#89: Living in a Lockdown [Video + Podcast]

Welcome to Episode #89 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Living in a Lockdown.”

The Covid-19 lockdown has changed all of our lives… but is it possible that it might be for the better?

My old routine and training habits have been shattered over the last 6 months, but I’ve been happily surprised at how many new ways I can still make progress. And if I can keep going, so can you!

Let me share a few thoughts that might help you make the most of our new reality, too. Because like it or not, life is going to keep changing even after this lockdown is over!

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Living in a Lockdown

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TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, and welcome to Episode #89 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Ando here, and I’m coming to you today from my couch. Yes, the couch. Mission control during this COVID-19 lockdown.

Are you having a lockdown right now? Has your life been changed? Has your routine been shattered? Of course.

Now, let me say right up front, if you have experienced a loss in your family or have suffered illness, that is the number one tragedy, so I don’t want to lose that context. Health and safety is always number one. Beneath that, let’s talk about the horrors of a lockdown.

Here, I’m living in Los Angeles, California, and we are now over six months in this lockdown. That means no going to the gym, no fitness centers, and no martial arts schools. As you probably know, I’ve even had to shut down one of my own martial arts schools. I have friends who have shut down their martial arts schools. To be a martial artist in today’s world, particularly as a business owner, is very dark, is very difficult.

But let me take it a step farther, because not only have I lost a school, and have lost my access to other people’s schools to go train and learn. Here in Los Angeles over the last few weeks, we’ve also had a number of wildfires. Okay, so not only can’t I go to a school to train or to the gym and train, I can’t really go outside and train. The air quality here, to some degree or another, over the last three weeks has been unhealthy. So that means more limitations.

Can’t go to a place, can’t go to the park, can’t go into the driveway, have to stay inside. Okay, so that’s two layers of lockdown. Let me give you one more.

When I’m inside, I also have to deal with being older. I have a couple of injuries that I’ve been battling over the last couple of months. Tendonitis in the hands and arthritis in my feet. I’ve seen a doctor. I’ll get these things taken care of. Don’t you worry, I’ll be back better than ever. Which is really my point today.

This COVID-19 lockdown has changed your life, I am sure, and definitely mine more than anything I could have imagined. Who saw this coming? Not only has my daily routine been broken up, but my progress has been broken up.

Now, this is a really important point. I have not been able to make progress in the channels that I am used to making progress. Partner practice, training in multiple styles, teaching in person, being able to touch someone and feeling how they touch me, interaction, impact, so many ways that were my chief training tools that have been taken away, right? Restrictions, limitations, progress, halted.

Now, for some people, that might be the end of the story. I hope that’s not you. Because it is also true over these last six months, I’ve made more progress than ever. Yeah, I’m actually very excited about how I’ve been changing during these months. I have not been able to make progress in my normal channels, but because we’ve been forced to shift how we train, I’ve been able to put far more time into my individual training.

I believe martial arts has two facets, two goals. One is self-control, and the other is controlling someone else, particularly a bad guy, someone out of control. So when you have the chance to train with other people, fantastic. But there is a downside to it, sometimes.

Of course, I always want to train with a partner when I can, but maybe to a fault, because sometimes I’d get a new idea, I’d get a new concept, a teacher would suggest something to me, maybe the way you breathe or how you move your body or how you visualize something, a new way to posture. And you work on that stuff alone, and then try to bring it back to your partner training. Right?

But if you’re always partner training, it’s very difficult to implement new habits and new feelings, because, let’s say I come home and I work on this new trick, this new skill, this new concept in my self-control and now I want to go test it out and I bring it into the partner practice. But during the partner practice, my ego gets woken up. I get hurt a little bit. Something changes my mind and I revert to old habits. I’m not able to shift in the new stuff because it’s not quite ready yet. It’s still in development. So I fall back on old habits that I know will still make me look good and feel successful, so that I feel like I’m still a great martial artist.

But during this lockdown, since partner practice is not possible, and since there is no distraction from other people, I’ve only had time to work on the first goal, the first facet: self-control, my breathing, my awareness, pain tolerance, posture, muscle control, visualizations, coordination. There’s a huge list of qualities that you and I can work on without partners.

I’ll say again, as a martial artist, I don’t believe you can only do these things. But what I am saying is, since I’ve been forced to only train the last six months by myself, I’ve become more and more grateful for this time, because I can feel that I am changing as an animal. I am changing the way I use my body, the way I breathe, my sensitivity, all the things I just listed. These are the things I’m working on. And I didn’t really have enough time to go as deeply as I did before this COVID lockdown. So for that, I’m grateful.

I’m here to tell you that even though I feel, at times, triple lockdown, locked down by the government that I can’t go out, can’t run a business, can’t teach or learn under someone else, locked down by the fires that I can’t go outside, can’t swing a staff around, can’t run out and just into the streets, and trapped within my own body that I can’t make a fist– it’s been a couple months I haven’t been able to make a fist and can’t put full weight on one of my feet– even with triple layers of limitations, I’m still very grateful for what I have been working on. And I feel that I’m getting way ahead of where I was.

I tell you, I have full faith that when restrictions are lifted in my body, outside, and back in the world, that I’m going to come back better than ever. I believe I have sharpened some tools beyond what I ever would have if it hadn’t been for this lockdown. Which also got me thinking, okay, we are all going through some type of lockdown during this time. And it’s easy to focus on the bad, the negatives, what we can’t do, what we don’t have access to anymore. Of course.

But let’s not lose sight of the good that’s coming out of this lockdown. I already told you that I feel that I’m progressing. I was limited. I figured, what can I work on? I’m working on that stuff. And I’m growing. So no complaints yet. I’m happy.

But it got me thinking that even before this COVID-19 lockdown, you and I, maybe everyone, we were already living within a lockdown of one kind or another. We were already self-limiting. There were already restrictions on our progress.

Maybe you thought a course that you wanted to take was too much money. So you limited yourself financially.

Maybe you wanted to ask a question of a teacher. And you thought, well, maybe next week, I don’t want to bug him. I’m not worth his time. And now you’ve lost that opportunity to talk to them all together.

Maybe you wanted to try a class in another state or take a trip to a school and do a seminar someplace. But you didn’t say, well, I’ll get to it later. I don’t have time for that right now.

Maybe you’ve been meaning to up your training, but you feel like you’re a little too old or too out of shape. You see where I’m going here?

We, even when we have full freedom, a fully functioning body and full access to the world, good air, still find ways to limit ourselves, restrict ourselves. And I don’t mean in a negative way, like we’re bad people. It’s just natural. We have to set some limitations on ourselves so we can choose what we want to do. So we can make some steps towards some goal. I can’t just do everything every day. You have to set limitations of some kind.

So here’s the other good part about the lockdown or any lockdown– it forces you to purify. That’s the word that’s in my head right now. Purify.

So consider coal and diamonds. Coal is dirty and lots of it. If you start crushing it and you limit its space, compress it, you put pressure on it, it seems like it’s going to get gritty and ugly and dirty, and it is. But if you keep crushing its spirit, if you keep crushing coal’s space, you keep confining it into a smaller and smaller spot, what emerges? A diamond. Something beautiful, something shining, something valuable came out of all of that. All of that coal, under pressure, under limitations, purified into something valuable.

If you’re not into jewelry, I’m not– maple syrup. You go out and you collect gallons and gallons and gallons of tree sap, and then what? You put it into a giant kettle, you turn up the heat, and what happens? You take away, you take away moisture, you take away, you take away. And very slowly, over time, it all gets smaller and smaller into a smaller quantity of maple syrup. And now it’s more pure, it’s more potent, it’s sweet, it’s valuable.

Consider that you are in that same process right now. Your life is coal, your life is tree sap. No offense. And now the pressure is on. And you physically, almost literally, are being compressed into a smaller and smaller space, six feet away from any other human being, inside a mask, inside your body, inside your house, on a couch, smaller and smaller, crushed, crushed, less and less access to what the world has to offer.

Now what’s the result of this? You have a choice to emerge from all of that pressure as either something valuable and sparkling, or as something broken, dirty, and just a mess, invaluable. I hope that you are using this time, or that starting now you can find a better way to use this time to purify yourself, to boil yourself down to that sweet essence of you.

What do you believe in? This time period is definitely helpful to start sifting through the mess of your daily routine, to start figuring out what is actually important to you.

What is good? What is bad? What is worth fighting for? What is not worth your time? What’s worth your money, and your energy, and your enthusiasm? What is absolutely not?

As you go through these questions, whether they’re coming to you because just circumstances are forcing you to make decisions, or you’re reflecting on your own, I do believe that during this lockdown, you can clean up your life in a way that has never happened before. At least for me.

You are forced to question and forced to answer, and then you have a map. All of those answers to those big questions are now the map that you’re going to need, so that when these limitations are lifted and the restrictions are gone, you will know exactly where to go, exactly what to do, and exactly who you want to spend your time with.

That makes sense, right? Use this time to purify and then plan.

I also think of it, if you can stand another metaphor, another example, in poetry terms, the haiku, at least the way I remember it. The haiku was a form of poetry where you are severely limited to the amount of words or syllables. The most popular one that I remember I think was 5-7-5.

You have to write a poem, that’s the assignment, where the first line is only five syllables in English, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables for the third line. So you’re limited to three lines and five, seven, five syllables.

Now, I remember when I first got that type of assignment back in school, and you feel like you’re going to go nuts because I want more than three lines. I want more than, what’s the math on that? Seventeen syllables. I’m not a math guy.

It feels so confining, so restrictive. How can I create anything? How can I express myself with so few syllables, so few words? And then what happens? Well, if you hang in there, you get creative. You take your time. You think about it a little bit.

Well, which words are the most important? What are you really trying to say? You boil down your expression to its most potent essence. You find the most valuable words to use to get your point across, to create the feeling that you’re trying to evoke. And if you haven’t looked into haiku before, go do it.

It’s amazing how many people have created almost like full length books from just those few syllables, created images, something haunting, something humorous, something a little evocative. You think, Well, that’s really great. I love the way you put those words together there. It’s just another example, my point, of how limitations are not necessarily limiting. Ooh, that’s a good one–

Limitations are not necessarily limiting. It depends on how you react to the limitations.

If you see it as being sentenced and confined and beaten down, well, then you’re going to act like that. And you’re not going to create very much. You’re not going to do very much. If you see it as an opportunity to bring out your best stuff and to get clever and to get creative, then this could be the best time of your life.

Let’s relate it to martial arts directly. When you’re a beginner in martial arts, pretty much any physical threat to you, someone punching you, or kicking you, or pinning you on the ground, or putting their hands on your throat, is a major restriction, right? You don’t want someone’s hands on your throat.

So someone says, OK, we’re going to do choke defense tonight. Put their hands on your throat. That’s a heck of a first night. When you feel the hands on your throat for the first time, you pretty much, like most human beings, focus on what you can’t do, what you just lost.

I can’t breathe. This hurts. I can’t move. I can’t step away. I don’t know what to do.

But what happens? As you learn through your teacher or through your experience and your practice, you find out you can move a lot of your body. You can find out you don’t need that much oxygen right now. You find out there are thousands of ways to begin an escape, to survive a choke.

And at an advanced level, what’s interesting is a lot of those escapes and a lot of those techniques that you discover are largely hidden to other people. If you’ve ever watched a really great master sparring or rolling, or you’ve worked with them, you might find yourself tapping and have no idea how that happened. Maybe you recognize, Oh, that’s an arm bar, but I didn’t see how you got that.

Or from striking standpoint, same thing. You get hit and you never even saw the foot. How did that foot get all the way up here to my face right in front of me and I didn’t even see it? That’s the beauty, I believe, of this pressure cooker that we’re living in, of this lockdown.

Within these limitations, the more you challenge yourself to keep creating, keep going, keep trying to be clever, work within those limitations, you find out that it actually expands. Your possibilities are much richer than you thought they were. And that is the ultimate message today.

I didn’t feel that way in the first month, but after six months, and with this triple layer of restrictions on me, poor me, I still feel freer than ever. I feel that I don’t need to go to class all the time. I feel like I don’t need my body at 100% all the time. I don’t have to go outside today.

So within what I can access, I find that there’s so much more that I wasn’t aware of. There’s so much more that I wasn’t using. I had so much more that I didn’t realize until I was forced to look within.

And that’s my challenge to you too…

Whatever the time period is that you read this, whether you are under a lockdown or not, whether there’s a moratorium on martial arts, or you’re trapped inside of an injury, or you’re trapped inside of a financial burden, you’re crushed under the weight of some family duty, whatever your circumstances, whatever that lump of coal is that you are carrying around, please remember, if you focus on your creativity, if you focus on your cleverness, if you just keep coming back to it with an open mind and a true motivation to keep moving forward, you will find a way to do it. You absolutely will.

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that I’m not allowed to spar with anyone, roll with anyone, physically teach anyone for six months, if you had told me at the beginning of the year that I was going to be triple restricted, but by the end of this year, you’re going to be maybe more proud of yourself than ever, that you will have made deeper progress than you ever thought you would in certain areas of your life. I would have thought you were crazy.

I would have thought, Well, there’s no way. I would have already been panicking, No, please! What do you mean I can’t go back to class? What do you mean I can’t teach? What do you mean I can’t have a school?

I would have thought that was nuts because that’s my routine. I was so blinded by what I was doing because it was good that it never occurred to me that it could be good a different way too. That’s not the only way to learn. And the things that you’re learning aren’t the only things to learn. There’s a whole mountain of material over here. And I’m just so grateful that I’ve had time to climb this mountain and start taking a view around to sites I never thought I’d see before. And I hope you can do that too.

If you’ve already been on that path, keep going. We will both emerge from this lockdown better than ever. If you’re still in a place that feels dark and bitter and resentful of all of these restrictions and limitations, you’re not alone, if that makes you feel any better. But please don’t give up.

Trust yourself to find a way to keep going. Pick anything and just start working on it within the limitations that you have.

Spoiler alert: it’s never going to change. Even when you’re allowed to go anywhere you want, eat anywhere you want, talk to anybody you want, there are still going to be restrictions.

Because of your finances, because of your time, because of your health, we are born with restrictions. We are born in a lockdown. You were born knowing that you’re going to die at some point. You were born with no guarantees on your health. Any moment, you could have a stroke and be paralyzed. You could have a heart attack and just die. So many ways, you could get hit by a car, slip, hit your head.

Always living under a restriction. Always under a lockdown. And look how far you’ve come already. So keep it going. Nothing has actually changed. That’s a big concept for you.

I’ve lost a school, can’t go outside, it’s smoky. Can’t visit my friends, can’t train with my training partners. Yeah, but I’m still alive. I’m still moving forward. And so are you.

So my friend, focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have. Focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do.

I’m still making progress. I’m still experiencing breakthroughs. I feel I’m increasing my value more than ever. How about you?

All right, that’s enough for me. I do believe it’s time to have a little piece of pie and a little nappy pie. I hope you’ll treat yourself well today, and I hope you’ll keep finding what’s valuable to you and polish it.

Until I see you next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.