Escaping Death - Geoff Thompson

MaeveD

This is one of the best articles I've ever read on what we do.... I did my once a year waking up grumpy this morning, and this has cheered me right up.... thanks Geoff

Escaping Death

When I fist started training in the martial arts, nearly forty years ago, I used to look at my heroes - Terry O’Neill, Bruce Lee, Frank Brennan, Chuck Norris – and wonder, ‘how did they get to be so good?’ Working locally at the time with local instructors in small local community halls (with cold wooden dojo floors) I trained with good people, dedicated people, but they rarely met the standard of those who graced the covers of our MA magazines. There was a difference in class, and that difference was startling, so much so that it was easy to believe there was an ‘us’ and there was a ‘them’ and that never would it be possible for the twain to meet. I always half believed that I – and everyone I knew personally – fell into the ‘us’ category, and the ‘them’ (people like Dave Hazard and Bob Poynton) were special, ordained to greatness, the naturals. I say half believed, because there was another part of me, the cheeky, strongly intuitive part, that knew this was bollocks, secretly I was aware that greatness was for everyone. I just wasn’t brave enough at the time to say it out loud. If you had foresight and individuality and could muster the daring-do to work like a steel fixer and invest like a city trader, all things were possible.

I knew that to be magnificent you had to strive and dare to become magnificent.
I wasn’t entirely sure at the time exactly how or why these legends entered the hallowed halls, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it had a lot to do with massive industry, and more still to do with finding piss-excellent instruction.

Later, when I had the pleasure of becoming friends with many of my heroes these suspicions were confirmed; what separated the local from the national, the national from the global and the world class from the ‘class all of their own’ was not that they were different, or even that they were natural – most of the naturals I knew bailed out very early – rather it was that they took their passion and they made it their raison detre, their very reason for existing. Dave Hazard would be the first person to tell you that he was no natural, his hammer-in-the-head delivery is all earned. And people like Australia’s BJJ supremo John B Will spent all his savings and invested all his hours into his own development and travelled the world to learn from the best. Rick Young was putting professional hours into his art while he was still working as a postman in Edinburgh Scotland, and every penny he pursed was spent on matt-time under esteemed masters - he was training with the Gracies and the Machados when they were still working out of their back garage in Los Angelis, California, and largely unknown to the outside world. And Dan Inosanto became a seminal martial artist by investing his very soul into in the pursuit of excellence.

Do you think that these people are different from you?

They are not. I know them, I have watched their ascent, in many cases I have been a part of their story and I have the pleasure of calling many of them friend. So I know categorically and without question that they are ordinary people who have chosen to live extraordinary lives. And what they will tell you, and what I will tell you, is that excellence is a choice, it is not a lottery. No matter who you are, no matter what your circumstance, no matter where you live, you can become magnificent, not simply by choosing magnificence, but by choosing and then investing the time, the money and the personal sacrifice it takes to sculpt the absolutely marvellous from the boringly mundane.

Ian Dury said that the best way to escape death was by becoming magnificent.

How exciting, the prospect of mastering yourself. Now that is worth getting up in the morning for. But he didn’t say that you became immortal by being safe, or by not investing in yourself, or by courting insanity by doing the same thing year in year out and expecting different results.

When I was anonymous, a young aspirant sweeping ****ty floors in dreary factories I dreamed of living gloriously and I was almost certain that if I swapped my broom for a gi, and practiced technique on the mat for eight hours a day instead of herding dust I could be outstanding. How (I reasoned) could I not. If I practiced guitar for eight hours a day, or if I hit the bag as my employ, or if I worked at my writing craft from 8 till 4, how the **** could I not excel? How could I not perfect any art if I am industrious and if I invest in escalating instruction? It would be bloody hard not to become brilliant, you would be surrounded by magnificence, you’d be tripping over the stuff. Can you imagine how good you’d get at (anything) if you practiced diligently three times a day?

That is what massively inspired me, and still inspires me to this day, the thought that I could be great at something if I loved it enough to give my life over to it.

And of course I did, and I have used the same principle in many areas of my life, from MA to door work right thought to screenwriting - and it always works.

I can remember running down the road, rain, hail and shine, at six in the AM and smiling and smiling and smiling at the realisation that this was my job. Can you even imagine how exciting that is? It was my work. It was what I did for a living. And when I trained full time at judo under the auspices of Olympian Neil Adams, that was my employ, it was my investment in me, in my art, in my personal development – I was even allowed to claim the cost of my five judo suits (when you are training two to three times a day, you need five suits) against my tax. And when I was having tea with Chuck Norris in Las Vegas Nevada after teaching for him at his invitation, and we got talking about the time he used to spar with Bruce Lee, I remember thinking ‘I am at my work – this is my wonderful employ.’

How splendid is that?

I have to tell you that being this free is exhilarating, and just the pursuit of this level of magnificence is magnificence its self.

The process is very simple, even if the actual doing of it is not.

Put in the work. More than anyone else. More than seems reasonable to a reasonable man. Invest what you earn into your own personal growth (Red Bull invests a third of all revenue into their own development), build a private library, it will become a personal armoury - purchase the very best that money can buy; it’s an investment that will return to you ten fold. And stop making excuses as to why you can’t find the time, afford the fees, or get the permissions. Move heaven and earth to make the conditions right. Listen, the world does not care about your excuses. It cares (as Billy Connolly might say) not a jot. Believe me when I tell you that the minutes, hours and days will be abundant when you are fully committed, time and space will bend its self to a will that is infused with certainty. If money (or lack of it) is the problem, then making more money is the solution; Rick Young posted letters to pay his fees, I swept floors, Chuck Norris made the tea on film sets; when you want something badly enough you will work like a demon to make the money, or you will work like ten demons to make the extra, but one way or another you will make the money shape. And if you don’t, if you can’t, then perhaps you don’t want it enough, because when you want it like a drowning man wants air, nothing will get in your way.
When you lack the first means to make a desirable end the universe is speaking to you, it is asking ‘how much do you really want this?’

When the Maharashi decided that he was going to take his Transcendental Meditation to the whole world his advisor warned him about the enormous fiscal cost, ‘where will you get the money?’ he asked. The Maharashi said, ‘I will get the money from where ever it is now.’ And he did.

Hermes wrote seven immutable laws, and one of them was this; what you give out will return. If you practice recreationally you will get recreational results. If you throw out a weekend script, don’t be too disappointed when the Hollywood elite ask you to leave your number in the bin. And when you invest more time in the telly that you do in your own expansion don’t be surprised when your standard plateaus out at ordinary.

I have found that when we are looking for reasons to abort, a million good uns will present themselves at your behest, but when you are certain – and the power is always with certainty – excuses will find no purchase.

Be well.
Geoff Thompson

poconnor16

That was excellent - so well written and applicable to all arts. Applicable to anyone really who needs motivation. Think I'll take that with me to training tonight.