It’s the Little Things

// January 24th, 2012 // General Info

English: Large amount of pennies

Image via Wikipedia

Plans and the biggest dreams are made up of small, seemingly insignificant pieces, much the way big buildings are made up of bricks, wood, and concrete (among other things) and those components are made up of even smaller things. Even atoms are made up of smaller particles.
Imagine if, for example, you took all the food you have ever consumed and placed it in one big pile. It would be a huge pile of food! Now take that pile and divide the food into daily portions; if you were 30 years old that would be 10,680 piles. Now break those piles into three separate meals a day and you would have 32,040 meals. Imagine that each meal was made up of 75 fork-loads of food; which would be 2,403,000 fork-loads.
Now apply this to martial arts. If you practiced 75 techniques, three times a day, for 30 years, you would have performed 2,403,000 techniques, and in all likelihood, from a technical standpoint, you would be a master.
Now apply this to education; to relationship building; to generating ideas; to “acts of commerce;” to “acts of marketing;” to overcoming obstacles; to farming; to invention; to kindness; to love; to fitness; to child rearing; and/or to art.

This then, is a lesson worth teaching.

Small things, simple, non-elaborate things, even things that fit on the end of a fork, add up to be huge things. Letters build sentences that build stories that fill books. Pennies add up to nickels, turn into quarters, become dollars, and become many dollars, which can end up providing for your life’s material needs.

The Martial Arts Teacher’s Job
To be a wise teacher, to instill in your students thinking and attitudes that serve to protect them from mental and emotional harm (in this case wanting and dreaming but not recognizing the power of the seemingly insignificant in helping dreams become reality), you need to express the idea that small (positive) things, done consistently, lead to grand things. I mean to remind them, almost from moment-to-moment, of the value in this kind of thinking. You want to instill in your students with an appreciation for little things; and that means an appreciation for each movement, for each repetition, for each moment.

The Little Things as a Tool for Student Retention
It may very well be that an intellectual disconnection between the little things and the big things is responsible for a lot of student drop-outs. Students and /or their parents want big results, the big payoff, the jackpot, credible evidence that they are wisely investing their time and money. What they can lose sight of (unless creatively and consistently reminded) is that the little tiny things, like regular class attendance, like 10 minutes practice sessions at home, like an after class discussion of philosophy, like an ever-so-small shift in thinking, and that each little kick, punch, roll, and throw are like so many pennies adding up to become so many dollars.
To improve retention is to keep the student in class by reminding them of how their effort, today’s effort, each technique, each moment, is taking them where they want to go. To remind them of the magic of the little towards the achievement of the big, requires that you, as their teacher, make a big deal out of the concept. It means you remind them of it, without fail, every workout, every few minutes, so that they never forget the value of what they are doing.
Now apply that “appreciation for the moment” to each moment they have the opportunity to share with someone they love deeply. Apply that appreciation to the red sky of the next sunset, to the shimmering brilliance of a night’s sky, to the feeling of resting after a hard day’s work. Apply that to the feeling of being with their father, mother, or grandparents.
The simple things, the little things, are way too important to overlook. As a Teacher of the martial arts, you are acutely aware of the value of the little things in big accomplishments.

Enjoy the journey.

GM Rankin

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