Читать книгу The Mushin Way to Peak Performance - Veltri Michael - Страница 6

The Japanese word aikido is made up of three kanji characters: ai (), which means “meeting” or “harmony,” and is also a homonym for the word “love”; ki ( ), which means “energy”; and dō ( ), which means “path” or “road.” So aikido means “the path you follow in learning to harmonize your energy” – with your opponent's, or the world's.

The discipline of aikido can be challenging for people who are used to traditional Western models of study where the student moves in a linear fashion from concept to concept. In aikido – as in other Eastern disciplines such as Zen meditation, calligraphy, and the tea ceremony – instead of progressing linearly from Point A to Point B, students circle around the mysteries of the discipline, looking at them from all angles, striving to get closer to the calm center of the spinning top that is the mind. The test is always the same: the one-on-one combat that is a metaphor for the battle the student must do with his or her own mind and ego.

Success in aikido is about learning to absorb or blend with your opponent's energy, rather than trying to land the hardest blow. It can be a very humbling discipline to study, because strength alone will not get you very far. In fact, it is often harder for stronger students to learn proper technique, because they can muscle their way through bouts on strength alone – until they come up against someone stronger than they are.

Aikido teaches the student that meeting force with force will never work, that the minute you choose to attack, you have lost, because you have gone outside of harmony. But it is not about being passive; it is about putting aside your fear and your self-absorption and acting to protect both yourself and your opponent. In fact, aikido enlarges your worldview to include your opponent's. It is a lesson that businesspeople often spend a lifetime trying without success to learn. After all, if you are unable to see what your competition is seeing, you are eventually going to fail.

This book will show you how to succeed by acting in harmony with your own nature instead of fighting yourself, by leveraging the strength of everyone around you instead of trying to act alone, and by maintaining a sense of balance instead of trying to push your way through a problem with brute force.

Most of us do not face a hail of bullets most days, but we do confront challenges that feel impossible. We do not believe we have the strength to fight the battles before us. Too often, when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we hesitate. We want to hold off on making the right choice because we are afraid. In this book, I will show you how to gain the clarity to make the right choices, how making those choices is empowering, and how even the most unlikely battles can be won.