#71: Your Special Gift [Podcast + Video]

Welcome to Episode #71 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Your Special Gift.”

You never know when someone will change your life forever. You also don’t know when YOU will change someone else’s life forever!

Is it possible that that you are changing the world without even knowing it?

In this episode, let’s talk about how a life that you consider “ordinary” might actually be a special gift for someone around you.

A big THANK YOU to Sifu Tim of the TW Smith Martial Arts Center in Raleigh, NC for the inspiration on this one!

You can find an interview with Sifu Tim right here: Episode #59.

If you’d prefer to watch this podcast on video, I’ll meet you down below. 🙂

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Your Special Gift

Here’s the video! If it isn’t playing, try this direct link.

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #71 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

If you’re watching this on video right now, you’ll see that I’m standing in a park. And just a few seconds ago, a coyote passed through right over there. So this video might get a lot more exciting.

I had a totally different topic to talk about today, but I received a package in the mail, a gift, a special gift. I’d like to tell you who sent it, what it was, and why it means so much to me. Of course, that sounds a little self-indulgent, but I think the message might mean something to you too. So stick around. And don’t forget, there’s still a chance I’ll be eaten by a coyote. So you don’t want to miss that.

So here’s the story. You might already know that back in 2017, late in the year, November, I woke up and I couldn’t move my shoulders. I just had this burning pain. So of course, at first I thought, well, I’ll just give it a day or two, it’ll go away. That’s pretty normal if you’re a martial artist, right? Waking up with pain.

But it didn’t go away. So I thought, well, okay, I’m a little older now, I’ll give it a week or two. Still didn’t go away. I started modifying my training, trying to give it a break, icing, not icing, heat, whatever. It just didn’t go away.

So after a couple of months, by the time we got to February of 2018, I was pretty nervous. So I went to the doctors, got the tests, x-rays, MRIs, and I got the results. And the words that I remember from the report were arthrosis, tendinosis, capsulitis, and a bone spur. This pretty much crushed my soul, because of course, martial arts is not just my hobby, it’s my profession.

I love martial arts. I’m all in. And the doctor told me, when I asked him, like, Well, what does this mean? What am I going to do? He said, Well, you can’t do any push-ups, you can’t do any pull-ups, and really anything that pinches your shoulder closed is not good for you.

You mean like punching? You mean like framing?

Yeah, don’t do that stuff.

Well, that was nonsense, right? I mean, that just blew my mind. But I had the pain. So I started on this path to figure out how can I continue in the martial arts without throwing punches, doing push-ups or pull-ups. And it’s been quite a struggle during that time period. It was pretty dispiriting, I got to tell you. But I didn’t give up.

And I worked with certain teachers and kept doing a lot of research and a lot of experimenting and started trying to find different ways to throw punches and different ways to work out. I did end up losing a couple of pounds just because my workout changed so much. I even changed my diet, trying anti-inflammatory type of diet, that thing, that whole thing. And whatever.

The point is, as the months passed, I was still feeling pretty frail, pretty delicate, didn’t really want to use my arms that much. So I did more stances, more kicking– doing what I can is the point.

So let’s move forward six months in the story…

So by August of 2018, my wife and I took a vacation to North Carolina. We have some family there. And I happened to drop in to visit my friend, Sifu Tim Smith, who has a school right outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. His Kung Fu school is there.

Of course, you’ll know Sifu Tim. He’s been interviewed here on this show before, made some videos as well on the YouTube channel. So he’s a friend of the show. So I thought, Hey, is it all right if I drop in? I sent him an email. Is it all right? I’ll be in town. Can I drop in? He said, Of course, anytime. And so I did.

Now, keep in mind, he doesn’t know anything about how my training had been changing. He doesn’t know anything about my arthritis. He doesn’t know anything about anything. Well, he knows about Kung Fu, but he didn’t know about my situation, I should say.

So I visit the school, and he’s got a busy Saturday going on, everything’s hopping. And I’m just a happy guest participating in what I can and in the classes. And after the classes, we’re hanging out, and I see over by the wall, he’s got these wooden boxes with handles on them. And I just casually say, Oh, what are those? Those look cool. And he says, Oh, those are Mok Yee Pai. And I’m like, Come again? Mok Yee Pai?

Apparently, these are a traditional training tool in Tibetan Hop Gar Kung Fu. And I think it translates to something like “wooden ear plaques” because they look like ears. I’m going to show you in a second. Oh, there you go. Spoiler alert.

So I say, Well, what do you do with those? And he picks one up and swings it over his head like that. And immediately I’m thinking, Well, I’m not going to be doing that!

But you see the problem here, right? I’m a guest in his school. And of course I’m a dude. So there’s a certain amount of ego involved now because it’s not just us. He calls over one of his students and they both start swinging these boxes around. And I’m watching this in horror thinking, Oh God, what have I gotten myself into? I should have just shut my mouth. Now I’m going to end up swinging one of these boxes.

And of course I do. So I pick up one of the boxes and I’m– keep in mind, I have not worked my shoulder through a full range of motion in up to this point, nine months. I’m terrified of doing a pushup. I’m afraid my arms are going to break if I move them. So I pick up the box and I half-heartedly, with my arm bent, swing this box around. He’s like, Oh no– you got to let that thing really swing. Got to let it fly.

All right. I’m not showing any signs of weakness here. So, okay, sure. So I swing that thing over my head and I’m terrified. I’m literally thinking that my arm is going to rip off my body and fly across his kwoon. Of course, it didn’t, but I’m still pretty stiff because I’m afraid.

So anyway, I do my best. And he’s got his student there, and he’s there, and he’s demonstrating, and they’re all gung ho. They love this stuff. And so I swing one around. I start warming up a little bit and saying, Okay, here we go. And then he says, You’re doing pretty well. Let me get you the big mama. I believe that’s what he said, “the big mama”.

So sure enough, he goes over, and there are different sized boxes. There were smaller ones, maybe four or five pounds, then six or eight pounds, and then some 10 and 12 pounders. So he brings me over what he said was like the 12 pounder, I believe. So now I’m like, Oh my God, this has really gotten horrible. But sure enough, I wing this thing around my head.

Then he says, Let me show you exactly what to do. He showed me this little routine where you swing it up and around and you hold it, you swing it back the other way and you hold it, and you rip it up and you hold it one more time. So basically five revolutions through the shoulder, the full range of your shoulder, five revolutions counts as one rep.

Then he says the magic words, I believe, if I remember correctly, he said, 36 is the magic number. You have to do 36 on both sides. Now, he was meaning this as, Yeah, go ahead, try it right now. And I’m stuck. Yeah, I’m stuck. Students there, he’s there, watching. So, okay, here we go.

I start winging this thing around my head and Sifu Tim is being encouraging. He’s saying, Oh no, you gotta really let that thing fly. Let it go, go, go. And so I do.

Now, my thinking in this process is probably something you’ve encountered before. That’s the idea, like when you’re training, sometimes you’re so into it, you know you’re doing damage. Maybe it’s just a blister on your foot, or maybe it’s just some nagging wrist injury you’ve had, but you feel it being aggravated, and you have that choice to say, Well, do I wanna just back out right now? Or is there something worthwhile here that’s worth the pain and I’ll just deal with it later? And of course, the latter choice is the one I went with.

So I said, I’m going for it. I don’t know what’s gonna happen here, but I’m in it now, so go for it. So I wing these things around, both arms. I do my reps. I’m sweating, you know, it’s a heck of a workout. So in that sense, I had a good time. And I just thought, Well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. If it’s a surgery, it’s a surgery, whatever.

All right, so the next day comes. And you know what? There was no additional pain to what I had already been living with. This was not a difference. There was no difference. And my whole world changed. Now, I know that’s going to sound dramatic, and I mean it to, because it was dramatic.

I’m kind of an OCD guy. I train every day. I’m always trying to get better. And when I got that death sentence, being told that I can’t punch anymore, or push ups and pull ups, and I had to just really limit myself. I lost some weight. It was a real kick in the gut. To suddenly put my body through this ridiculous trauma, I mean, the universe seemed to say, Let’s do completely the opposite of what the doctor told you. Let’s do completely the opposite of what your fears are telling you to do. Let’s just swing this box around, 12 pound box, lots, and see what happens.

To find out that it worked out okay, was like a brand new life had begun. And immediately, now that I had broken through that fear, I incorporated pushups back into my workouts. I went back to doing some pull-ups, modified a couple of things just to see, to learn again, like, Okay, now that I’m gonna do these things, let’s do them maybe a little smarter than I had before. Then re-modified how I throw my punches.

So, all in all, it was perhaps one of the greatest training experiences of my entire life, because it’s opened up the second half of my life, now that I’m just about 49 this week. It’s given me a whole new license to not think of myself as being smaller and weaker and doing less and less. It’s actually opened up opportunities, because in my modifications of how I punch and how I train, I’ve had new techniques coming into my repertoire.

I’ve changed how I move, and I think it’s better. I actually think I’m punching and moving better than I ever have before. And I never would have discovered that if I hadn’t been hurt and then put myself in a situation where I was given another way of moving, a new challenge.

Now, what’s the lesson here?

The lesson here is what you do on an everyday basis, what you consider normal or ordinary, is actually something special, has the potential to be something life-changing to someone else. Sifu Tim had no idea that I was kind of down in the dumps about my training, or that I felt limited, or that I felt that my career was narrowing. He had no idea. I didn’t tell him that.

And on the other half, I wasn’t looking for some magic pill. I wasn’t looking for some magic tool that was going to help open up my world. It just happened. His ordinary routine, that training tool that he’s had sitting there for years, and they’ve been using for years, was no big deal to him.

To me, I didn’t know what I was looking at. I’m just asking casually, What’s that? And yet at that moment, BOOM– my whole life changed.

Now, when I realized– I should back up one second here, in those couple of weeks right after that, I came back to Los Angeles and I had had this kind of experience where I woke up and I was OK. I realized I could get going in my training again. And I was all pumped up.

I tried to find some Mok Yee Pai, but those, as you might imagine, are not very common. Yeah, they’re kind of like kettlebells, but they’re not quite the same. I wanted my own pair because now they meant something to me. So I sent a video of myself on my phone back to Sifu Tim to say, Hey, I’m still doing this routine. I really love this. This is a big deal to me. I’d found like a medicine ball with a handle on it. I had some dumbbells that I did it with.

He just texted back, Oh, well, I’ll have to make you a pair. And of course, you think, That’s just a nice thing to say. I said, Oh, don’t trouble yourself. That’s a kind thought. But that’s fine. I’ll take care of it. I’ll figure out something.

No, no, I didn’t figure out anything. I went to the hardware store. I thought, Oh, I’ll saw something. No, I never will. Oh, I’ll get some of that quick crete and maybe some gallon jugs. No, no, I’m not going to do any of that. It didn’t work out. I’m not that handy.

So nine months passed. This brings us up to the current date. Nine months from that event, from that late August/ September time period, passes. And I get a text from Sifu Tim, and it’s a tracking number for a package. And he says, They’re on their way.

What? Really? Is it possible? They’re on their way– so he sent me two, right? These are the Mok Yee Pai, the wooden ear plaques. And they’re gorgeous, right? I mean, I’ll just take a second to admire the craftsmanship here. You can see why these things take time.

This is just solid wood. It says JR Woodwims on the bottom, so perhaps he had a partner helping him out. But look at this thing. Solid, all wood. This thing’s about 10 pounds. I’m having a great time with it. I touch it every day because it means so much to me. I like to remind myself that I can still wing this thing around my head. And even when I’m not using it, I keep it in my living room.

All right. Now, that might sound nuts. Fortunately, because the craftsmanship is so nice, my wife doesn’t mind. So I put this right in my living room, so that every day as I’m walking through, I can look at it. And it reminds me, this has become like my talisman, to say–

Hey, don’t accept limitations. Keep pushing, keep looking, keep trying, keep experimenting, because you never know when the next breakthrough is going to come through.

And that’s my bigger message here for all of us. Your ordinary is someone else’s special. So, even no matter who you are, just being you and just doing what you do has the potential to change someone’s life. And I think that’s a beautiful message.

Now, sometimes, especially if you’re a good person, you might get caught up in thinking, like, I do want to help people. I want to change the world. And so then you think you have to create a plan and you have to hustle. You have to go after that goal. But in my experience, it’s usually the opposite that works out, right?

Especially when I was younger. I was a very arrogant teenager and 20-year-old plus. And I thought if I just went around giving people advice– Hey, you’re smoking. Stop that. Hey, here’s how you should eat. Hey, martial arts is awesome. Hey, you should work out more. Hey, you should do this. You should do that. I got advice. I can fix your life.

It was all positive, right? Just like I’m doing now. It’s positive to give people advice. However, you cannot predict what they’re thinking, what part of the journey they’re on. Most of the time, they’re not in a place where they appreciate your advice.

You probably know what I’m talking about here, right? You have a friend, they’re in trouble, they’ve got a problem. Maybe they’re even asking you for help and you give them information. You give them some resources– they don’t take it. Then you get frustrated, like, Come on! I told you, you can just do this or just do that. Why can’t you do this for yourself?

Well, it’s not personal, not on your side of it. It’s nothing you’ve done wrong. They’re just not ready for that information yet, or they’re not ready to take action on it. And it doesn’t matter what you do or what you say. Don’t feel bad about that. They’re on their own journey, you’re on yours.

Your job as a human being is just to keep taking your journey. Live the best life you can. At some point, that will become meaningful to someone else. You don’t know who it’s going to be, you don’t know when it’s going to be, but you have to have some faith that it’s going to be.

This reminds me of episode #56, I believe, A Religious Experience. That’s what it was called. You might recall I was having a pretty down day. What? I get depressed? You bet. And I just happened to be taking a hike, and on the road, someone before me had written some words into the dirt, actually some biblical things as well. And it meant a lot to me on that particular day.

I don’t get depressed that often, but on that particular day, those words, those messages, meant a great deal to me. I don’t know who wrote them. I don’t know why they wrote them. I don’t know how long those words were there. I don’t know if I imagined the whole thing. I can’t tell. All I know is that there was a sign to me that day. It seemed like a sign from the universe to keep going and doing what I’m doing.

Now, in that episode, that was the message, right? That you are a sign from the universe. And I’m repeating that same message, that you are a gift. You are a special gift to the people that are in your life, even people you don’t know, people who just see you once, who have an encounter with you. That’s an opportunity to have influenced them in a positive way.

So, this is what I want you to think about. Keep doing what you’re doing and keep being who you are. That’s number one. If you’re a student in the martial arts or a student of anything, then my message to you would be to keep going even when you get discouraged.

I get emails and comments from people all the time who say their school shut down, their teacher passed away or moved away, they don’t have money right now, they had to move locations, or they’ve had an injury, some type of setback, a family emergency… but that doesn’t mean you have to stop training.

You always have the ability to do something. And as long as you’re in the game, then you have the opportunity to have your life changed. You don’t know when that breakthrough is going to come through. But if you’re in the game, things happen. If you show up, if you put yourself out there, if you ask the question, things can happen.

The only way you lose in this game of life is if you’re not playing. If you decide to hide away and give up and do nothing, then it is very difficult for you to ever have a success, to ever stumble into a good opportunity, to ever see that dusty wooden box and say, What’s that? And then suddenly have your life changed unexpectedly.

So you’ve got to be in the game. And if you do want to be a teacher, if you do still feel that compulsion to share something like I do– like I said, when I was a younger person, didn’t have videos and podcasts like this. I couldn’t do this. So I just shot my mouth off everywhere, and it wasn’t very well received. If anything, people resented the advice. I think you probably know what I’m talking about.

But nowadays, I still feel that compulsion to just share. Maybe just for my own processing of information, just to work it through for myself. They say when you teach, you learn twice. So this is good for me, and I hope in some way it will be good for you too. But I don’t know.

I can’t predict who exactly is going to listen to this, or when in their life they’re going to hear it. All I can do, if you want to be a teacher, is put yourself out there. Again, be in the game. Share what you have, and just have a little bit of faith that at some point, someone is going to be positively influenced by it.

Even making this video right now, I know that the views will not be high. This is not exactly something that you can search for, or something maybe people even want to find. But I have faith that maybe one person, someone, will stumble across it at that moment in their life where maybe some part of it will mean something to them. That’s what you have to go on as a teacher.

I know for sure, if you’re a teacher, your heart breaks often. You go into class, you have 20 students, you give them everything you’ve got, you share your life, you share your experiences, you share your discoveries, you’re encouraging them and trying to motivate them, and you’re sweating, and you’re losing your voice.

How many times after that class do you think, It didn’t matter. Nobody cared, nobody asked a question. You’re pretty sure no one’s going to practice any of that stuff at home. They come back to the next class and they don’t seem to remember anything you just did or said. And that breaks your heart, because you feel like all of that effort was for nothing.

Well, most of it was for nothing, but not all of it! And that’s the part you have to have faith in. You just don’t know what’s going to stick and what’s going to be meaningful. You can’t predict it. You don’t know if maybe that night nobody said anything, but three months down the road, one of them had a memory of something you did or said, and then it made sense to them, or then it mattered to them. You don’t know.

So all you can do is just keep playing the game. That’s the message here. If you want to fight for a happy life, you have to fight for a happy life. If you want a happy life, you have to do the fighting. That means you have to be in the game. You only lose when you give up, when you stop.

It’s very unlikely if you’re just hanging out in your house all day, getting high, and doing nothing, that someone’s going to knock on your door and change your life. It’s possible, maybe, you’ll see a video that’ll change your life. In this day and age– you know what, I should correct that. The technology allows us to still influence each other, even if you’re not out there in the game.

Maybe I’m a little old fashioned in thinking like that. That you have to go outside of your home to interact with other people and to be influenced. So maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe you can stay home, give up on the game, do virtually nothing, and still find inspiration in something you just saw on TV or on the internet or heard in a podcast. So, okay, I stand corrected.

Whatever it is, be a searcher. Even if you’re sitting at home, be a searcher. Don’t give up on the game. Keep playing. I promise you, your ordinary is something special. And you may never know the influence you had on someone.

I can think of teachers that I had when I was a younger person, even now, that stick in my mind. And we’re talking, you know, 40 years ago. And I remember a certain teacher, the way he dressed. I was in a private Catholic school in my youth. And I know those people didn’t get paid much as I got older. And some of them would just wear terrible clothes and seem a little unkempt and not take a lot of pride in their appearance.

But one of those teachers always took care of himself. He only had a couple of different sport jackets, but he always wore a sport jacket. He wasn’t a rich person in any way, but he would always make sure his hair was clean, he had cologne, he wore a ring, he always wore his tie, perfectly tied. You could tell that he had self-respect.

That’s not the kind of thing that as a nine-year-old you remark upon. You don’t say, Hey, you know what? You really dress well and I see you have self-respect and I really like that. I think that’s something I’m going to keep with me for the rest of my life. You have no idea as a kid, but as I’ve gotten older, I always reflect on him.

He doesn’t know. He has no idea. Maybe I’ll look him up and try to tell him. But that teacher 40 years ago is still on my mind today and influenced me in a positive way. So just think about all the people that you’ve met, all the people that you’re meeting, and imagine the impression that you’re making on them.

You don’t have to be fancy about it. Like I said, just being you and just doing what you do is a gift. That’s your special gift. To the world.

Okay, that’s what I wanted to share. My thanks again to Sifu TW Smith for sharing this very special gift with me. Truly.

If this message meant something to you today, then great. If not, that’s okay too. Maybe 40 years from now, it’ll mean something. Either way, I hope you’ll consider sharing this podcast with someone you love. Maybe it’ll mean something to them.

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