The Journey Within

My journey into the English language is limited. I’m not a grammarian. I do not actually care whether contact is a verb or not. But the use of the word “contact” has recently made me cringe. It is worst than “I’ll call you later”. With “I’ll call you later”, I know that the person may call me. With “I’ll contact you”, the person doesn’t even know how to contact me. Is he going to call me? Is he going to email me? Is he going to write a letter to me?

If he doesn’t know how to contact me, I doubt he knows if he wants to contact me at all.

Actually, I don’t care if he’s going to contact me or not. If it’s important enough for me, I will either call him, email him, or drop him a phone message.

The important point here is HOW.

How do you plan to “contact” a person?

Often, when I write a note down to myself to contact a person, I now get into the habit of making this decision already. I’ve decided that I am either going to call him, or email him, or message him, or just tell him in his face if I am sure I’m going to meet him in person, e.g. I have an appointment with him on Tuesday.

If I do not make this decision now, if my to do list says “contact John”, I am pretty certain that John will not be contacted very soon. Just because I haven’t decided HOW to contact John.

This is an example of the uncommon common point. While “contact” may seem like the obvious common point to achieve the action of contacting John, it is not. Calling him on the phone is. Emailing him is. Contacting him is not.

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Push hands is a 2 person exercise. In its simplest, it starts off with 2 person standing facing each other, and each of their right hand touching at the wrist. From there, both move about in what seems like a dance between 2 people, to see who gets the upper hand.

I normally focus on the dance. I focus on how I can sense the other person’s force and how I can counter the force and hopefully make the opponent off balance. I fail to realise the importance of the contact point.

As Jay Heinrichs points out in his book Thank You for Arguing, searching for the common place is important in an argument. It is where an argument can be build from. It forms a base where an argument can take its shape and form. It is from a common place that 2 people can identify with each other, and form a common basis of understanding, before getting into the heat of an argument.

Similarly for push hands, it is through the common point of contact that we can hope to topple the opponent.

I have been focusing too much on the movements while ignoring the importance of this common point. The funny thing about this “argument” is that the common point is already found! I don’t need to search for it. It’s already there for all to see. I’m ignoring the common point at my own peril.

I guess with a lot of things that we do, the common point is often obvious. It is the need to look for the common point that is not that obvious. Suppose you want to tackle a really big project e.g. renovate the house. Now, all you know is that you want to renovate the house. But what is the common point between this big project and you? What is the thing that connects you with this big project?

It is normally a very simple action, like call a contractor, or ask Jim about his rates, or look up the directory to find a list of designers. Although the action is very simple, we normally fail to identify this action. In Getting Things Done speak, it’s called the Next Action (surprise surprise).

Common points are everywhere. And it’s the first glue that connects you to the thing that you want to do or achieve. Without the first brick, there is no house. Without the first screw, there is no car. Without the very next action, there is no further action. Without the first step, there is no journey.

Find the common point. Find the next action. You will be on your journey to become the millionaire that you’ve always wanted to be, or have that house by the beach that you’ve always dreamed of. It all starts with identifying the common point.

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What you resist sticks to you.

I got this quote from a self-help book, and I thought it was talking about push hands! The book is by David Allen, from the Getting Things Done fame. His more recent book is Making it all work: winning at the game of work and the business of life.

When he mentioned about resistance, he meant resistance to action. It was in the context of work. For things that we resist to do, like taking out the trash, the thought of taking out the trash itself will haunt you. You might not be thinking about it consciously, but it will take up some real estate on your psychic land. And because you did not consciously note down this piece of resistance, it will haunt you like there’s no tomorrow. You will be thinking about the trash at the most inopportune time. When you’re eating, when you’re sleeping, when you’re brushing your teeth, when you’re out shopping and just remembered that the trash collector is coming round this afternoon…

Similarly in a push hands exercise. When I resist, my force is used against me. It’s being used to stick to me and followed through with a force that I cannot resist, because I resisted.

My teacher reiterated this to me again. I must let go.

Let me pass this message along to you as well. It is only when we let go that we can be honest with ourselves. And that’s the whole purpose of a journey within – to be honest with yourself. Resist yourself, you will become the enemy of yourself. Let yourself go, and you can be your own soul mate.

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Tai Chi has been known for a lot of things – old man’s exercise, good for health, “that group of weirdos who are waving their hands in the park”, the act of cutting a BIG watermelon, a martial art etc. I know it through a philosophical lens, and this is what attracted me to pick up Tai Chi in the first place.

Change is the only constant in the universe.

I’ve heard of this quote many times. And although I understand this intellectually, the quote doesn’t connect to me strongly on a day to day basis. It crops up when there are obvious changes in my life, e.g. quitting a job, moving from one country to another, joining toastmasters. However, subtle changes are happening every second of my life. I just fail to see them, or just choose to ignore them.

Changes like hair loss, increasing psychic clutter (information overloading), dusts, commitments… unless you keep track of every one of these changes, you are not likely to notice them. It has formed part of your daily negotiations with yourself. You just do it without realising you are doing it, e.g. buy milk, take out the trash, brush your teeth.

I’ve only ever consciously felt subtle changes by practising meditation and Tai Chi. For example, through Tai Chi, I can feel the changes going from one form to another. And I realised this recently, to master Tai Chi as a martial art, you have got to master the changes. It’s the transition from one form to another that gives you the opportunity to make a positive move in your favour.

This is the reason I like Tai Chi. It provides me a useful everyday platform that I can use to understand the world around me. It provides me with a useful tool for my journey within without journeying into realms I cannot understand. Change the world is too big a word to make sense on a personal level. Change my hand from here to there, I can understand better.

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I have been doing a lot of procrastination lately. This topic has been thrown about so many times that I don’t even want to write about it. Yet, I find myself wrting about it now, because I found a new angle about procrastination.

I joined the GTD-VSG (Getting things done virtual study group), and have been listening to the various podcasts they have there. One of the things that struck me was about procrastination. It’s not just a GTD phenomena. It’s something everyone understands. Everyone instinctively knows what procrastination means, even if the word is a long word with plenty of syllables.

What the VSG prompted was this:

everything you do is a procrastination.

Please read that again for good measure.

For example, I’m currently typing up this blog post. By doing so, I’m procrastinating on the dishes that I have to wash. I’m avoiding to clean the floor. I don’t want to be replying my emails now. I don’t want to be on Facebook now. I just want to write now. And by me writing, I am procrastinating on other activities.

My MacBook dictionary tells me that “to procrastinate” means to “delay or postpone an action; to put off doing something”.

The message from the GTD VSG? If you are going to procrastinate anyway, KNOW what you are procrastinating. It’s about knowing and feeling good about procrastination. It’s not about procrastinating itself. I know that when I write this, I will be doing the dishes immediately after I finish. I know that the floors will get cleaned this week. I know nothing on my email inbox will explode if I write this post now. I know that I can always surf on Facebook later.

So the next time, don’t fret about procrastination. Just make sure you know exactly what you’re procrastinating on, and feel good about it, i.e. it’s not the end of the world. If you are postponing it for a long time, chances are, it’s not that important to you. If it’s really important to you, you would have done that first, and procrastinate the rest.

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It is a long acronym for Getting Things Done Virtual Study Group. It does what it says and broadcast their study sessions through podcast. It’s a great way to keep your GTD skills fresh. It’s also great to see how others are struggling with the same problems you are when trying to implement the GTD method. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The facebook group is here. Their website is here. I’ve subscribed to them through iTunes.

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A week went by without much practice from my side. My poor performance shows when I turned up for class this morning. It wasn’t a total loss, as today, my lesson was on psychology.

Today, I learned to journey within other people through their Tai Chi form. The obvious example I can think of is the one all of us can relate to – doing a stiff form. It means you are not relaxed enough. For a beginner, this is common as you are not used to moving in a certain way, similar to learning anything new.

For someone more experienced, your own characteristics will start to show. There is a certain quality that defines every one’s form and ultimately, their character. Moving stiffly after years of training may mean stubborness. If you keep getting the same feedback from the teacher, it means that you have not moved on. You are still stuck in your old ways which you think is correct. This unwillingness to change will show up in your form, especially if you are doing the same thing over and over again. If you try to notice, or ask your family, you will notice the same thing happening in your family life as well.

Sometimes, when you start showing improvement in your form, it is an improvement in the wrong direction. For example, you might think that holding a lower stance is good, when your lower stance is forced through. Even after this was pointed out to you, you still think that this looks good on you. This has the characteristics of focusing on the superficial. It will show up in your work as well, like focusing on 3-dimensional pie charts and animation in your presentations…

If you use a lot of strength in your form, there is a tendency for aggresiveness. Again, this shows up when you deal with others, whether in your social life, your work life, or in any aspect of your life in general. You just like to be a big bully.

This is all very interesting, but the point of all these? To find out more about myself.

Our journeys are intertwined. And if our journeys crossed each other, chances are, there are plenty to learn for each of us. I do not pretend to know how the universe works by bringing you to read this article at this moment, or why doing Tai Chi led me to write this, or what am I having for dinner. But I do know this. Chances can be turned into opportunities, only we if we capitalise on it.

A Tai Chi lesson? A psychology lesson? A lesson in life? You decide.

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At one of the push hands class, I was discussing with a fellow student how to counter another person’s “attack”. While we were experimenting with various kinds of counter attack, a very important point emerged. I forgot about me.

Everyone is unique. Everyone has his own way of doing Tai Chi. It follows from this logic that everyone also has his own way of counter attacking. One method that works for one person may not work for another. And we are talking about counter-attacking the same person. Although he was showing me his way of counter attack, I have to develop my own way as well. I can adapt from his, but I have to learn how my body moves which is more efficient for myself than for others.

A question of “how did you do it” becomes “how can I do it my way”. Do not follow blindly what the teacher is teaching. Learn the essence, and adapt it to yourself. The whole world will be better off that way because you are contributing your own perspective to the world.

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I am currently in the process of offloading a small business that is simultaneously my dream job and my worst nightmare. Without going into the details of what job that is, it seems that although I love the job itself, it is not how I want to contribute to the world, as I have recently realised.

“They” say, the grass is always greener on the other side. But still, people go to those grasslands. People still flock there like a herd of sheep. However, we are following an invisible shepherd called “perception”.

I don’t know how we form our perception of greener pastures, but it was definitely formed subconsciously. It could be from movies. It could be from friends. It could be from parents. It could be from lovers. Whichever way it was formed, it seems like it wasn’t formed from within ourselves.

I know this now because I found out this about myself. I love my job. I love what I’m doing, but it doesn’t satisfy a bigger part of me. It doesn’t satisfy the part of me where I could be more. I found a cushy job but a cushy job does not promote growth. I thought no growth was good. I thought if sustainability is achieved, it’s a great feat. But this is what I found out about growth vs sustainability.

sustainability = growth

Growing is key to sustainability. If you don’t grow, you will be removed from the world, and more importantly, you will be removed from yourself.

You don’t have to grow at other people’s pace. You don’t have to grow at other people’s direction. BUT, you have to grow. Whichever direction you chose for yourself, you have to grow in that direction. It is the only way you are true to yourself.

But what’s the point of growing if we are only a blip in this world? What’s the point when we are only living in this world for a very short time?

Rather than answering that question, I would say, this question makes it more important that we choose our direction to grow wisely. It makes it more important that we focus our efforts. Rather than choosing what you think you might love, you’ll have to choose what you will really make you fall in love, head over heels.

As I seek closure to this chapter of my life, I’m looking forward to a new chapter. Stay tuned!

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