, experience can be priceless. And sometimes, it can lead to big bruises. In my post about maturity, I did not want it to come off as if I was on my high horse and sound like I have maturity all figured out and am the most mature human in existence. Forgive me, that is not the case. I was VERY mature in many ways at a young age, but the lack of emotional experience limited me in my maturity in the bigger choices in life. I moved out on my own at 19 years old, and I had a lot of maturity in some things that made it work well, and in other areas I lacked maturity that would have allowed me to function much better. And don't get me wrong mistakes are good, but sometimes in your process of making mistakes and gaining that experience too soon or too late, can cause pain to others and you don't even realize it.
The hope is that you come back with a renewed sense of self and intentions to become a better you which will overflow to others in a positive way. My martial arts training is not just training my body, it has been a journey to training myself mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and I take that very seriously. My martial arts is no joke. That being said, when I take serious strides to better myself, that means the mistakes can be very serious as well. As part as my journey to maturing, my mistakes also hurt many others in the process. What is very important to me is to have enough humility to take responsibility for myself (my choices, actions, decisions that hurt others, and my words), and have enough integrity to right my wrongs.
When righting your wrongs, it starts with self. I've been working on self for . As long as I am alive, I am always in a state of becoming. But you must also do the right thing. I am a believer in communication. The mind is like and umbrella, it works best when it is open, and interaction fuels action. One of the biggest problems in our society is that there is less communication and less laughter in the lives of people. People would rather pound their feet and strut with an attitude and be angry and hold grudges and hold onto their problems. I can say this, because I would do it too. And why not? That's what we know and it's comfortable. The martial artist in me never gives up either, so I am amazed that other people give up so easy. They give up on situations, people, dreams, and it amazes me. What a shame it is.
I've done all these things too. I never wanted to be that kind of person to hold grudges, but I did and it only hurt me. When we do things against our own values, it errodes from our self-esteem, and when we don't face our own fears and issues, we self-sabotage and we attack others, usually the ones we love the most. I am absolutely guilty of this. It doesn't matter whether you intended to or not, it doesn't matter whether you realized it nor not. Because sometimes we do things and have no idea what we are actually doing. This is called disassociation. I've heard about it, but never understood it until I experienced it myself. These were hard lessons, and I felt horrible realizing I could commit such hurtful behaviors. This was part of my personal journey to maturing. But like becoming our full self, we are always maturing into new beings as well. This is how I came to the lessons of my last blog on maturity.
That's part of maturing. Enduring those kind of experiences. They come from mistakes, they come from successes, but maturity is not a just behavior or a way of acting, it is a level of behavior due to experience that comes from enduring good achievements and bad mistakes. And making the attempt to right your wrongs is a high level of maturity. Sometimes people close off so much, you will never get the opportunity to right those wrongs, and I've seen it with others and experienced it myself. My opinion, that is immature and unfair. But only my opinion. But we have to do the best we can, and we do everything in our power to be consistent and not refer to the old habits of being that caused us to hurt ourselves and others. That is a mark of maturity.
We cannot victimize. I've done that too. The poor me mode is an illness, so avoid it. But if someone is making a genuine effort to make changes in their life, allow them the opportunity to right their wrongs, because most people never think they're wrong. And be sure to admit when you are wrong or contribute to a problem, because every situation is never one sided, and we all contribute to a conflict. "Ye who have no sin throw the first stone." Mhmmmm!!! The collective WE must be mature enough to take responsibility for our part, and to show forgiveness to others and attempt to right our own wrongs. I share this lesson in maturity because I too am applying it. I too struggle with it. I too suffer on the receiving end of it. I have great successes and I also have great failures in my lessons of maturity.
None of us will ever be 100%. I know I desperately want to be, but I'd be happy with an 80/20, having the positive be the tipping point. I have righted a lot of wrongs in my self. I could not believe the positive response I have received from doing so and I am so grateful, and surprised. By being true to myself, so many areas have fallen back into place. The hardest part of fulfilling my own maturity is righting the wrongs of my past, whether it be my own self-sabotage or hurting others. Many if not most have allowed me that opportunity. There is a small few who are completely closed off to it, and they know that hurts me more. It makes me feel like a bad person, or the thought that I would never change is a sense of giving up on me. It's as bad as when people said to me in the past I would never open my own martial arts school. Shame on anyone who tells someone they will never do something, and the same goes for those who want to make a positive change for themselves to better themselves and better others. But I guess that too is a part of maturity. Knowing that with understanding comes acceptance, and when those who want to remain stuck and hold onto pain and disappointment, when those don't want to understand, we have to allow enough maturity to shower those people with compassion and forgive our own selves.
Fight through the FEAR: Face Everything And Recover. Never lose FAITH: Feeling As If There's Hope. And always have HOPE: Hold On Possibilities Exits. These lessons come from SPIRIT and stays away from EGO. That is how we better ourselves and help others in the process. My lessons in maturity come mostly not from my successes, but from my shortcomings, my mistakes, and my failures. I share this so you can all be better than me. (BOWS)
Yours in service,
MASTER A TRENTO
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