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You might define lifestyle as encompassing all the things that you spend your time engaged in, that is whatever it is that you do regularly defines your particular lifestyle. If you take a minute to think about some of those things, and how you feel when you’re doing them, that is what I’m calling your comfort zone. If you’re thinking about your day job, then it doesn’t mean you need to like what you’re doing, just that it is something you can do without needing to stretch yourself too much — especially if it is a job you’ve been doing for a long time.

Letting yourself stay inside this comfort zone for too long is what leads to that “stuck in a rut” feeling, or becoming bored. And not necessarily just with your job; the same applies to your relationships, hobbies and your whole life. The problem is that getting outside this comfort zone is inherently “uncomfortable” by its very nature.

Before I reached my teens, I was a stereotypical geek: Bottle-bottom NHS black rimmed glasses, shy and much preferring to program in Z80 machine code in my room that play outside like the other kids. And worse, my family moved house every year or two, so I was always the “new kid”, which is no fun at the best of times. Like many martial artists of my age, the turning point came when I first saw The Karate Kid and wanted to be just like Daniel-san. My folks found a local Karate club and signed me up, delighted to see me engage in something a little more extroverted than reading, programming and playing Dungeons & Dragons. I felt pretty awkward even just shouting ki-ai (kiyap in Korean) at first, but this was the first time I had gone outside my comfort zone with all the discomfort that brings. I looked up the line at all coloured-belt students and determined to have a belt of my own soon, stuck with it, and sure enough within a month or so my comfort zone had grown a little to include shouting my ki-ai, and I had developed my personality a little.

So, by stepping a little outside your comfort zone for a while, you can improve your own personal development, and pursuing a martial art is an excellent way to be constantly pushed. The trick is not to push too hard, or the stress will make you retract and give you a bigger barrier to get through next time.

I kept at Karate until I left for University 4 years later, to discover the University Karate Club didn’t care too much for the safety of its students. In my first few weeks, one of the senior grades broke a new student’s collar bone with an axe kick in line work… bad enough in itself, but the instructor mistook it for a dislocated shoulder and in trying to pop it back in pushed the broken bone through the skin before calling for an ambulance. Looking for another club, I discovered Tae Kwon-Do which was far less formal than Karate, with students encouraged to help each other rather than compete against one another. I also liked the idea of wearing safety pads and engaging in semi-contact sparring. Once I got to University I’d decided to start wearing contact lenses instead of glasses, so I wouldn’t have to excuse myself from sparring. Over the following year I came to enjoy sparring sessions in the club, and when a local tournament came up I decided to enter. Although I was only a middle grade, I’d been practicing martial arts for a few years more than the other students of my grade, so my instructor entered me in the Mens Heavyweight Red Belt category (one below black belt in Tae Kwon-Do). By now I already knew that I needed to move outside my comfort zone to grow, so I took the sick feeling in my stomach as a good sign that I was pushing myself. Needless to say, I lost in the first round. Badly. I had only sparred with friends until now, and was taken back by how hard my opponent was hitting. I didn’t enter another competition for almost 10 years after that experience. A great pity, because once I did start competing seriously I eventually peaked at 2nd Place in the English Tae Kwon-Do Open Championships 2002. The fights at this competition involved much heavier contact and far more experienced fighters, but having expanded my comfort zone since that first unfortunate loss in 1990, it wasn’t so big a stretch to enter a National level event now as it had been to enter a local competition back then.

Nowadays I use my level of discomfort with new ventures as a sort of radar. If I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable about something, and making bad excuses to myself about why I shouldn’t bother, it is a good indication that I’m moving in the right direction to develop in some way, which spurs me on to stay motivated. If I need to make half a dozen trips to the bathroom and feel a little sick, then I’m pushing too hard and need to expand my comfort zone some more before I set myself back by pushing too hard.

Since then I’ve read Iain Abernethy’s excellent book Mental Strength, which goes into great depth about the comfort zone. If you’ve enjoyed this article, you’ll certainly find a lot of good advice in Iain’s book.

Inspired recently by the ongoing buzz surrounding the TextMate editor, I bought the e-book TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac by James Edward Gray II from Pragmatic Bookshelf. If, like most people, you find reading e-books to be far less pleasant an experience than reclining with a dead-trees edition, this tip might make e-book reading more bearable for you:

First enable the gamma inversion shortcut:

1. Open the System Preferences dialogue from the Apple menu;
2. Select the Universal Access icon;
3. Make sure Enable access for assistive devices, at the bottom of any tab is checked.

Now you can flip the gamma curve to make black-on-white pdf documents display in white-on-black, which is much easier on the eye, and allows you to dim your display considerably lengthening the time until you next need to recharge. Try it now by pressing: Ctrl-Alt-Command-8 (the three keys to the left of spacebar on my macBook). To return to normal, press the same combination again.

The next trick is to configure Preview.app to display the pdf in a more book like manner:

1. Open your e-book with Preview.app;
2. Select Facing Pages, from Preview’s View -> PDF Display menu;
3. Select Slideshow, from Preview’s View menu, or press the Shift-Command-F shortcut;
4. You can also click the Expand Icon in the popup navigation bar to use every last inch of screen real estate;
5. You can flip pages back and forth with the left and right arrow keys, or click on hyper-links to navigate through the book;
6. When you’re done just press Escape to leave full-screen viewing.

What you end up with is actually quite readable on a laptop.

Incidentally: the book is rather good; What’s that? TextMate itself? What can I say… Farewell, cruel Emacs! :-)

Last week I documented my Week of Martial Arts, where I attended a different martial arts class at my nearby Gloucester GL1 Leisure Centre every night of the week (more or less!), in order to pick one style to devote the next 6 months of study to.

And the winner is (drumroll please): White Dragon Tai Chi. Kidding. I found the instructor and students of Cheltenham Wing Chun Kuen to be closest to my wavelength, and what’s more, I already have some small experience with Jeet Kune Do which has its roots in Wing Chun, so I won’t be starting from absolute first principles. Actually, I almost went with Muay Thai and that would certainly have moved me outside my comfort zone (an important thing to practice in order to keep growing), but in the end one of my criteria for this exercise is to become involved in something that isn’t going to leave me with bruised limbs every week. With luck, my old Tae Kwon Do club will still be running fortnightly Fight Club if I feel the need to let off steam…

So, last night I arrived at Wing Chun for 2 hours of realising how very little I do know about the style. The next few months promise to be very challenging and exciting, and better yet the school organises visits to train with Ip Chun (eldest son of Bruce Lee’s Wing Chun teacher) in Hong Kong, which is only a 2 hour flight from Manila when we move again in the Autumn.

Related Articles

1. Week of Martial Arts
2. Week of Martial Arts: Wednesday Wing Chun

Last night was the last night of my Week of Martial Arts, where I attend a different martial arts class at my nearby Gloucester GL1 Leisure Centre every night this week, and then pick my favourite to devote 6 months of study to.

I’ve broken my own rules slightly for this one, because they have moved from GL1 to the nearby Christchurch Hall on Montpellier, and because I had only planned to spend a week looking. But, it’s okay that I broke the rules, because the whole experience was destined to be rather bizarre from beginning to end…

The rest of this post constitutes an open letter to the White Dragon Society. If you are a student or instructor with one of these schools, please leave your comments.

Training Times

I was especially keen to try Tai Chi, so even though I was disappointed to find the school had gone when I turned up to meet them at GL1 last Tuesday, it took only a little detective work to find The White Dragon Chinese Martial Arts website with class times and locations. There is a one hour Tai Chi lesson at 7pm every Monday at the new location, juxtaposed directly with the White Dragon Kung Fu lesson for the following hour. There are additional nights at other locations, though the nearest is Cheltenham and the others would involve a longer commute for additional one hour lessons further afield.

Lesson Structure

Having looked at the website, and read the Join Us page, I was expecting to be invited to join in for the advertised taster lesson, or perhaps to sit and watch if the subject matter for the lesson was aimed at advanced students only. My only experience with Chinese martial arts involved one year of learning the fundamentals of the relatively hard-style of Zhuan Shu Kuen Gung Fu as a student at University over 15 years ago, after which I took over the club as instructor for the following year and then handed over in turn to another black belt when I left. In the decades before and since, I have devoted my study mainly to the Japanese and Korean arts. Of course, much of my attraction to Tai Chi is that it is a total departure from the many hard styles I have studied until now, and that I’m keen to keep learning from as many different perspectives as possible.

Imagine my surprise then, when I was turned away!

Students and Instructor

I arrived ten minutes early after a brisk twenty minute walk across Gloucester, and talked with two other students who were also in plenty of time. They were quite friendly and interested in my previous experience, how I had learned of their school and such. At the stroke of 7pm, a lady with the key to the hall let herself and the three of us in, whereupon she challenged me with a curt: Can I help you?. I explained, exactly as I had to the other instructors I’ve spoken with this last week or so, that I had recently moved here, and was looking for a martial art in the area to study for health and fitness until I leave in the Autumn to spend the winter in the Philippines. She apologetically retorted that Oh, he won’t be interested in that!.

I was then treated to a handful of platitudes from the aging, unkempt, overweight presumed class instructor that “he wouldn’t waste his time teaching me if I wasn’t committed to 52 weeks training per year” (hmm, for just one hour per week? Hardly a commitment considering most martial arts I’ve been involved in over the years require four hours per week, and I routinely devote twice that amount of time); “we teach in a very traditional Chinese manner” (that implies forming family like bonds, no?); “this isn’t just a club, we are a society that has been around for over 300 years” (What!? With secret handshakes or something you mean?); “we don’t accept new students without an appointment, you should have booked through our website”. Well, I’ve since looked carefully through the website and it plainly invites potential students to turn up at one of the classes for a taster lesson. Very odd. What were they trying to hide I wonder? I can only imagine that the quality of instruction would be so suspect that the prospect of an experienced martial artist in the class was worrisome somehow…

By now, I already had no interest in trying to learn from someone so rude and close-minded, but I continue to be interested in Tai Chi none the less, so I asked, “Would it be alright for me to stay and watch the class?”.

“Why?“

“I’ve just walked all the way across Gloucester to meet you, I’m interested in Tai Chi, and hoped to at least watch a class before I leave.”

“No. We don’t allow anyone to watch the class.“

“Oh, that’s unusual. I really would like to watch…”

“Look, I’ve been doing this for 38 years, and you can’t stay!“

Curious then, that there are plainly two people (one with a video camera) obviously just watching in this photo from the White Dragon Pictures page…

I learned long ago that any martial artist who pulls rank by telling you how many years they have been training is really saying: “I’m better than you. Do as I say”. An attitude I have no time for. It is exactly this kind of parochialism that led to the divisive my kung fu is better than your kung fu arguments in the 70′s. Luckily most of us now live in a more enlightened age with a spirit of sharing knowledge for the benefit and development of all. I left quickly at that point, safe in the knowledge I had nothing to learn from this particular teacher, and that he was carefully protecting his existing students from coming into contact with the likes of me.

Style and Techniques

I can only point you at the White Dragon website, and hope that if you still wish to participate you might find the other classes to be less objectionable than the Gloucester class I hunted down. In all my years of training, this is the worst reception I’ve ever witnessed from any martial artist…

For any prospective future student of the martial arts, please don’t be put off if you are unlucky enough to start your journey with an encounter like this. In my experience the vast majority of instructors are thrilled at the opportunity to teach and learn from another keen martial artist, indeed I’ve been lucky enough to be invited to train with a Grand Master on the other side of the world, and been shown nothing but hospitality and humility irrespective of my rank and experience.

Related Articles

1. Week of Martial Arts

You might have noticed the gorgeous fighting fella’s icons I’ve been using for my Week of Martial Arts posts, reproduced below for your enjoyment:

Tae Kwon Do	Ninjutsu	Qi Shi Shaolin Kung Fu
Wing Chun	Muay Thai	Tai Chi

They were all drawn specifically for my blog by my incredibly talented other half, Octavia. You too can commission her to provide one-off custom icons, logos and banners for your website, by contacting her through Lunarian Art. Normally, she charges £30 (or $60) per hour for such work, but orders received between now and the end of April quoting “Azazil April 25% Discount” will only be billed at £22.50 (or $45) per hour. All six of these icons took 2 hours, so you could have a set of similar complexity and still have enough change from a £50 note to buy a couple of pints.