We Become What We Think About

"Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you create your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny — shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences — over time. There's no such thing as an unimportant day."

— Robin Sharma, The Greatness Guide

I've been reading up on the Law of Attraction, and I came across a new website, book, and CD collection called "The Secret." The movie clip on the website seems to be a kind of hokey combination of "The DaVinci Code + The History Channel + Oprah." And yet, there's something to the concept that's worth investigating: We attract the things we focus on into our lives. Okay, I admit it: I downloaded and watched the 20-minute excerpt from the film from Google Video, and I've been listening to the CD collection in my car during my commute to an from work. It's not the first time I've come across this concept, but in this format, the message that our thoughts become things seems to be sinking in for me.

So now, more than ever, I'm watching my thoughts, consciously directing my intentions, and doing my best to focus my attention on the things I want — and not on what I don't want. I'm "acting as if" and visualizing my goals as complete or coming to pass effortlessly. I'm paying more attention to coincidences, and listening to my gut. This practice aligns with everything I know about meditation, visualization, and the power of positive thinking. Easy to talk about, difficult to do, but my attitude has improved tremendously in just the last few days. Hey, that's gotta be worth something!

And speaking of coincidences, just this week I was contacted "out of the blue" by a non-profit organization called Conscious Consuming. They're an organization that seeks to increase awareness of sustainable consumption, and encourages people to live in line with their values by better prioritizing time, money, and material things. Exactly the kinds of things I've been focusing on lately!

Interestingly, though, the woman who contacted me said she did so because she found that her organization's message really resonates with people in the yoga community. (She had found the link to the yoga studio that shares our dojo space.) Now, I have healthy respect and strong admiration for yoga, but why doesn’t this message also resonate in the martial arts community? The masters of the martial arts — Funakoshi, Kano, Ueshiba, and others — taught that beyond the practical and the obvious, that the true aim of the martial arts is the perfection of character, the betterment of society, the fulfillment of what is lacking.

The martial arts, like yoga, link the body, the mind, the breath, and the spirit. The martial arts, like yoga, preach respect, compassion, gratitude, and other positive values. The martial arts, like yoga, can be a powerful vehicle for self-expression and self-discovery. So if the budo — the martial ways — are truly a path to enlightenment, then martial artists need to start taking more enlightened, responsible, compassionate actions! Since we don't have another planet lying around, isn't environmentalism and sustainable consumption “the ultimate form of self-defense?”