When we think about all the things we need or want to change, it can become daunting. But often we make it more difficult to change than it has to be.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self podcast, we talk about the things that can stand in our way of self-change and how to become aware of these and not let them drag us down when we become inspired to change our lives for the better.

We specifically look at how our thoughts and past can turn against us, loading an additional weight onto our shoulders.

I share a brief story about how I faced such a moment of my mind turning against me when I wanted to change a simple thing in my life, and the lessons I sourced from this instance.

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Martial Art of Self is a Martial Arts Self-Awareness Journey with a focus on self-development. Bringing the essence of Martial Arts back to self. Martial Arts Podcast and Blog.

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Table of Contents:

[00:00:00] Episode Intro

[00:00:44] Why it is so difficult to change

[00:01:08] When past failures shoot back

[00:02:43] Failures from the past, dooming the present and future?

[00:03:11] Losing confidence in our ability to change

[00:03:59] The old self taking over again

[00:04:52] Listening to your discouraging thoughts

[00:05:37] Deciding to move instead of listening to thoughts

[00:06:02] Starting small

[00:07:33] Doing something that is of self-movement to get out of the mind

[00:08:03] Lessons Learned

[00:08:08] You don't need to listen to the discouraging voices

[00:08:36] I don't have to stay where I am just because I once decided

[00:08:58] A decision can be changed any time

[00:09:22] Change comes down to me deciding to

[00:10:08] The is no universal law of having to stay with a 'bad' decision

[00:10:54] How to change in the middle of an experience?

[00:11:51] Every new moment is a chance to start over

[00:12:09] Change can feel daunting in the beginning

[00:12:25] When your past is against you

[00:12:44] Don't take your mind personally

[00:13:37] Focus on what you can change instead of everything you did wrong

[00:14:20] The is no limit to creativity in the methods to facilitate change

[00:14:29] We are masters of making things more difficult

[00:14:56] The pitfall of waiting for the right mood

[00:15:35] Episode Ending

[00:16:13] Episode Outro

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we are looking at martial arts as a path to self-understanding.

Here I share a story of how I used to see martial arts in my life. I was obsessed with perfection and wanting to excel for the wrong reasons. The training turned more into stress than an aid for me, my self-experience, and my life in general.

Further, I touch on how the simulations we create in our minds about our skills can have adverse effects when we meet physical reality with such imaginary simulations.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we discuss the transformation of our motivation for doing our martial arts so that it is no longer rooted in fear.

When we do something, like our training, out of fear, and we practice individual skills out of a fear-based reason, we are only feeding into the fear. Instead of evolving inside ourselves, we are merely improving our external physical skills, while at the same time developing, strengthening, and expanding our fears.

What if we could transform our martial arts to be a support to become less fearless over time instead of growing our fears?

In this episode, I talk about my discovery of doing martial arts and training for specific things due to fear at the root of my motivation. I mention some of the realizations I gained in the process and walk you through a practical approach I used that lead me to see, understand and start changing my starting point for doing martial arts from fear to something more useful and fulfilling.

Hi everyone, I am Aldin, and this is the Martial Art of Self podcast.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by martial arts. The training and philosophy has helped me through difficult times, and I've had this inner itch to explore what more there is to it that can enrich all aspects of my life.

In this show, we explore how we can bring the principles, philosophies, and strengths of martial arts into our daily life.

We focus on transforming our martial arts journey into more than just an external discipline. Self-understanding, self-awareness, self-change, and self-creation are the themes we aim at.

We go beyond the martial application and straight into the heart of ourselves: How can we bring martial arts back to self?

Welcome to the Martial Art of Self podcast - this is my personal recorded journey where I focus on bringing the essence of Martial Arts back to Self.

Listen on Spotify, iTunes, Anchor, or wherever you like to grab your next podcast from.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we discuss a pattern of being too militant in our training, or life in general. 

For me, I discovered how this militant approach towards my martial arts training, as well as to other parts of my life often lead me to burn out, and losing interest, and joy in the things I do, or which are part of my life.

Being too rigid with our plans or goal settings suffocates the necessity to be flexible and to adapt to real-time moments and contexts of what we are doing. It is good to plan and set goals, but I find all plans need space to breathe freely. After all, life doesn’t move as a straight line, but rather more like a wave that seems able to travel up, down, back and forth, and sometimes it feels like it moves in all those directions simultaneously.

In this episode, I talk about the importance of practicing sensitivity. It is vital to establish communication with what our body feels like and goes through.  

Then we can assess a challenging moment in self-honesty and establish if such a moment is a chance to push a bit more for growth, expansion, and creation, or if we are demanding too much too soon from our body, mind, and self and should slow down.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we continue exploring some further dimensions of the Martial Arts personality.

In particular, we open up and discuss the pattern of chasing positive feelings through our art, or whatever it is we are doing.

More often than not we are trying to generate some powerful positive feelings to boost our ego, or we look for positive feelings to superimpose onto the negative way we truly feel deep within ourselves, or life.

Here I tell my story of how I chased some positive feelings to boost my ego or compensate for the negative emotions I felt inside. I list some of the core applications that I use to face and work through my negative emotions.

The essential question I ask here is whether the things we do - such as martial arts - grow our person or our ego.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we look at some dimensions of body-respect and body-care.

It has become mainstream to drive our bodies to the limit in an unnatural, and harmful pace, and way. Unfortunately, we mostly treat our body as a driving vessel for our self-interest, our desires, wants, and needs only.

We miss the fact that the body is one of the most important manifestation we have in our life that makes or breaks our physical life-quality. We live with our bodies day in and out. It is here from start to end. Through good, and bad. A true unconditional companion. Hence, we should treat it a lot better.

In this episode, I talk about how I became aware of treating my body ill with my martial arts training, and how I approached my training. I share a few of the viewpoints, and realizations that opened up for me when I looked at this point of how I treat my body through the process of self-inquiry in self-honesty.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we discuss self-limitations. We talk about ways we limit ourselves by imposing certain thoughts, feelings, and emotions onto who we are, and the things we do.

Once we accept a belief as truth inside ourselves, it becomes a conviction in our mind. From that conviction, we build our self-definition. Once we accept a certain way of seeing and experiencing ourselves it becomes so much part of us that it becomes hidden in plain sight.

Often we no longer immediately see that we are acting in certain ways, or experiencing certain things inside us and our world because we have imposed specific limitations on ourselves, and life.

Here I share a bit of how I became aware of some self-limits, and this general pattern of limiting myself through the thoughts, and beliefs in my mind. I talk about how I assist and support me to challenge self-limits, and expand myself instead.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self, we discuss the Martial Arts Personality.

Often we create a personality or virtual entity around the things we do, be it sports, painting, career, education, or martial arts. This suit or mask is mostly limiting. We often lose interest or focus on other things life has to offer. We become consumed by only one or two main things we do.

To step outside such a suit and take off the mask requires us to ask the difficult questions. It requires courage to face something that makes us feel good and question it. But it is rewarding. We discover our true expression and much more life has to offer that we can use to benefit the thing we love doing and expressing through, such as martial arts.

Here I share when I became aware of my Martial Arts personality, how it was, what is was, and how I am moving forward with it to free myself from it so that I can keep on expanding and actualizing myself further.

In this episode of the Martial Art of Self podcast, we discuss the concept and action of training. We ask the question of what real training is. Is training only limited and applicable to martial arts, fitness, sports and other applications that exercise the body and mind in superficial ways

Training is synonymous with practice, application, and living. Thus to practice, apply and live something over and over again until it integrates as part of ourselves, as a new way or state of being.

Here I touch on how I have copied the definitions and understandings of the word and action we call training from others and settled on that. With that acceptance, I closed myself off from entering a deeper relationship of understanding and application of the word and concept of training.

I talk about my process of learning more about what training really is, where and how it applies, as well as giving some distinct examples of how I have lived it practically to help communicate my understanding of what training is as I have come to understand it for me through a process of self-investigation and self-introspection.