UBBT Success

I’ve been participating in the Ultimate Black Belt Test for almost five years now. I’ve witnessed spectacular successes and many failures. The one thing that all the failures had in common was the breaking of the no quitting rule. When you think about it, whether or not you achieve all the goals you set out to achieve, a year dedicated to mastery cannot end in failure if you stay engaged in the process. Stick to the process and progress is guaranteed. The process. That is the secret. The UBBT is not a program you participate in, it is a process you develop. My I Ho Chuan team members (student UBBT team), past and present, continue to struggle with this perspective.

Lifestyle changes are only lifestyle changes if the changes last a lifetime. Temporary change only garners temporary results. If you want to lose weight, any strategies you adopt to lose that weight must be maintained over your lifetime if you want the weight loss to be permanent. Mastery is no different. A Master does not achieve a goal and then immediately revert to a life of accepting average. Mastery is a way of life, not some arbitrary goal recognized by a certificate you hang on a wall.

Something for my 2012 student team to think about — have you transformed yourself over these past seven months? If not, you still have five more to turn this around. Finally, a question for my past student teams. Has the mastery you developed over the course of your challenge become part of you or have you already discarded some of the tools that allowed you to achieve the extraordinary?

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” - Patanjali