What happens when we open social media? We are overwhelmed by an unlimited stream of content that shouts two principles: always be successful and do it as quickly as possible, not to bore our audience, who will give us 5 seconds if we're lucky, and not to succumb to competition. Unfortunately, real life doesn't work that way; perhaps that's why we always feel a bit inadequate, a bit out of place, even if we wear big smiles in selfies. There are things that can be learned and showcased in 3 minutes, but there are things that require 30 years, a lifetime. The more we study them, the more we want to delve into them. These are things that smell of failure, of falls and strenuous climbs, of moments we wouldn't want to show anyone, of determination, friends, sweat, smiles, conflicts, tears, solitude. Above all, they smell of life and us. And it's that parenthesis that we can't show on social media, too personal. Editing is too approximate. It's not two-dimensional like a phone screen. Are our inner dimensions not potentially infinite?
Today, let's talk about this. Let's begin to understand what we can learn in 3 minutes and things that will require a lifetime. Let's try to grasp this abstract concept through examples from our everyday life, like a work meeting. And let's bring in our dear M Hosokawa for an example worth more than a thousand stories!
Comment on the episode post on Instagram to share your story: What is the thing that will require a lifetime of study for you? And send me a DM to suggest content for upcoming episodes and contribute to growing this community https://www.instagram.com/ritsu_aikido/
And if you're in Rome, come train with us in our dojo! All the information is available here: https://kohakuaikidoroma.com/
For further information:
HOSOKAWA HIDEKI: Born in December 1942 in Tokushima, Shikoku Island. He comes from a cadet branch of the noble Hosokawa family, related to the Ashikaga shoguns, feudal lords of the Awa region. In 1974, he accepted Master Tada's proposal to move to Rome. He took over the direction of the Central Dojo, entering the Educational Directorate of Aikikai as Vice Director.
PIER PAOLO PASOLINI (Bologna, March 5, 1922 – Rome, November 2, 1975): An Italian poet, writer, director, screenwriter, actor, and playwright, considered one of the greatest Italian intellectuals of the twentieth century. In the episode, I refer to his intervention on October 28, 1961, on Vie Nuove: "But I am a man who prefers to lose rather than win with unfair and ruthless methods. A serious fault on my part, I know! And the funny thing is that I have the audacity to defend such a fault, to consider it almost a virtue..."
IRIMI TENKAN (入り身転換): Formed by irimi, entry (yang), and tenkan, rotation (yin), the basic movement of Aikido.
KAZUO ONO (Hakodate, October 27, 1906 – Yokohama, June 1, 2010): A Japanese dancer, guru, and inspiring figure of the dance form known as Buto.
HENRY FORD (Dearborn, July 30, 1863 – Detroit, April 7, 1947): An American entrepreneur, one of the founders of the Ford Motor Company, a major player in the automotive industry even today. Among his many quotes, one suggests that when we face difficulty in doing something, we should break it down into many small parts.
#SocialMediaRealities #LifeBeyondScreens #AuthenticLiving #TimelessWisdom #SelfReflection #PersonalJourney #MentalWellness #MindfulLiving #LifeIn3Minutes #30YearsofWisdom #EmbracingImperfections #DigitalDetox #InnerDimensions #SelfDiscovery #MindfulEditing #WorkLifeBalance #PersonalGrowth #EverydayWisdom #LifeChallenges #InspirationInDailyLife
What's up cuties, this is The Ritsu’s Podcast and if you're looking for that moment of inspiration that comes when you least expect it, then you're in the right place. In this space we talk about what happens to us every day through a special lens, the martial way of the samurai, which that genius Ueshiba Morihei transformed into the art of Aikido. As? Don't you know what I'm talking about? Then stay with me.
Try to think about it. There are two determining elements in today's typical narrative, linked in particularly to social media.
1. We must always be the winners, there is no longer any attention to failure, consideration towards failure. You just have to win, be excellent.
2. All this must be done as quickly as possible. I had some experience with Youtube before coming to the podcast. The first thing you are taught is that you have to capture the attention of the person listening to you in the first 5 seconds. Tell me if I, who have to give a half-hour speech, can summarize it in 5 seconds. Ok I am good at summing up, but damn…let's not exaggerate. And for goodness sake it's a marketing strategy. The hook. 5 seconds. After that, I scroll, next, but…above all, I have to provide value. I have to give you value. Why would you waste those 5 seconds on me? In those 5 seconds I have to make you understand that in that video you will find things you have never heard of, fantastic things that will add value to your life. Ok, the greatest value we have today is time, so understanding whether I have to waste it listening to someone is crucial and I have to understand it quickly. It is not wrong.
The problem is that there is no longer any attention to the spaces between one performance and another. It is taught that if we do things quickly and without fuss, then we are perfect. Damn it guys.
When Pasolini told us that to winners he preferred losers to reconcile himself with his sacred little, he wasn't saying it because he was a loser. It was Pasolini. He has understood that the meaning of her life lies in something different from winnings.
For example, one aspect that I like to talk about most is the multiplicity of egos. Because we are not one. When we present ourselves on YouTube or Instagram as the Aikidoka, the lawyer, the influencer…Yes! I wish we were just one thing! We wake up in the morning one way and go to sleep another in the evening. This is one of the big reasons why our lives don't add up as much when we look at social media as they should be. Too bad that even there the truth is different. But let's go back to the topic I would like to delve into today. Today we talk about the fact that not everything can be done very quickly and you cannot be excellent in 10 seconds.
There are things that can be learned in 3 minutes and there are things that take a lifetime. So when see these extraordinary results that try to frame us and they go like: get this result in a weekend! And 5 fantastic tips to never make mistakes again in life! You wanna find the right man? 10 hacks to get the result. Ahahaha…sure! One of the most important things we have to do if we want to be truly successful (whatever that means), because I prefer to be a loser in the long run, meaning, knowing how to lose, winning everyone can do that…it’s knowing how to lose what keeps us going. So, if we want to be satisfied with our life, or see it from another point of view, we must understand what we can learn quickly and we can also show off accordingly. And we need to understand what requires our all life. And so if we really have to show it off, let's not show a fake result, 5 secrets to understand the meaning of life in 5 minutes, it's not that, if we really have to boast about something, let's boast about the fact that we will continue to study for the rest of our life.
A typical example, the student arrives in the dojo, right? And he tells me, obviously it happens: “ehm, how long does it take to get a black belt? But can I do it in a few months?” Now I'll confess this big secret, it's not that I was that different at the beginning, I didn't want to get my black belt in a few months, but nevertheless I wanted to get it quickly, I was like: ”guys, I am 30 already, it's not like I want to become a black belt at 60 now!” I wanted to do it quickly. And then when I started studying I realized that the belt in itself didn't mean anything, it could even be a white belt, if you are fantastic, you are whatever the belt is. I happened to see a seminar flyer recently that said:,”get your black belt in multiple disciplines in one convenient weekend. Do you want to become a great martial artist? With us you can”. I will never, ever tell you who this leaflet came from, because we are not even talking about the last idiot, you will never know who he is, unless you find out yourself, but know that I have read it. Earn your black belt in multiple disciplines in one convenient weekend.
What have I been doing for 30 years then? No, not 30. Oh well, 15. It's not feasible, and even if it were, what could I understand in a comfortable weekend of disciplines that have hundreds of years of study?
To partially improve our relationship with social media and how demanding today's society is towards performance, let's start setting limits. I can learn this quickly, I can show this as something quickly acquired if my goal is to show it…that instead takes my whole life, this is my study, I don't have to tell this, at most I can tell that I'm studying, or maybe just don't care to show it off!
Learn how to evaluate within yourself what can be learnt in a short time and what, instead, is a path you have chosen for life.
I'll tell you a story about this. Hosokawa Hideki Sensei, one of the greatest Aikido Sensei in Italy, he followed Tada Hiroshi Sensei, together with Fujimoto Yoji Sensei, and Hosokawa Sensei was, let's say, in the central – south part of Italy, while Fujimoto Sensei was in Milan.
Hosokawa Sensei did and said a lot of legendary things, one of them was how he examined black belts, not always, but he did. He asked to perform irimitenkan. Now, irimitenkan is a step forward with one foot, then you pivot on that foot, so if I go forward with the right, I pivot on the right and bring the left back, okay? A pivot that is essentially easy. It's one of the basic movements that you learn in the very first lesson, literally two steps. So you go to the black belt exam where you have 700-800 techniques to perform with all the variations, a lot of basic movements, a lot of extra exercises, for instance someone asks you for weapons, irimitenkan you think that either they don't ask you or it's the first five seconds of the exam and then you move on to the juicier things, and instead he said: “do irimitenkan” and he failed you if you didn't do it well.
That is, irimitenkan was enough to understand if you were ready or not. My dream is actually to judge a black belt exam asking only for irimitenkan, you know right? I am waiting for the moment to be authorized to examine them exclusively to ask this question, because in fact the irimitenkan can be learned in 3 minutes, but the atmosphere to provide to this move, the look, the balance, the plasticity, stability, a lifetime is not enough, do you want to study irimitenkan? We repeat it endlessly and it is never perfect.
This is an ideal example for those who want to understand what could be learned in 3 minutes and what in a lifetime, so at the first exam I ask you to do irimitenkan and I just look at how you place your feet, but at the black belt I look at what atmosphere you provide me by performing it. As one of the two founders of butoh dance, Kazuo Ono, would say: “watching you, I have to think that life was worth living”. This is another wonderful thing to talk about and if you want, comment on the post on Instagram, and I’ll give you insights about butoh dance, which is a fantastic discipline and there are some wonderful stories that can be connected to Aikido.
So if we want to apply it to our everyday lives, what do we learn in 3 minutes and what do we learn in 30 years? Let's try to give a typical example from the desk jobs world. Typical example, I go to a meeting, if in that meeting I go with a newbie hired teammate, I will ask him to write the summary of this meeting, telling me just the facts that happened. A 3 minute task, he just arrived, he has no experience, he can perform this type of request easily, he simply has to remember what is said and report it accordingly.
I go to a meeting with a experienced teammate, like with 10-15 years of experience, I will ask him something completely different, I will always tell him to write the summary of the meeting, but what I expect is not only that he reports the facts accordingly, I expect to see reported which of the functions will benefit the most from the topic of the meeting, who is totally inattentive, who perhaps does not want to participate in the project, what is the effort, what is the amount of work that that meeting can generate in the future, what are the execution times of the activities resulting from that work. So if the subject of the meeting is for instance a project, in the summary I have to understand who will work on that project, who will definitely not work on it, who is against it, who is in favor, how long it will take, how much work will be generated and how it should be divided. It is clear that this is not exactly what will be said in the meeting, so he must report the facts to me, but from the way he reports to me I must be able to make assessments for these additional information if I was not present.
And it is clear that to do something like this you need 15 years of experience, so it is not a 3 minute task, but it is a 30 year task. We can apply this to all areas of our lives.
I apply it a lot in the dojo. One of the most beautiful things that our Sensei said was that when we were senpai and younger guys, white belts, kohai, beginners came, what happens? You perform a technique together, they don't know how to do anything, you just have to tell them: do it like this, put your foot like this, put your hand like this, now you have to receive like this. And so since he was witnessing all those discussions systematically, he came and told us: “guys, when you choose to say something to someone who is less expert than you, you have to have the clarity and the ability to choose the one thing that he needs to hear in that moment to actually progress. So faced with the type of beginner you have, you have to be able to understand whether he needs to understand the movement of the feet, or the hands, if he needs to understand the atmosphere, if he needs to loosen the body, if he's stuck for some reason and so he just needs to see what he's doing from a different perspective. To do something like this requires the experience of a Sensei, because he knows how to understand what that person can learn in the next 3 minutes, to make the switch to move forward, but the perfect execution of that technique will take 30 years.
So you can't tell everything to him at that moment, because at that moment he can only make 3 minutes' progress. Understanding which is 3 minutes and which is 30 years, it's for sure guys, the challenge of every teacher, it's very difficult to understand, it differs from person to person.
Try to apply it to your life, ask yourself in the things you do every day, especially when you are frustrated, faced with something and you go like: “ah I can't do this thing, this thing doesn't work, I can't get out of this situation, I can't solve this problem”. Some of these things you can learn in 3 minutes, but many of the things that frustrate you, many of the things that you can't do take much longer and you're the one who wants to learn them too quickly. And also remember something else, what happens often? That by confusing the things that can be learned in 3 minutes with the things that can be learned in 30 years, we end up not learning even the easy things quickly, because we can no longer see them clearly. So there is a great piece of advice, it is worth remembering, then I will put the link in the description where you can find these insights, and it comes from Henry Ford quotes: break things into many small pieces when they seem too difficult.
Do you want to learn an exercise? Do it in many small pieces, for instance, I have a piano degree, so for me music is always key. I have to study a piece, how do you study a piece? There is a page, you study it bar by bar, right hand, left hand. So what do I do? I take the first bar and repeat it 500 times with the left hand, those are the 3 minutes, I have to learn the positioning of the fingers, then I switch to the right hand, another 500 times and then I try to put them together, this is the little progress, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 3 minutes and little by little I will eventually get to the end of the page.
When I get to the end of the page I start to put everything together, I start to interpret, I start to make the ligatures, to give the colors to the piece, etc., but an interesting thing is that when I have it all ready there will definitely be some part that doesn't work, why? Because there is perhaps some technical aspect, some element that for me, given how I am, is particularly complex, for example I have always been very good at the so-called fast technique, that is, lots of notes all together, I have always been a disaster at chords and especially in progressions, such as sixth or third progressions, for others they are simpler. So when I had a sixth grade progression, that for me is the study that requires my whole life, it will always be the last thing I learn, the one that requires me to study the most. If I try to do it in 3 minutes, I'll take the piece and throw it out the window. And I tell you, I start with the part that comes easiest to me and little by little I start to elaborate. When I get to the difficult piece I break it in a million little pieces, I try two notes again, two notes a million times and sooner or later they come out. I won't try 50 all together, jut two. Even if the progression would require 50, two. And then I move on.
So every time you have a difficult task, every time you are faced with a challenge, every time you keep repeating the same thing over and over and go like: “damn I don't understand anything”, start asking you, is this a 3 minute thing or a thirty year thing? And after you have given yourself the answer, dismantle it into very small pieces, realize what you will carry with you throughout your life, which will be a continuous deepening, the one from which you will never emerge, but not because you don’t know how to do it, because when you learn how to do it, you understand that you will want to deepen it, you will want to deepen it, you will want to deepen it.
And what I learned instead in 3 minutes, cool, let’s move, next. And remember this, what we learn in thirty years, we cannot learn if we don't learn the 3 minutes lesson, but what we learn in thirty years is what then makes us the people we are, it is what gives us life lessons, it is what tests us with failure, because we fail many times before we get it, and it is what gives meaning to the practice we are doing.
Comment on the post of the episode on Instagram, if you have tried to divide your tasks into 3 minutes and thirty years, let me know if you have ever thought about it and if these tips, these points of view can be useful to you.
Thanks for joining me and see you next episode!