New Year’s Resolutions | Silicon Valley Shotokan Karate

New Year’s Resolutions

Resolution: noun. The state or quality of being resolute; firm determination. A resolve to do something. (American Heritage Dictionary)

January is the time of year when many people set (or reset) some long-term goals. Very common New Year’s resolutions include such things as “getting in shape”; something that many people new to karate training often have in mind when they begin their training. But how many of us are in as good shape as we would like to be? Some of us talk a good story. However, to actually put forth the required energy is sometimes too much for some of us to do on a regular basis. Making a firm commitment to reach a goal is usually more conducive to it actually happening than leaving it simply to luck.

There are plenty of other good New Year’s resolutions. I have been making resolutions for a long time, sometimes around New Year’s. The big difference from many other people’s, however, is that mine often include no deadline. Most people set a deadline, such as “by the summer” or “by the end of the year”, for the objectives they set at the beginning of each year. My idea of goal setting bugs my wife quite a bit. She is one of the most organized people I know, with very strict deadlines on all her projects. So she tends to lose confidence in me getting something done if I have been talking about it for 5 years. It may still be on my to-do list, but it is simply not the highest priority.

Well, this year I am going to try to set some deadlines. Here are some of my karate goals for this year, a few of which had already been planned for a while, along with corresponding timelines:
• Move dojo location to a larger and better space: February (already scheduled)
• Increase dojo class time to 9 hours/week from present 8 hours/week: June
• Double existing dojo membership: Fall
• Increase teaching responsibilities of other dojo instructors and increase my own training time: beginning in February
• Update my website (www.jkasv.com), getting rid of bad links, etc: April
• Update website (www.tokaidojapan.com) with more pictures, more automation, more products and just plain “more”: ongoing, with various embedded mini-goals
• Get more than 6 hours of sleep at night: whenever I can

Most importantly, I have set goals for myself regarding getting together with fellow karateka, particularly those who have trained in Japan, and finishing the book project that has been on hold for over 5 years. For updates on the Hoitsugan Seminars, please see the following link: http://www.jkasv.com/hoitsuganseminars.html

This will be the greatest gathering of western Shotokan instructors thus far in history. Over a dozen instructors teaching a total of as many as 20 seminars. Some of these instructors are among the very best in the world. Some are coming from overseas. Organizing this event is already proving to be a major endeavor. But it is going to be worth it. In addition to the seminars, those who trained at the Hoitsugan Dojo in Tokyo in the past will be meeting several times to talk about old times, catch up with each other on more recent events and discuss the book project, which I hope to have completed by the end of the year.

Maybe another resolution should be to stop writing these articles. What do you think? Maybe my time would be better-spent doing other things? I get an average of about 400 hits/day on my website and a large majority of these are likely the articles. Do I already have enough up there? Is there really a need for one each month, or would reducing to quarterly articles be sufficient? Please feel free to write to me and let me know what you think.