Hello students & parents,
Apologies for the delay on this month's newsletter - lion dance season was insane (as usual). Follow our social media for any and all photos recapping all the performances we've had in the last couple of weeks. We've had quite the lineup!
Happy Birthday to Ivy this month!
Here are the focuses this month:
Morning Taiji: Meditation and Qigong movements
Evening Taiji: Taiji 28 (Continued)
Beginner Gongfu: Duan Gun/Wu Bu Quan/TBD
Kid's Gongfu: Ji Ben Quan Shaolin
Advanced Gongfu: Fu Hu Quan
OVERCOMING ADVERSITY
This month's words-of-wisdom comes from one of our school's Disciples, Li Gong. I often tell him he's one of the strongest people I know and is just one of the many reasons why I chose him as a Disciple. When it comes to the spirit of gongfu, few people have that spirit as strong as him. Please enjoy:
What is adversity? It is instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune. Examples of this could include a loss of a loved one, an injury, an economic hardship, loss of a job, a disability or even just bad luck. Though some of us sail through life easier than others, one thing is for certain - we will all encounter something difficult at some point in our lives. Sometimes it seems like your life might be ruined and you just don’t know how to move forward. That is okay, these feelings are normal, and though everyone’s experiences are different, there are steps that everyone can take to overcome their struggles in life.
First you must change your mindset, which is the way you view things. We all have that inner “voice” that sometimes discourages us or limits us from growth. It tells us things like “I’m not smart enough”, “I cannot change”, “I’ll never be good at that” or even “why me”. These are all examples limiting thoughts that can kill dreams before they even begin. These negative thoughts must be replaced with positives ones. To do that you are going to have to be comfortable with the fact that something needs to change. Things are not working the way you are currently doing them, so you must adjust to new conditions in order to move forward. Then you need to give yourself a reason to succeed and acknowledge that accepting the change is critical to your success.
The reason I have had for success has always been my children, but that will be different for everyone. It is important to stay positive, rewiring your brain to think differently isn’t going to happen overnight. My mother always told me “There is a positive thing to every negative action, sometimes you just have to take a second to find it.” Which to me
meant there is always a lesson to be learned even if you do not see them right away.
The last thing is to be thankful. No matter how bad things are, they could always be worse. Give yourself daily reminders of things in your life that you are grateful for. Once you have altered your way of thinking, the next step is to set goals. Set a big goal and then break it down into smaller steps on how you are to get there. If your goal is years
out, for example earning a black belt, then break it down to what you need to do yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily to reach your goal. One thing important to remember about reaching your goals is that failure is okay, quitting is not! Failure teaches things what not to doso can we learn from it.
The best approach is to try and complete your daily goals everyday for the win but if you don’t win don’t get discouraged because there are seven days a week. Only takes four days of completing your daily goals to win the week and three weeks out of four to win the month. You just got to remind yourself that failure is okay, that you just got to get up and try for the win again tomorrow. You might not get wins right off the start but as long as you learn from your mistakes and keep trying, eventually the wins will start coming in and they will get easier to achieve as you build yourself into a routine.
Now you have a routine down, the final step helps you keep that routine, which is discipline. Self-discipline is training your mind and body to get up day after day to do all the things you have to get done even though you don’t feel like doing them. Motivation is great but will only go so far, but having discipline will get you through anything tough. Motivation is basically doing things based on how you feel, where discipline is doing those same things despite how you feel.
There are things you can do to help improve self-discipline. Set aside time specifically for working on your goals and remove all temptations that might keep you from doing so. Make sure that you are getting proper rest. If your goal requires you to get up early, then you don’t want to be staying up all night. Take on the tougher tasks first. It is always a better strategy to complete the more difficult tasks in the beginning then to save them for last. Unless we are talking about exercising then it’s important to warm up first.
Ultimately life is a rollercoaster with a lot of ups and downs. We will have a lot of good times mixed with some bad ones. No matter what there will also be some difficult situations in our lives and learning how to overcome these adversities is a natural process that allows both growth and strengthens our character’s. It really comes down to just accepting what has happened, changing the way you think about it, coming up with a plan and then sticking to it. Remember, nothing last forever and if you take the action, then you can change the direction of in which your life is heading.
Li Gong
HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS
For those that keep their uniforms at the studio, it's best practice to take your uniform home often to wash and clean it, especially at the end of the month. For adult classes, you're more than welcome to hang your uniform on the clothing rack in the dressing room to dry out after training.
Reminder that all sash testing fees are due and automatically paid on the night of your/your child's testing, in case you see any charges on your card regarding that. Higher sashes require more testing time, hence the higher price, as well as invited guests to help with judging. These are normally charged the night of or after testing and also cover your sash for when you pass. Fee schedule is below: - White to Orange - $20 - Green - $30 - Blue - $50 - Red - $80 - Brown - $100 - Black - TBD
SCHOOL SCHEDULE

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