Sensei Joseph Hurtsellers: Hi this is Sensei Joseph Hurtsellers from Ohio Martial Arts. Most people know that martial arts is practical self-defense and getting people in fantastic shape, but people also know there’s something more going on. There is this idea of learning to focus the mind. This show is designed to address that third component, how people can focus their mind to get more of the things life that they want and less of things they don’t. Thanks for listening to my show. I hope you enjoy.

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Sensei Joseph Hurtsellers: So there’s an analogy that I like, and it’s good one. Once you get this, you’ll understand better how the mind works. Let’s back up just a bit, and let me start by staying there’s three promises that we give people when they come into the dojo. One is we’ll get them in great shape, and that we’ll do it in a structured way that’s interesting and engaging because there is curriculum and all that. You’re learning something. In fact one of the biggest problems with that is when people come into the dojo they’re learning that they don’t know how hard they’re working, and if we’re not real careful—Mr. Pagel’s seen this many times—if we’re not real real careful we’ll get the call. You know what the call sounds like? “I really it, but I’m in so much pain today, so I’m going to wait to get in better shape before I come back in to the dojo.”

The crazy thing about that is, and the thing that we find frustrating about that is, they’re the one that’s doing the work, because it’s not like a gym where you say, “Lift this hundred pounds.” What we’re saying is throw your punch. Throw your punch as hard as it feels good to you, but no harder than that so that you can come back in tomorrow. But it’s just so engaging and so fun, it’s just the most natural thing in world for them to overwork and over train. So a big part of our energy with these new students is saying, “Slow down. Go 50%, 50%, 50%.” Even then, sometimes that’s too much, so we have to be really really gentle with our new ones.

But then the second promise that we give people is that we want to teach them how to be able to defend themselves, practical self-defense. There’s so many benefits to it other than being able to win a fight. The thing about it is most people will never ever ever use this in the street, but the reality is that feeling of confidence that you get, the way you walk, the way you look, the way you feel when you’ve just done something for yourself really changes things a lot.

Then the third part of marital arts, that we think is equally important, is the internal part. It’s the focus part, and in most places here in the west that kind of gets glossed over. The reason why it gets glossed over, I think, is mostly because most people don’t really understand it, but of all the things we do, the fitness part, and the self-defense part, while those things are incredibly important, the mental part affects your relationships. It affects the level of success you have in life, and the mental part in large extent determines whether or not you’re going to go on and purse great things even in the martial arts world. So if you don’t have the mental part, nothing else really really matter. So my point of these talks is really is really to address, a lot of times, is to address the mental part of martial arts, and that’s what we’ll do today.

So an analogy that’s a good one that we could use is to imagine that thought gains momentum the same way a train gains momentum. If you have an engine, and you’ve got a bigger load, you might add another engine. For an even bigger load, you might add another engine. So the more engines you stack on a track heading in one direction, the more powerful and the more weight that that train has. But here’s on the secrets that people don’t know, and once you get this, it’s like you’re really on your way when you understand this. That track is not a flat track. That track is moving at an (upward) angle, and this is the crazy part. If you shut all those engines down, the (upward) angle that that train is moving in, in this analogy, is away from your goals and dreams. What I’m saying is your goals and dreams are downhill, they’re not uphill, but the only reason that we’re NOT able to achieve in life is because we’re stacking all these engines that are climbing and making us work really really really hard to move away from our goals. This is the thing that is interesting. If you look back on your life experience, you’ll know this to be true. Weren’t there times in your life when you struggled, and you struggled, and you struggled, and you struggled, and then all of a sudden you were struggling anymore? You just stopped struggling, and all of a sudden you started succeeding. Yet we live in a society that seems to tell people, “No, no, no! Struggle is the secret of success.”

Here’s what usually happens. What usually happens is we struggle, because we’re doing it wrong. It’s just like when somebody does jiujitsu wrong. They struggle. They’re doing it too hard. They’re working too hard. Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, and then they just give up on struggling. Then their mind opens up and they go, “Oh but maybe there is an angle I should look at.” Then they change the angle, and all of a sudden it works. Then they say, “Ah! The secret is all the struggle.” No, the secret is getting to the point where you give up struggle, and you don’t have to struggle to give up struggle. You could just decide to give up struggle. It’s just that simple.

So here’s what I’m trying say. What I’m trying to say is so every time I have a negative belief, it’s like adding another engine, and another engine, and another engine, and another engine on that track that’s taking me away from my goals. So people will have a tendency to think, “Well then I have to then learn how to learn how to build positive thoughts.” Well, yeah, but that’s really hard. If you’ve got a lot of negative thoughts, it’s real hard to build to positive thoughts. But once you know that the angle of this track is at an UPWARD angle, you don’t even have to have positive thoughts. You just to have to STOP thinking, and as soon as you stop thinking, all of a sudden the train stops, and gravity starts taking you right towards your goals.

Now once you start moving towards those positive goals, what does that feel like? Well the emotion of moving towards your goals—see there’s really only two kinds of emotions, right? An emotion that makes feel good and an emotion that makes you feel bad. An emotion that makes you feel good only means that your train is moving in the right direction, and an emotion that makes you feel bad is an emotion that is telling you your train is moving in the wrong direction. So as soon as your train starts moving in the right direction you go, “Oh, that feels pretty good,” and then what do you do? You begin to attract thoughts that match it, and those thoughts are positive thoughts. But it wasn’t because you did affirmations. It wasn’t because you recited a certain number of things from your goal book, or your dream book, or had a dream board, or did all that kind of stuff. All those positive thoughts come automatically when you stop thinking

So this is the reason that we say meditation is the foundation of all true martial arts, because when you learn to meditate, you still the mind. When you still the mind, the train stops. When the train stops, it won’t stay stopped for very long. It’ll starting rearing itself right down the hill right towards everything that you want. But there are certain things along the way that we do that mess us up. That’s what I really was going to talk about today, but I’ll be very brief because I talked about all the other stuff first.

So what do we do to mess ourselves up when we start heading in the right direction? The number one thing we do is we start asking ourselves questions that we don’t know the answer to. So, everybody in here as big dreams and big aspirations for their life, things that they want to do, things that they want to accomplish. But here’s the truth, you don’t know how you’re going to get those things. You have no idea. But here’s the other truth, it’s not of your business to know how. It’s none of your business, because it’s like climbing a flight stairs. You climb up one set of stairs and then the next set, you can see the next level. You will never know the next step until you get to the next step, but if you start trying to skip steps and start predicting way out into the future— how’s going to work, when it’s going to come, how it is going to come, who is it going to get there, what’s the date, what’s the time, putting it all down in writing and all that— what begins to happen, what you’ve done, now you’re saying, “Yeah, but what if it doesn’t happen then? But it might not because of this, and I don’t know what to do.” Every one of those I don’t know that to dos is just putting another engine on your track going the opposite direction. So you just have to find a way to chill sometimes.

But then the second thing that we do (that messes us up) is then we want to convince other people of what we’re doing. There is this internal insecurity that we all sort of have that I feel if I get up in the morning and I’m feeling happy. I’m feeling joyous, and I’m feeling delighted with life. I feel like going for a walk, and I feel like taking a deep of breath of air. I just feel like my life is good and my meditation is good and everything is good, now I have to kind of defend why I’m so happy. But the truth of the matter is there’s no reason that I’m happy. There’s none what so ever. The only reason why I’m happy that I just stop struggling, and I stop adding trains to wrong side of the track. So now though, if I came up to Mick, or Paul or Joe, and I said, “Okay, now I’m going to explain to you why I’m happy,” then I have to kind of defend why I’m happy. In the defending of why I’m happy, all of sudden now I’m adding more trains to the track going the wrong direction.

Then the third and the final thing that I’ll say that we do that mess us up is we think it’s our job fix things for other people sometimes— sometimes for ourselves, but mostly for other people. And the simple analogy that I use for this is, have you ever been to a party where it was great, everybody’s having a good time— and this actually happened to Sempai and I one night, and I really thought about this, and I’ve kind of learned over time and wisdom how to handle these kinds of parties—so there’s some alcohol, and there’s some food, and it’s good. It’s just a great time. It’s been going on for a while and going on for a while, and all of a sudden they run out of food, but there’s still a lot of alcohol.

Students: [laugh]

Then it’s getting a little noisy and a little sloppy and a little late. Some people are leaving, but there’s an awful lot of people still staying, and it’s getting a little loud. Time to leave; time to leave. Because you can just all of a sudden feel that somebody’s going to drop a table on their foot, and it’s going to be bleeding, and they’re going to be stuck in the kitchen helping people clean up dishes. You’re you going to get all this crap of the party that you otherwise wouldn’t want to have to stay for. So you just get sensitive enough that that was a good time, that was a good time, that was a good time. It’s just getting a little loud, I’m having a good time and all, but time to go home. Then you’ll have many many more parties that you can go to.

So why don’t we leave the party? The reason that we don’t leave the party is there are sometimes we feel this sense obligation that maybe we should stay and clean up. Maybe we should be the one to calm people if people are getting unruly and getting out of hand. I’m really using this as an analogy, so whether you choose to leave a real party or not that’s your business. But it’s a life analogy, and here’s what that analogy is. The reason that we don’t leave a bad party is we feel an obligation to fix things for other people. But it’s not our obligation, because we weren’t hosting the party in the first place. It’s not our party. So the same thing is true as you go through your world, and you see somebody that’s miserable, one of the worst things that you can do for your hopes and your dreams and your aspirations is to try and take a miserable person and make them feel better. Not only do you make them feel worse, not only do you make them hate you, you also add massive trains to your side of the track.

So that’s the point today. The point is, just remember where our mind goes, that’s where everything goes in our life, and our mind is really rigged to favor us if we don’t think negative thoughts. The natural outcome of not thinking negative thoughts is thinking positive thoughts. You can’t stop your mind totally, but what you can do is learn to meditate so that your mind becomes still enough that all of sudden the train starts sliding down the track, and you start getting that positive stuff automatically. The second thing is don’t ask yourself specifically when or how you’re going to accomplish your goals. Instead, just keep thinking about what you want and why you want it. The more you think about what you want and why you want it, those steps will all of sudden reveal themselves one step at a time when they’re ready. The third thing is stop trying to fix things. You don’t have to fix anything. The only thing that you need to fix is your own relationship with your own joy. You fix that relationship with your own joy everything comes along.

What will also happen—I will just add this to end—is that you will have occasions when you’re just so joyful and you’re just exuding joy, you’re not trying to change anybody, you’re not trying to do anything for anybody, that other people will get within your presence, and that aura that you’re giving off will rub right off on them. You will end up bringing those people up, not because you’re trying to, but because they’re asking for it, and when you are near them, it was able to come out from them.