Hey Sifu Davis

Through your life you embarked on a great journey - to find all the puzzle pieces of JKD by learning from the Original JKD students, as well as any other resource you could find.

I was wondering, how did you maintain this through your whole life? How did you maintain your drive?

Do you do any sort of goal planning stuff? Writing down goals and such? Or did you just have the idea in your mind and just use sheer willpower to achieve your skills?

Wei Lin

This is a great question! As anyone who's spent time in the martial arts will tell you, motivation and training plateaus every now and then. Many people think this is the end of their training, the lucky few realise it's just a chance to catch your breath and enjoy the view before continuing on your journey

One of the major contributions to achieving long term goals is milestones. Set shorter term goals that are more easily achievable. In that respect, this is the major benefit (Actually, about the only benefit!) of gradings and belts. I know, I know, belts are only good for holding up your trousers! WE know this, but Joe Average interested in learning a martial art for the first time doesn't. It took me to actually get to black belt in Gung Fu to believe it! If you're in the classical arts, that 4 or 5 year journey to black belt is looooooong, so you focus instead on your next belt, which signifies a milestone on the journey. To that end, belts aren't a symbol of expertise or size of ego - they're metaphors. Actually, I view them as training wheels. Pretty silly when you look at them, but they keep you going til you get to that point where you just don't need them anymore. In JKD, we don't have any belts, let alone the black ones which signify a solid goal, so we can't offer those kind of milestones. The challenge to JKD instructors is to provide an alternative to keep beginners motivated so they too can smash through their personal barriers, train through the plateaus, and reach the point where they're effective and good exponents of JKD.

I readily admit that it's the belts the originally kept me going all those years ago. Now - I just LOVE training (And get kranky when I miss out on it!)

personally reality has always been the motivator. The first time I felt (IT) there was no questioning why I needed to progress. Knowing that at anything time you are out something crazy can go down gives me encouragement.

Positive Energy Activates Constant Elevation
P.E.A.C.E.

Goals: to reach perfection and simplicity

Motivation: to know one's self