Overture

Merry Christmas

     Merry Christmas, I hope that everyone got their Christmas wishes. My wish, in fact my dream is to change. Change is going to happen whether we like it or not the key is to control or channel the change if you can. Like a stone in a river the rushing water will run over you and I changing us forever but it took blood sweat and tears for Micheal Angelo to create the sculpture David. I have been on a journey for some time now, a year and a bit ago I had overworked myself and was briefly hospitalized because of it. This brush with death set me on a path to discover the real reason behind who I am, why I exist and why I do the things I do. Much of this journey has been internal, thinking about things and such, but in August it became something different. I, out of the blue and for no reason I can put my finger on started to study Kung Fu with Silent River Kung Fu in Stony Plain, Alberta. My metamorphosis now has a physical element. My journey has become much more than I had originally thought possible. I believe that I arrived at this point in my journey because it is time for physical change.

     My mental and spiritual journey is well under way and although I have changed in many ways, ways that feel earth shattering to the world I once lived in, I have only just begun. I feel that if the person I was is 12 O'Clock on a clock face and the person I wish to become is 6 O'Clock I may only be at 12:30 but from this angle I can now see who I was and know that I am no longer that. Change is scary, because even though I want the change and who I was is uncomfortable becoming something new and unknown is scary. The best sign to me that I am no longer who I once was is that I do not do the things I once did. Through my business and personally I attend auctions, and I always buy something, but not anymore. I have been to 4 full days of auction and I have been unable to purchase anything at all. It may not seem like much to you but to those who know me... Something huge has changed. 

I Ho Chuan

I was accepted to study this coming year as part of a select few who comprise the I Ho Chuan team at Silent River Kung Fu in the year of the horse. What is the I Ho Chuan? In the worlds of Sifu Brinker

"Silent River Kung Fu's I Ho Chuan is a year-long MENTORSHIP PROGRAM based upon the Ultimate Black Belt Test - designed by my friend and mentor, Tom Callos of Hilo, Hawaii. Through the general requirements set by Silent River Kung Fu's Black Belt Examination Board and the personal requirements set by you,

I WANT YOU TO LEARN:

• Your yellow belt, your green belt, your black belt, your kung fu are all about MASTERY.

• MASTERY IS A PROCESS concerned with your journey toward your goals. It cannot be about the destination because as you continue to grow and evolve so will your goals and ambitions. The journey never ends.

• Many small things can add up to one big thing. Embracing and applying the concept of incremental progression is the CORNERSTONE OF DISCIPLINE.

• People you associate with affect your thinking, your values, and your self worth. They influence the value you place on your goals and hold sway over how you choose to live your life. Your commitment and level of engagement are so affected by your social peers that they may be THE MOST IMPORTANT INFLUENCE determining your success or failure." Sifu Brinker

Mastery, much of this is focused on Kung fu and that excites me but much of it is focused on the individual and that is equally exciting. For each person that enters the I Ho Chuan their will be a great deal of struggle. In a normal race some will run the race with no trouble at all and it will not change them. Others will run the race and it will take everything they have an a little more, for these people change will be great. The I Ho Chuan is designed that even the most elite of athletes will be pushed past comfortable, even past what they feel was possible. Finally, Sifu Brinker has told me "There is no quit" you begin, you finish. the only difference is whether you finish well or finish badly, whether you will be changed for the better or forever be changed for the worse. You will find out who you are, what you are made of and glimpse perhaps, the greatest that you could become. Always to remember its not whether you succeed or fail at individual tasks but true success is found in how we deal with failure. The most growth is found during failure, if you never fail you will never grow. "There is no failure except in no longer trying." Elbert Hubbard.

Carson Wyndham.