Episode 415 - Martial Arts and Your Career
Martial Arts and Your Career
On today's episode, Jeremy answers the question about balancing Martial Arts and your career and he's joined by the sender, Mr. Raymond Auty.
Martial Arts and Your Career - Episode 415
On this episode, Jeremy tries a new question and answer format where he's joined by the actual sender, Mr. Raymond Auty. Mr. Auty's question is how do you reconcile martial arts and your career? To further break it down, the ways on how to advance your martial arts development and grow your career to be financially stable. Listen to find out more!
Show Notes
You may connect with Mr. Raymond Auty through his Facebook.[gallery type="slideshow" size="full" ids="7205,7204"]
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.
Hello, everyone! Welcome, this is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 415. Today, we’re talking about balancing martial arts with your career. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, your host for the show, the founder of whistlekick and a guy who loves the martial arts and that’s why we do this show. We do this show twice a week. On Mondays, I bring you an interview with someone. On Thursdays, we bring you a topic and sometimes, like today, you get a little bit of both. If you want to check out everything that we’ve got going on, you can head on over to whistlekick.com. you can see all the projects that we’re involved in and the products that we make. If you use the code PODCAST15, you can save 15% on everything we’ve got going on over there. If you head on over to whistlekickmartialarts.com, however, you will see the show notes. You will see photos, you will see transcripts, you'll see links and you'll see 414 other episodes that we’ve made over the last 4 years. Today, I'm bringing you an interview but it's an interview on a subject. We do this once in a while but today, that conversation comes out of an email. In fact, I received an email from today’s guest, Mr. Raymond Auty, and he was asking me a question and I said, you know? Let’s do this as a show. What do you think? And he said, sure, let’s do it! So, that’s what we’ve got today. Today, we’re talking about being a martial artist and trying to advance in your career because, let’s face it, sometimes the two conflict so here we go, let’s do it! Mr. Auty, welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio.
Raymond Auty:
Pleasure to be here. Glad we’re able to do this.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It’s a pleasure to have you. Yeah, me too. so, I’ll let the audience know, obviously, both you and I know that internet problems affected us last week and almost had to reschedule today because I've been sick and hopefully, I am kind of willing myself to be well for the next 45 minutes, hour, however long we’re going to talk and probably going to pass out immediately after.
Raymond Auty:
That sounds like a good plan. Make sure you drink a lot of fluids and all that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I think I timed it just well enough that I'm the appropriate amount of being hydrated without having the need to press pause in the middle of this conversation for obvious reasons if you get what I mean but I'm excited to have you here and audience, I want you to know that Mr. Auty is being very generous because we’re testing out kind of this new format. Anybody who watches First Cup or follows a lot of what we do with whistlekick knows I love answering questions and I get questions in email almost every day. People wanting my advice or just kind of wanting to see what I think about a particular situation. Usually, it involves the martial arts but I've kind of been toying with the idea what would it look like if we had kind of this longform Q&A as part of the show and so, you were unsuspecting and emailed me a question, I said, AHA! I would like you to be my guinea pig. Will you come on the show and ask me this question so we can talk about it so the listeners would have the benefits so I want to thank you for your bravery or trust in me, whichever the two it is.
Raymond Auty:
Well, it's not a problem.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, thank you. Of course, I know your question already but would you be willing to kind of sum it up to repeat your question to the audience?
Raymond Auty:
The question I posed to you is more or less trying to reconcile your training with your career and we can break that down a little bit more here in a minute but that’s the meat of the question.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, of course, anybody who trains and has a job has probably had some experience with the two bumping into each other whether that’s maybe you're someone who enjoys competing on the weekends and that means you're choosing between competition and, quite often, professional advancement. A lot of that professional advancement, those seminars, things like that, happen on weekends so they don’t interfere with work. Well, that’s when competitions are too or, quite often, rank testing or anything like that and you’ve got to make a choice and it's a difficult choice, isn’t it?
Raymond Auty:
Absolutely, it is because you have on the one hand, you have your martial arts development and growth and then, on the other, you're trying to grow in your company or wherever you work to try and, ideally, have the livelihood to continue training.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, right.
Raymond Auty:
And still remain financially comfortable and all that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, and there's the Catch 22 is that if you find a way to advance in your career more, it usually leads to more money, more flexibility in the time that you have. Not always but often and that can give you more opportunity for training, for travelling to train or compete or whatever’s important to you about martial arts. If you advance in your career, you’d probably have more availability to advance in your martial arts career.
Raymond Auty:
It can happen at some times and I've also come to notice in certain companies, like the company I'm with, I don’t really want to say the name because I don’t know if we’re allowed to but when the higher up you go, actually, the less personal time you seem to have and that I've seen people who are supervisors and higher up who’ve, they’ve, it's supposed to be their day off and they get called in and told Hey, we need you to work and they don’t really have the option to do otherwise as compared to just a regular level worker, you have the ability to they call you up and say Hey, we need you to work today and you could be like can’t do it, got something planned.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, right. Now, this was the thrust of what you would ask me was how do you balance that? I mean, that wasn’t the word you used but I think the good word is am I…
Raymond Auty:
Yeah, balancing it is a good…I mean, we’re martial artists. We are attempting to find a good balance in all things. Spiritual, physical, all that, so I believe balance is the most apropos word to use.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, part of the reason, audience, that I wanted Mr. Auty to come on and talk to me about this is that I haven't had a whole lot of experience having to balance this. Many of you know that I've been an entrepreneur since even before I graduated college. I've been able to balance my life with martial arts and non-martial arts things pretty much from the get go. I did have one six months stint where I worked for Staples as I was growing my IT. company. I was full-time and I was very fortunate that my supervisor understood the importance of martial arts to me and made sure that I had time off to train and this was also, this overlapped the period of time where I had my own school so I let them know that hey, yes, I need these days and these times off. It's non-negotiable and if you want to make me work weekends to make that happen, I’ll do it and guess what I did, I did work weekends usually.
Raymond Auty:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, tell me a bit about what your personal situation looks like and as you're trying to balance martial arts and your career?
Raymond Auty:
Currently, the position I'm in, my schedule, I'm very fortunate, at the moment, that my hourly schedule like my shift is set so I know what time I got to come in, I know what time I go home. The other side of that coin is, though, my days off are all over the map. I could have a Monday, Tuesday off one week and then the next week, I won’t be off until Wednesday, Thursday. It makes it kind of difficult. I have to let them know well in advance for, like you said, belt testing or competition, things like that and then hope and pray that I actually get the time approved so there becomes one of the little issues that you run into working in the professional world and trying to maintain your training and keeping up with your advancement, not only like I said with your career, but with your martial arts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, so it sounds like with the job that you have with very little flexibility and when you're going to work, when your days off are which, of course, lead to when you're able to train, you kind of have to sprinkle martial arts in when your career is making it available. Am I understanding that right?
Raymond Auty:
Yeah, it's more or less yeah, I'm having to try to, as you had the opposite issue, you were trying to, it seems like wedge work in between your martial arts, I've having to try and wedge my martial arts into my work and there was a period of time where when I was working overnights for the past almost year or little over a year. On my lunch break at 12:30 AM, I would eat and I would find a big, empty place at my job, because I'm a Taekwondo practitioner, I would practice my tools or my patterns and so, I was having to, like you said, kind of sprinkle my martial arts into my work.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, now, I think it bears mentioning that this isn’t a huge issue for a lot of people because a lot of people work 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 or some kind of more, let’s call it, conventional work hours but that’s not you and so that’s part of…
Raymond Auty:
Well, it is me now. It wasn’t until about 3 weeks ago was when I went back to, what you would consider, conventional hours. I work from fairly early in the morning, 5 AM, to 2 in the afternoon and so, that’s been a little bit more…what’s the word I could use…it seems to allow my martial arts a little bit more leniency and gives me back some of my time with the martial arts but, as you're saying, when I was working unconventional hours, it is very difficult because especially if you work overnights and, any of your listeners who have had to do overnight shifts, they understand that you sleep for a good chunk of the day and then, you have to get up later in the day, make it to a martial arts class, make it to a seminar or something, come home and then, go and do your job that night and hope you're not too tired or beat down or anything to perform your job properly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right and anybody that’s worked overnight, third shift, that kind of stuff, understands how much of a toll it takes on your body. Those of you who have not worked those sorts of hours, if you do any amount of research on the general health of people who work those sorts of hours, it's the data’s not good, so the idea that you can easily just kind of adjust, just get up a few hours early, things like that, it's not the reality so it's important that we understand that and then, to compound that, there are some people who will…they’ll work these late hours and then, on the other days, they might try to live by a more normal schedule but adjusting back and forth can be really, really exhausting and unhealthy. I don’t know if you tried to do that.
Raymond Auty:
In my case, what I did was, to avoid having to do that adjustment, I just maintained, on my days off, the same kind of sleep schedule and everything and that can kind of make for having issues with personal stuff and things like that, like trying to just get stuff done around your own house. I mean, when you're mowing the lawn at 6 AM and then, get a shower and go to sleep, that’s just a very odd feeling.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm sure. I'm sure. Now, you would mention to me in your email that, at one point, you would even turn down a promotion because it was going to lead to even less opportunity to train.
Raymond Auty:
Yes, the school I was going to had only 2 classes for us to attend and those were evening classes and on those days when you get a promotion at my job, it is required to work a closing shift that night so I wouldn’t be getting off. The class would be at 6 PM, I wouldn’t be getting off until 11 PM or midnight on those days so it will just completely eliminate me being able to go train and I went to a small school, it was actually one that was held at a community center so they didn’t have the opportunity to have, like some schools do, you can have morning classes, day classes, multiple days of the week so, at one point, yeah, I had actually turned down an opportunity to advance in my career to keep up my martial arts training.
Jeremy Lesniak:How did that feel?Raymond Auty:That wasn’t an easy decision. I had to discuss it with my wife and, as any of your listeners who are married, they know that it's always the first step you do. You always discuss with your spouse.Jeremy Lesniak:Should be, anyway.Raymond Auty:It really should be and I don’t always prescribe to the happy wife, happy life concept. Me and my wife go with happy spouse, happy house so a lot of the decision, we obviously go into together but I discussed it with her and, luckily for me, I have an amazingly supportive wife and she’s actually the one to help me find the Taekwondo school I went to because she knew I wanted to get back into martial arts because I had taken time off but I had to sit down and talk with her and say, look, at this moment, martial arts is one of my main focuses. I know I have the opportunity to go for this position but what would you think of me passing it up to continue with my martial arts? Luckily, she was very supportive of that.Jeremy Lesniak:I’m contemplating. Just going to make a note how we’re going to make a transition here.Raymond Auty:I thought I was going to lose signal or anything.Jeremy Lesniak:No, no. We’re good. Alright, coming back in 3, 2…Alright, now you would brought up, what really at the same time is just a different way at looking at the same question of reconciling work with your training and this other aspect might be a little more relatable to some of our listeners so could you talk about that for a moment?Raymond Auty:Yeah, the other aspect that I mentioned was the physical toll that martial arts can take on your body and the aspect of anyone who’s done martial arts for, at least, let’s say at least 6 months, knows that you're going to get hurt occasionally. You're going to get, especially if you spar or in Karate, you do kumite, or anything like that, you are going to get hit. You're going to be in some sort of pain and there had been times that I had to call off of work because I just, physically, couldn’t do it that day because I was in pain from…the worst one was on my right side, from my right ankle all the way up to the top of my head on the right side was just beat. I had bruises on my ribs and all that. You run into the issue of is my martial arts physically allowing me to work and having to kind of weigh those against each other too.Jeremy Lesniak:And this is certainly a challenge that, I'm going to guess most of the listeners have experienced. Now, if you work a physical job, something that requires you to be at a certain physical level with your body, this can be huge if you can't stand all day. If you can't pick up the heavy objects if you have some kind of pull or strain in a muscle, it can mean that you just can't physically cannot do your job and, for others who maybe work more of a desk-style job, showing up with a black eye doesn’t look good especially if you're someone facing customers. If you're interacting with customers, people that are paying you for your services. Imagine going out to eat and seeing big scrapes or claw marks or a couple black eyes on your server, that’s not going to inspire confidence in the quality of the food even though the two have nothing to do with each other.Raymond Auty:Yeah, it's a very judging a book or situation by just a glance. The best way I can look at it is one of my favorite movies that kind of really shows this is the movie G.I. Jane with Demi Moore. There's a scene where she just finished brutal training and she’s in a ladies’ room and one of the other patrons just looks at her and says, in my opinion, I’d say leave the guy; not knowing what the context of where all that came from and that really, as a martial artist, kind of spoke to me in the fact that, like you said, if you work at McDonald’s or something and you go to the front and you go to the register and you have 2 black eyes or something, that’s not going to be a good appearance for the customer.Jeremy Lesniak:So, let’s…I think we’ve set up the problem, if we want to call it that, the challenge well enough. Let’s start talking about some of the answers, some of the options and, of course, you’ve kind of, whether it was intentional or not, you’ve solved part of it for yourself in that, you’ve changed your hours. Now, not every job is going to give you the option of working a different shift, sometimes you do, sometimes, if you’ve got that really variable schedule, I would say, I don’t know of too many jobs where it can be any given time, any given day, Sunday through Saturday, you know certainly the military offers the opportunities like that, but I think at the end of the day, no matter what job you're working; if you're not able to do anything that you want to do, if there's something that’s really important to you like martial arts and you don’t have the ability to even carve out a little bit of fixed space to have that, I think you need to look really long and hard at the job itself. Is the job worth that sacrifice, because that’s a pretty substantial sacrifice, and I'm sure that if we’re talking about a job like that, it's not just martial arts that’s suffering, it's a social life. If you're a single person and you're looking to date and maybe find a partner, that’s going to become limiting. You're out mowing the lawn at 6 AM. These are things that most of us aren’t going to want to engage in so I think the first step is looking long and hard, is this job a job that is going to satisfy all of my needs or just the financial needs? Did you have that conversation with yourself at some point?Raymond Auty:I did and what I came to the conclusion on was I absolutely love doing martial arts but I had to weigh the financial well-being of me and my spouse so, unfortunately, I had made the decision but I got, it was kind of a, how would I put this, it was kind of two-pronged. I had made what I thought was a decision that, unfortunately, meant that I had to give up martial arts and actually went for a promotion and I didn’t get the promotion but that, going for that promotion, allowed me to be put in another position where I could still do martial arts but get more skillsets so it was a very interesting kind of situation there. I had resigned myself that, okay, I'm going to have to put off my martial arts training and it's not a fun decision to have to make for anyone who’s listened, who has had to put their martial arts on the back burner, more or less. I already done that once when I was in high school and having to do it again was kind of a hard pill to swallow but I had to make that decision and it did take some reflection. It did take a lot of inner thought and also, again, conversations with my wife to make the decision and, ultimately, she had said that whatever decision I make will be, she will support and that was really the crux of it was, because she knew how happy martial arts makes me. I absolutely love it. I love going to the dojang when doing Taekwondo and just working out with the people, the camaraderie, the skillsets you learn and everything there but she also knew that my career is important to me. I'm a very driven person. The day I graduated high school, my grandfather told me that you have a high school diploma so you can do anything from digging a ditch to running a bank but no matter what you do, you do it your absolute best and so, even though, I don’t work in , what would be considered a high-powered or glamorous job, I give it my absolute best and that was really where I made the decision and I'm like okay, I got to do this. Martial arts is a big part of my life and I was able to come back to it before but it never went away for me so I went for that promotion and, like I said I didn’t get it, but they said, we can move you to another spot. You'll have more conventional hours and it will give you an opportunity down the line for possible advancement so that choice is still not gone because I do have the opportunity down the line to go up so it's still a matter of reconciling that.Jeremy Lesniak:Now, the next step, the next thing, I guess, I would ask. If you had kind of gotten stuck with these hours that you couldn’t train, it would’ve been…is there a school that you can change to, right? Because not every school has classes two days a week. Some schools have classes 6 or 7 days a week. Some schools have classes, if you're in a large enough area, they offer classes through the day. I've seen schools with morning classes and noon classes.Raymond Auty:Oh, the first martial arts school I went to had classes starting at 8 AM and going all the way to 7 PM at night. The only issue was the, and you discussed this before a few episodes back, I believe, or it was further back. I remember the conversation you had on the cost of martial arts, the financial, and that was really the thing was trying to find another school in the area that I could afford. So, that was the thing that got me with doing the Taekwondo. Like I said, it was held at an adult center so it was far less expensive to do where it was, I was paying less than $30 a month, whereas most conventional schools, whether it be a Karate school, because we do have a few schools in my area, it's just most of them start at about $90 to a hundred and something a month so it was just a matter of well, I would have to put it off for a little bit and then find a school that I can, once getting promoted generally comes with the pay increase, I could eventually afford once we managed our finances.Jeremy Lesniak:I guess the next piece would be what can you do on your own? So, let’s say you're at a school that it's two days a week and once in a while you can make it with your hours but not reliably not consistently which kind of describes my relationship with Taekwondo right now. I'm not able to attend often but I still train on my own and I still do so in order to maximize the time I have when I do get to make it to class and, depending on the school that you're at, the instructor may give you, let’s call it, homework. They might even, depending on who it is, more and more martial arts instructors are getting comfortable videoing what’s going on in class. You may have someone who’s quite willing to do that and would video, maybe even livestream, the classes that they have going on and you can watch and kind of play along later.Raymond Auty:Yeah, with the Taekwondo, I don’t know which specific type you do but I do ITF Taekwondo but what’s really good about my school is they actually, when you sign up, you get a book. You get the [00:28:22] book and it goes over everything, not like break down class by class, but it breaks down everything you're going to need to learn physically and with our school, you also do a written test so not just physically, but the required knowledge so when I wasn’t able to attend the class, I could at least go to my book and practice what I know out of there. The only issue that I came up with with practicing at home is if you're doing something wrong and you do something wrong a hundred times, once you go to class, they have to break you of that habitJeremy Lesniak:Right, my suggestion when people are training at home and, I recognize I'm jumping in on you here, but I'm going to keep going anyway because it's my show and I get to do that.Raymond Auty:It is your show. You get the run of it.Jeremy Lesniak:When I train at home, the way I recommend if someone’s going to train on their own, you should be working on very, very specific things and they should be things that you are very aware of how you need to adjust them so, for example, if I'm working on making a particular kick higher or I'm working on the balance for a kick or I'm working on conditioning, things like that, these are all things where it's pretty clear whether or not I'm progressing or whether or not I'm making progress in the right way.Raymond Auty:Absolutely, it's one of those. It's very black and white. You can feel when you throw a kick wrong. You can feel it if you're not positioning yourself right. Everything like that and I agree with you. Make sure you have something that you can catch yourself on am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? That’s one of the things I love about doing the pattern is you know, if you're doing it right or wrong because you know, as they said, it's a set of moves and I still, I love doing patterns. I really do. I look at myself as a form of what I call active meditation. I just have something to focus on but, like you said, it is a great idea to just hone in on something like okay, I'm not able to make it to class tonight. I need to work on my balance for my side piercing kick because I keep falling over when I throw it or things like that. I need to work on my positioning of my feet when I'm trying to land from a flying technique or something like that and I think that is a really, really good piece of advice that you have there.Jeremy Lesniak:And, of course, you can get your instructor’s input on this and if you are someone who you have a varied schedule and your schedule comes out and you can say, I can only make it to class this day but not this day or maybe even no days that week and, maybe, it has nothing to do with work, maybe it just has to do with life getting in the way for this particular week or, heck, more. I strongly suggest that you schedule in the time that you're going to train even if that’s 10 minutes. Scheduling in 10 minutes and making sure that you're doing it, planning it, putting it on the calendar and giving it that priority, you are more likely to do it and respect it and get something out of it than if you say, oh, if I can get 10 minutes later, I’ll train. There is always something that’s going to come up.Raymond Auty:Yeah, or you can create your own distraction like you could say, oh, I'm going to train. Oh, there's a movie marathon or something like that and I agree if you put it down, especially in the age of smartphones, we can put a reminder in your phone, set the loudest, most obnoxious alarm you can and you can’t help but notice it going off.Jeremy Lesniak:Absolutely and then, the last option, I think, and you said this: what do you have to do to bridge the gap to get to where you can train the way you want to train again? Does that mean that you have to temporarily take a different role? Because one of the things that I find myself saying often lately to people that are talking to me, martial arts is always there for you. It's there for you when you're ready to go back or able to go back, whether it's time or money or just life getting in the way, martial arts is there and if you're someone who doesn’t do well training on your own, like me, I do not do well training on my own, I do some of it but I know that I need the structure of a class and, right now, I'm not training as much as I would like to because I'm involved in other things like whistlekick that distract me, that pull me away, but I know that it's not permanent. It's temporary and, at some point, when I can start training 2, 3, 5 days a week as I would love to, martial arts would be there for me when I'm ready.Raymond Auty:And what’s really nice about martial arts is the way I look at it is martial arts is not going to get upset with you for not going. Other people might but it will always, like you said, it will always be there for you. You can take a week off, a month off, 6 months off or, in my case, I didn’t do martial arts for almost 10 years or more. I did martial arts as a freshman in high school and unfortunately, again, it came down to finances. We just couldn’t afford for me and my brother to continue and I grew up in San Diego, California where a lot of things are expensive there and we looked around, we tried to find a more cost-effective school and, unfortunately, we weren’t able to so I didn’t do martial arts, I didn’t get back into martial arts until 2 years ago and I'm 27 years old so that was a fairly large gap.Jeremy Lesniak:Yeah, it's a long time.Raymond Auty:There's a whole gap of high school student in there. Somebody who could be born the day I stopped doing martial arts in high school and then be in there.Jeremy Lesniak:Yeah, now, let’s talk about the other side of this. Let’s talk about the physical side because we brought up the problem, the challenge, of how you reconcile those two. Having a physically demanding job or even just bringing the physical aspects of life into your job with training and, of course, we’ve had plenty of people on the show who have talked about, a lot of people called the blood and guts, or the golden era of the martial arts is in the ‘70s where there wasn’t sparring gear. People were beating the tar out of each other.Raymond Auty:Yeah, like the interview with Bill Wallace where he was talking about where he kicked somebody and when they opened up their uniform, you could see their footprint or his footprint on them. That’s one of my favorite stories. I've heard it on your show and I've heard it elsewhere, I believe, that’s one of my favorite stories. That’s one of my favorite shows, The Superfoot Wallace, episode. Yeah, like you said, the blood and guts are of it where if you're not bleeding, you're not training kind of a mentality.Jeremy Lesniak:Right, and there are some schools that have that attitude now but I'm going to be honest. I don’t think that’s a good place to train. Now, if it's what you want, by all means. I'm not telling you, you shouldn’t train there but most of us, as evidenced by the fact that this episode even exists and if you're listening, you're still listening; have to balance work and training or life and training depending on how you're looking at it and we need that opportunity to find a way, even within our job, to hopefully carve out some variability for balance for our training and do the same thing within our training. Now, I've had times where I've been…I've needed my body for things and said to the people I'm training with, hey, I need to dial it back today. I need to go do X, Y, Z tomorrow or this weekend or whatever and I want to train but I don’t want to take the risk and some people might look at that and say, well, you're doing your training a disservice or yeah, absolutely, because we’re talking about balance.Raymond Auty:And I've even actually had the exact opposite situation where I have been at work and I've been like hey, I need to take it easy at work because I actually do have a fairly, physically demanding job because I had a tournament the next day so I was like hey, I need to kind of dial it back tonight so when I go to my tournament the next day, I'm fresh. I'm good. I'm not trying to fight a back strain or something like that and, like you said, I feel like I was doing my job a disservice but, like we’ve been saying, the whole crux of this episode and the whole crux of the whole underlying theme that I've been kind of interested in is balance. We have to have that balance and, like you said, we’ve all done it probably. We’ve done our training a, what people consider, disservice by going lighter in training because you had something personal the next day and then, I've done and I'm sure other people have done, they’ve gone lighter at their job because they have a martial arts thing the next day so it's very much like you’ve been saying as a balance. Trying to find that good spot right in the middle, the traditional martial arts idea of yin yang, you have to have that.Jeremy Lesniak:And I think the key is communication. It's communicating with yourself to understand what your physical needs are in and outside of training. it's communicating with your instructor to let them know what your expectations are and what your needs are and, I’ll be honest, if they're not willing to accommodate that, it's probably a sign they're not willing to accommodate you. Maybe you need to look for another place to train and then, there's communicating with your training partners to make sure that they know the parameters, the boundaries that you're heading for how they're working with you and what you're going to be willing and able to do and, hopefully, you're not dialing it back every class because if you are, it's a sign that either you're not pushing yourself or you’ve got yourself in a situation that is not sustainable and you should be looking for a way to change it.Raymond Auty:Yeah, because if you're dialing it back every class, then mediocrity becomes your norm and I've heard you say and I've heard other people say with martial arts, you want to be above the mediocre. You want to be above the mediocrity. We are trying to be the best versions of ourselves and dialing it back once in a while is needed but if you're, like you said, constantly having to dial it back, you have to kind of take a moment and be saying to yourself why am I doing this? Because I feel martial arts is too demanding for me or even is this style too demanding because I've known people who went from doing Kung Fu which is too much on their body and they went to Tai Chi and much more, much easier on your body and, again, it goes back to the balance. You got to have that balance but if you're, like you said, if you're dialing it back every class, then you well and truly are doing yourself a disservice.Jeremy Lesniak:So, lets sum this up because I think we got some good advice now for people. We’re talking about balance. I think that’s the word that probably is more than any other as we’ve talked.Raymond Auty:It's almost like we’re getting paid for every time we use the word balance.Jeremy Lesniak:It's communication and, what else, it's, I think it's a willingness to change whether that’s…Raymond Auty:How about we call it a willingness to adapt?Jeremy Lesniak:There you go! An even better way to express it. I love it.Raymond Auty:The willingness to adapt, the old military expression, improvise, adapt, overcome is a good way to look at that, in my opinion.Jeremy Lesniak:Right. Alright, is there anything else that we want to leave the listeners with before we wrap up?Raymond Auty:Just if you're in the position that I've been in, especially if you're having to, if your livelihood is not just your own but you have a wife, a husband, kids, anyone you're taking care of and you're going to make one of these decisions, I implore you. Communicate, like we said, but communicate with your family, communicate with your other half or if it's just yourself on your own, really have that introspective moment. Take the time. You don’t have to do one of those pro-con lists. I've come to realize, you're always going to have a more con section than in the pro but have that moment. Have that time to make the informed, make the decision that is best for you and don’t let other people tell you what is the best for you. Only you can do that and I know that seems to oppose the concept of talking it over with your family but, ideally, if you have to talk it over your family, they are on board with whatever decision you make and they will support you and I think that’s one of the things you got to look at it. Make sure you really take that long look in the mirror and decide what is important and, for some people, you have to, like I said, have to put off martial arts. Other times, it could be more beneficial to yourself and your own well-being, not so much financially but just you as a person, to make that decision to make martial arts your Number One and that’s just what I kind of want to give to the listeners.Jeremy Lesniak:I thought we had a great conversation and I thought we ended up with some good advice, some good thoughts and I hope that you got something out of it. I want to thank Mr. Auty for coming on this show, for being so kind and hospitable to me figuring out this sort of new format that, honestly, I liked and I’d like to do more of. If you have a question that you’d like to ask me on air, go ahead, send me an email, jeremy@whistlekick.com and, of course, you can find everything we’ve got going on at whistlekick.com. Don’t forget the code PODCAST15, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is the place for the transcript, photos, links, signing up for the newsletter and a whole bunch more. 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