Sensei's Weekly Mokuso Aug 28- Sept 2nd

Onegaishimasu Parents, and Students,

For most of us, this is our last week to help prepare your children for back to school. While some of our luckier students have already started school and that is FANTASTIC!! Our mission here is to help you make this year, your child’s BEST YEAR EVER in school, home and life.

We will be sharing tips and tricks to help you make sure your child gets off to a huge head start.

Over the past few weeks we have been really ramping up our program in preparation for your child's return to school. We are now going to move to the next phase of preparing your child….

You may notice we skipped review week, and indeed we did.

One of the most powerful things we can do for our students is teach them to become a Black Belt Learner. The essential elements to this are FOCUS and SELF CONTROL, TRYING THEIR BEST, WORKING HARD all the time, and NEVER GIVING UP!

We want our students to show up in every single minute of their lives, at school, karate, home.....everything they do, and not just when they “FEEL” like it. While review weeks can be helpful in the early phases of training, over the long term they can foster a mentality of “ I don’t have to try all the time…I can just study, or try right before a test and pass”. We believe this only teaches our children to “take a test” and doesn’t teach proper character, technical skills, or proper success habits…IT ISN”T LEARNING!!

Here’s something else…..Don’t tell the kids but we intentionally make the material they learn too hard, or expect them to learn it too fast on PURPOSE! We want to help you create more “good" stress in their lives. Those stresses are boredom , hardship and failure. With the belt stripe test we want to repeatedly create the stress of “This is too hard!” and “I can’t do this!” and “I want to quit!” because every time they get these intense emotions and feelings then power through them they get stronger in character, mind, and body.

The more often they do this the quicker they develop one of the most essential character traits for success - GRIT. Grit is persistence and perseverance. The ability to stick with something no matter how long it takes or how many times they get knocked down. When everything comes too quick and easy they never develop Grit. If they never have to work hard or struggle for something they never develop Grit. Character can only be learned by “doing”!

At the next level, Grit steps up to become DISCIPLINE. Highly disciplined people make life look so easy. If you want to know the critical element for success it is discipline and the ability to delay gratification.

Discipline is simply the ability to do things you do not want to do while delayed gratification is the ability to wait for something harder or more important later over something that is easier or more pleasant right now.

Have an amazing week!

Sensei

Keiko Karate – “Actually we do make Ninjas and Superheroes here………………we turn kids into Ninjas and we turn their parents into their superheroes!”