Self Mastery: How The Karate Kid Ruined The Modern World

If you're deficient in areas critical to basic functioning, then you've probably thought a lot about who or what is to blame for your failings. Why can't I stop procrastinating? Why can't I stop eating? Why can't I stop being so lazy?

From the perspective of self mastery, you'll only ever find it useful to blame four things for your shortcomings: thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and willpower. What about family, society, industry, and the government? Aren't they to blame? In a word, no. Let me explain.

I could easily write a whole series of blog post on all the ways that these entities have failed young men, but that wouldn't do anyone much good. That would only give you an excuse not to do as much as you could to improve yourself.

The following is a quote from David Wong, editor of Cracked.com, from an article titled How the Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World: "The world demands more. So, so much more. How have we gotten to adulthood and failed to realize this? Why would our expectations of the world be so off? I blame the montages. Five breezy minutes, from sucking at karate to being great at karate, from morbid obesity to trim, from geeky girl to prom queen, from terrible garage band to awesome rock band.

In the real world, the winners of the All Valley Karate Championship in The Karate Kid would be the kids who had been at it since they were in elementary school. The kids who act like douchebags because their parents made them skip video games and days out with their friends and birthday parties so they could practice, practice, practice." David Wong

How many of you have actively gone out and searched for new and better beliefs? Even those of you that have been failing for years how many of you have seriously tried to change your mindset? I would venture to say that not very many of you have. Why? Because of entitlement. You feel like you shouldn't have to. You feel like rewards should magically come down from heaven just because of who you

These beliefs are the ones that you should target for change.You need to engage in a project of belief realignment. That is, the process of introducing new a whole new mindset to take place of the older maladaptive one. The current belief structure you have in your mind has failed you, and its time for a new one--one that empowers you and compels you forward toward action.

You've already begun that process by reading the first post in this series. The fundamental tenets of the philosophy you should seek to find and adopt are as follows:

It empowers you as an individual, and helps you focus on ways that you could be improving right now.

It takes into account your identity as a man and as a human being

It gives you a rational way to deal with the inevitable pain and discomfort of change

If focuses your mind on productive endeavors that benefit yourself and others

The process of changing strong underlying beliefs, and the habits of mind that they generate begins by saturating your mind with new, useful beliefs. Right now, your mind is chock full of the wrong stuff--stuff that's been reinforced by years failure. The heart of the issue is that you have taken the wrong thoughts to be literally