The energy that each and every person brings in to the dojo is important. When you enter the room…..the feeling that you are holding inside of yourself comes with you. Then- when that feeling is translated into the things that you say, the look on your face, and the effort that you impart throughout the class, this same energy is then transferred to others awareness and hence is passed on to others psyche.
Each individual is then responsible for their part in everyone else’s training session. It is your duty to ensure that you bring the best energy you can to a class. It’s okay to have a bad day and we all have them, and the dojo can be a great place for turning around your mood and mental state. What is critical in this process however is the ‘desire’ to want to improve. Coming to class in a bad mood and just wanting to ‘vent’ but not change your outlook is destructive for all. Inversely, coming to class with a passion to feel and do better is inspiring.
Imagine that there are two large glass Jars at the front of the dojo. One jar is labelled positivity, and the other is labelled negativity. Each time you walk in the door, you have to place the physical manifestation of your current mental state (we shall call this a mood token) into the appropriately labelled jar, and then take out another token which is your ticket to class- perhaps one that someone else has deposited.
At the commencement of the session, the instructor will collect each person’s mood token and then throw them all up in the air and this creates the feeling of the session. Everything is decided by those mood tokens down to what happens in class, whether or not everyone trains hard, does well, improves and learns, or the opposite that the energy is low……people are lazy and uninspired, quick to give up on something or Someone gets injured etc.
It would then be advantageous if everyone who was positive- still took out a positive token from someone else. Those feeling negative…. should place their negative tokens in the jar to stay… and take out a positive one in replace. They should borrow someone’s positivity and use it to make their own.
So how does this very simplistic version of events explain a very complex topic ? It probably doesn’t as I’m no quantum physicist. However, a simple real life example might be this :
***Person A and Person B***
Person A walks into the dojo and greets person B. Person A isn’t feeling great today (they have a list of reasons why including running late for work in the morning, their stupid boss, kids, car broken down etc etc) Person B replies……”oh no. What a day huh. You know that sucks but lucky you’re here. You can train hard and forget about all of that. My day’s been pretty crappy too….let’s go hit the bag and take out some stress. Nothing fixes a bad day like a good session huh!”. By doing this, person B just put in a positive token for person a to take for the class. Person A should take it!
Compare this to the alternative where person B replies instead “Oh no. That sucks. Man I’ve had the worst day too. Why is everything so hard. You know… I don’t even know why I came tonight. I guess I’ll just see how I go.” Now there’s only negative tokens avail for choosing.
I know what your’e going to say. What about person C or D….Well that’s just it. We are now relying on them to input positive tokens or what’s going to happen to the jars and the tokens available for choosing ?
Again, I know this is extremely simplistic. Most things however, are actually quite simple in nature. They are just difficlut to do unless you are being aware of your thoughts, your words and how this affects not only yourself but everyone around you.
The dojo is your community and home away from home. You should always feel safe there and sure…. vent away. Sometimes it’s you… sometimes it’s your teammate. Just when you do need to vent, be aware of the positivity handed to you and take it. Inspire others. If someone downloads their woes on you – don’t take it on board. Listen- re-direct and help them lift their spirits. Raise people up don’t give them a hand down.
What sort of energy are your bringing with you today?