Martial Arts Teaches You How to Respond Intelligently

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Category : Attitude★Martial Arts

Martial arts is about much more than merely physical exercise. The real study of martial arts is about exposure to mindfulness and how to become a better person in your everyday life. A quote from Bruce Lee sums up martial arts entirely:

“The martial arts are ultimately self-knowledge. A punch or kick is not to knock the hell out of the guy in front, but to knock the hell out of your ego, your fear, or your hang-ups.”

Although through martial arts people learn how to defend themselves and gain the ability to hurt other people, the real key to martial arts is learning how to respond intelligently to hard situations. This is achieved by providing students of martial arts with the ability to overcome some of the life’s challenges. Whether the student is a three-year-old boy or an eighty-year-old woman, martial arts can help to improve mindfulness in stressful situations throughout life.

5 Conditions Martial Arts Helps to Improve

In assisting people who struggle with everyday confrontations in their lives, martial arts improves standard conditions which can lead to a clearer thought process and the ability to make an intelligent decision when confronted with a desperate situation. Five primary conditions martial arts helps to improve include:

  1. Depression

Depression is extremely common among adults, with almost one in ten adults suffering from major depression at some stage in their life. Signs of depression include fatigue, pain, and struggles with negative emotions. Even if you feel there is no light at the end of the tunnel, martial arts can help and is proven to combat depression.

  1. Anxiety

Ordinary tasks can become a huge deal if you suffer from anxiety. Being anxious can produce many adverse side effects and prevent a healthy and enjoyable life. However, the mental lessons learned through martial arts can provide you with discipline and focus, helping to reduce feelings of anxiety. These experiences and the reduction in anxiety can lead to more intelligent decision making in stressful situations.

  1. Aimlessness

Many people reach a stage in their life when they feel like they’ve lost direction or feel adrift with no escape. Feeling like you’re simply going through the motions in life can be tough, but martial arts can help you rediscover your spark. Finding that passion again and reconnecting with your inner spirit will reinvigorate the mind and lead to smarter decision making.

  1. Stress

Daily life can be extremely stressful, and the effect of stress can stretch far beyond the day to day with long term stress responsible for heart disease, strokes, depression, and much more. Martial arts helps to reduce stress levels, relax, and refocus, leading to the energy and desire to deal with everyday confrontations that would have stressed you out before.

  1. Loneliness

Feelings of loneliness can often lead to misplaced aggression and poor decision making. Upon taking up martial arts, you will instantly become part of a community of like-minded people and as you learn and grow together will form lasting bonds.

How Martial Arts Changes Your Response to Difficult Situations

The five conditions listed above can all contribute to poor decision making during a difficult situation or a conflict. However, martial arts teaches peaceful conflict resolution by improving these conditions and providing you with the ability to have confidence in your choices. Another aspect of martial arts which changes how you may respond to a difficult situation is the physical side. By learning how to defend yourself properly and becoming confident in defending yourself in any situation, you will gain the confidence to use other options to attempt to diffuse a situation first.

Martial arts teaches you to properly defend yourself but also demonstrates how to use mindfulness and intelligence to reach a non-violent resolution to a conflict. By improving and dealing with depression, anxiety, aimlessness, stress, and loneliness you will have the confidence to attempt to de-escalate a situation, and with the backup of your physical martial arts training, you will have even more confidence to try every other solution first.

The most important lessons learned in martial arts relate to the mind and its well-being. Once you have mastered your mind, you will find solutions to situations and problems that you may have never imagined before.

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