Ninja Reflection

Every year, I take time to sit back and reflect on the past year’s accomplishments, lessons learned and what didn’t go as planned. Now it this takes a bit of time, but this reflection allows me to look forward to setting new goals and objectives for the upcoming year. Now with 2014 here, I am just starting this process again and thought I would share this with all of you as a lesson to help improve your training and potentially your life in many areas.

Reflection Process

Tools: Notebook, pen/pencil, audio recorder anything to keep track of your thoughts, Goals from previous year, highlighters.

Step 1) Review your previous year goals, write them in your notebook and briefly describe what you have done to complete them, and if you did complete them Highlight it at the top.

Step 2) Review any other accomplishments that occurred during the year. Many of these can occur without planning but almost all of them will take away from time that you were planning on using for Goal achievement.

Step 3) Review any lessons you might have learned throughout the previous year. This could be anything you learned along the way, and might be tid bits of advice, actual skills, things not to do or try again etc.

Step 4) For each goal you did not achieve, write down WHY you didn’t achieve it. Trust me this can be painful as you might be opening a can of emotions you didn’t want to deal with, but the why is important, especially as you start to create your life plan for next year. (Do you like the” Life Plan” I use this to keep my goals all encompassing.

Step 5) Did you miss anything? Take a few minutes and read what you have put down, the good the bad and ugly. Just because you didn’t achieve something doesn’t mean you didn’t accomplish something during the process of attempting a goal. Of course you learned that maybe it wasn’t a goal you wanted to achieve, or your love of candy outweighs your goal of losing weight, but you did learn something.

Step 6) Start your Life Plan for 2014! Start with goals in areas of Self improvement(learning), Physical improvement, Relationship, financial and spiritual improvement. Set a goal that is or has something you can measure against, a weight, time, dollar value, number of training sessions, books to read etc. This is the best way to see if and what you improve. As an example I had a goal of reading 80 books, listen to 20 audio books, this did not include magazines or online articles etc. (Yes I hit this goal, if you are wondering)

So, you may be thinking what does this have to do with Ninjutsu? Well you should remember the secret of Sanmitsu (Thought, Word, Deed) and how this should drive you to improve your skills and life through the action of Thinking and reflecting, setting a goal and the taking action to become a better ninjutsu practitioner, partner, father, friend, whatever it is you want to achieve! So my fellow Ninja’s take the time over the next week to review your 2013 accomplishements and set a new Life Plan in place for 2014. I will share this with you….1 of my big goals is to make this website a hub for Ninja practitioners from around the world to share and learn to and from!

Bufu Ikkan!!

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”


― 
Mahatma Gandhi

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