216. Genchitaofu Baguazhang's Gong - 艮氣道福八卦掌の功 (part 2/2)

I know for a fact that many of you are struggling to come to terms with the 'gong' of gongfu and qigong. I know this because my podcasts around gongfu are nearly always my worst performing podcasts. It seems to me that most of you don't like the hard work involved to reach mastery, and you think that by listening to my podcasts and reading my books will give you the 'secret' to easy ambitions. But here's the thing: I never said that gong means hard work. You did. Gong only means doing the work required to master one's craft. When you assume that work must be hard, it's opposite polarity is also true in that work can also be easy. Easy and hard are just subjective qualifiers that you have attached to doing the work. You assumed things that weren't necessarily there. And your body and mind responded in kind. And I can prove it. You go to your favourite department store and pick up a five kilogram dumbell. And do ten reps on both sides, biceps and triceps, and it's easy stuff; to do in the store. And then on a separate occasion, you go to the gym and again pick up a five kilogram dumbell, and try to do the same. But it now feels like ten kilograms, and you're struggling. So what happened? What happened was that in the store, you were probably showing off and playing around, and you told yourself it was easy. But in the gym, because somewhere within you you felt intimidated by the muscle around you, you subconsciously fell into the trap of telling yourself that it's gonna be hard. And so it is. Now, if you need it to be hard, that's your story and you have decided to live with it. Whatever you're doing requires it to be so. But for the rest of you, making things harder than it actually is, is just another excuse holding you back because deep down inside you are afraid to be who you are really wanting to be. And so you live in a world that is all stick and no carrot. And your martial arts world is the same. And for the muscle guys in the gym, it is all carrot: They have the posters, they have the girls; they have the lifestyle. It is who they are - that is why they succeed (at the gym).