Episode 446 - Sifu Jeremy Roadruck
Sifu Jeremy Roadruck is a martial arts practitioner and instructor at Meng's Martial Arts of Centerville, Ohio. He is the host of the Parenting Program Show podcast.
We always get consent before we move forward. You can't coach someone who doesn't want to be coached or who's not asking for it.
Sifu Jeremy Roadruck - Episode 446
If you feel like your life is meaningless, has no direction, and you think you are born for a greater purpose rather than working on a boring job, what would you do? Sifu Jeremy Roadruck turned to martial arts, although later than usual, it changed his life for the better. Martial arts helped integrate and connect parts of himself. Today, Sifu Jeremy Roadruck is a martial arts instructor and owner of Meng's Martial Arts of Centerville, Ohio. He founded The Parenting Program which helps families to help parents and children against abuse. Sifu Roadruck has a lot to share so listen to learn more!
Show Notes
Sifu Jeremy Roadruck
You may find more about Sensei Jeremy Roadruck on his Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube channel.If you are interested in The Parenting Program, you may visit their website or listen to the podcast!
Show Notes
You can read the show notes below or download it here.
Hello there, welcome! This is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 446. Today, I'm joined by my guest, Sifu Jeremy Roadruck. My name is also Jeremy. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, host for the show, founder at whistlekick and a devout., passionate follower, devotee of the traditional martial arts. Why do we say traditional martial arts? Because we’re including everything. If you consider what you do to be traditional martial arts, we’re probably not going to tell you you're wrong and that’s why we do everything we do and you can see everything that we do at whistlekick.com and if you happen to wander into our store over there, you can use the code PODCAST15. That’s going to get you 15% off the new hooded sweatshirt or t-shirt or anything that you might find interesting. Remember, we bring you this show twice a week and you can find audio, not only at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com but in your podcast app, in our podcast app or even on YouTube. We’ve got some video stuff over there on YouTube too. You might want to check it out. Today’s guest, Sifu Roadruck, comes to us as a recording pro and gives us, what I can only describe, as a clinic on things that most of us are going to be concerned about with regard to martial arts. He has a way about him that I found really compelling and I'm sure you're going to enjoy this episode so let’s do it. Sifu Roadruck, welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Hey Jeremy, great to be here! I am very excited for this conversation.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, I'm excited too and I want to publicly apologize for a situation that the listeners wouldn’t’ve even known about but when I mess up, I own it. We didn’t do a great job the first time we had you scheduled and bobbled some things and dropped some balls that were being juggled and I appreciate your willingness to come back.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Yeah, absolutely. I used to work in software testing when I had a non-martial arts job and I know the exigencies and “joys” of technology and the layers of how things don’t always talk to each other and handshake and oh, hey, it was a misfire here, cool, let’s just figure it out. Right, martial arts, we learn to change and adapt in battle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Here we have another martial artist on the show who works in IT. There's something about it. I don’t know what it is but that was my background before whistlekick. I was in IT and I should probably have somebody go through and figure out what percentage of guests have jobs in IT. It’s a huge number.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Yeah, I think it partly must be just the way the mind works to deal with the processing and the layering and this sort of, they correlate. Being able to discipline your body, thinking a certain way, the flow of martial arts and being able to do that in the technical sense because you have to be able to move through. I used to test software for a company called Lexus Next and it's legal research software. There's user interface, authentication, there's always things that go on authentication and all these different types of handshakes then we go into query bases and databases and we’re pulling off what we got 8 layers of the layer cake, of all these different stuff. As a software tester, you got to figure out where's the breakage, how do I test through and hit the biggest impact with the least effort. That idea of efficiency definitely shows up in the martial arts and that’s why I see that pattern in the brain definitely correlates between the 2.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree. How do you get from, instead of asking you how you ended up in martial arts, I'm going to guess there’s some overlap in there. you didn’t just start training a couple years ago. This goes back.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Yeah, it's been a little while. A little bit more than half my life now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, let’s talk about that then. How did you find martial arts?
Jeremy Roadruck:
The real story, my wife only found out about it a few years ago and I'm not going to get into that just for legal reasons but, suffice it to say, when I was 20, a buddy of mine and I, I was working in a sandpaper factory and my life basically felt like it had no meaning, no purpose, no direction and I was one of 8, one of 10 kids, but my mom had 8 miscarriages so my brother and I were the only 2 that lived and so I had this feeling that my life has some greater purpose than working in a sandpaper factory and I had dropped out of college because I really didn’t know what I wanted to study and I didn’t want to waste my parents’ money because they were going to pay for it while I was there and they had a rule, either you're working or you're in college. You're not just going to sit around doing nothing so I was working in a sandpaper factory, hated it and it was more my attitude than it was the job although the job wasn’t that great either. In the winter time, I wouldn’t see the sun if I didn’t go outside for long because I would go up before the sun came up. I would finish after the sun sets so 5, 6 days a week, literally no sunlight. It warps your head a little bit, at least it did mine so I was looking for something to do. I got to do something bigger and I had always been fascinated by the martial arts, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism. I had done a bunch of cross-cultural religious studies when I was 12 because I had been to pretty unhappy places as a child so I always wanted to do martial arts so I grabbed a buddy of mine and I was like hey, let’s go check out to all the schools in Dayton. I mean, Dayton, Ohio and we went for pretty much every single school that was open and we could find in the phonebook and we would try and we would walk-in with all the information they had. They gave us information, they ignored us or just whatever the situation and I ended up studying with a gentleman that I'm still studying with. It's Grandmaster Benny Meng, founder of the Wing Chun museum and in the initial conversation, because my friends and I used to get together and we would swordfight with rake and hammers and we would beat each in high school and so, I thought I knew some stuff and I thought I had some things. I got to talking with him about what you got, what do you do and he said something I thought was very interesting and it definitely caught my attention which is I've been doing this since I was 10 years old. He was in his late 30s by then. No, actually, mid-30s. Wow, he was younger then than I am now. That’s awesome. By like 10 years, that’s awesomer. But he said something to me, I've been trying my whole life to prove this stuff wrong. See if you can do any better and that was pretty much the exact, perfect thing to say to make my ego show up and make me want to be like yeah, ok, I’ll prove you wrong. I'm good at that because I had a very prodigious intellect and a very big ego and a huge amount of scarcity in fear and so, me showing I could dominate someone intellectually, yeah, I'm all for that and that’s how I got started and pretty quickly, I got my butt handed to me pretty quickly. It was awesome and I remember one of my Kung Fu brothers, Master Chung, he was just a purple sash when I met him. Upper intermediate student and he had actually, I didn’t know it at that time, he was 5 years older than me, so he was 25, and he had been training since he was 5 with his dad who is one of the original members of the UDT and what later became the SEALs and his dad came back with some trauma, occasionally would flip the couch over and protect the house because somebody was coming in in his mind so Chung Go had kind of grown up with martial arts fighting. He and his brothers used to go beat up martial arts instructors to see if they were worth studying with and they were scared to try and fight grandmaster Ming. That’s how they started training with him when he first opened the school so I met Chung Go for the first time and I'm 5’11”, 140 pounds, scrawny white kid on the suburbs and he’s much bigger, stronger guy. Turns out he had 20 years of experience and he goes to shake my hand. Oh, hey, nice to meet you. Go shaking my hand like oh, I don’t shake hands. I go oh, I don’t shake hands. Oh, why is that? He’s curious, turns his head to the side. He’s like well, shaking hands is a symbol among warrior cultures you're not carrying a weapon but you train to be a martial artist so your whole body’s a weapon. That’s makes you a liar, I don’t believe in lying and so he hated me for about 3 years and wanted to just pound me into the dirt. He was Muslim at the time and prayed to Allah that I would last until sparring and I did and he beat the crap out of me, just every which way from Sunday up and down the training floor and every time he did, I was like cool. I would get up and be like how did you do that? do it again and I just come after him and I was just, you ever give a dog a toy like you want the toy, you actually give them a toy and I don’t want this anymore? It was kind of like that because it wasn’t any fun because he realized I wasn’t the egocentric jerk that I came across as and I didn’t put it all together until years later but the truth was I had such a negative self-opinion of me and I have felt like I was worthless and I knew you were going to reject me so let me just get it out of the way on my terms and make it happen now and stop all the pretense. No one likes me, I don’t like me, screw all of you and so, that was kind of the catalyst. What got me into the martial arts and studying what was then Wing Chun, shaolin, shiina, tai chi and has later become shaolin Wing Chun as we’ve done more research into the origin system for the last 24 years but it really helped me and I'm sure a lot of your audience, being in the martial arts helped integrate and connect parts of themselves that they had maybe been fighting with or not understanding or not fully appreciating and they found something in the study that as they created that power and that kill to control and to damage, the desire to do it went down. Once you have that skill or you have that power, that confidence grows, you don’t need to express it. you don’t need to show people because you already know what you have so it's not like hey, look at me, that insecurity goes away and that’s been, I think, the biggest gift. It's just that, as I get more mature, slow process, slow-going but as I get more mature and kind of own where I am, the more I'm just becoming more confident, more solid in myself and then, I'm able to be more helpful to the world around me and for me, that’s what it's really all about is just how to create powerful people because everyone is strong. There's no manipulation anymore. You don’t need it. we can help each other, we can grow each other and that, you see that in the best martial arts schools. Whatever system they practice, whatever style, the best schools, everyone’s there to build each other up and that’s not the competition. It's not look at me, I got the biggest set, look at me, I'm the biggest fighter, push each other down. So, for me, that’s what got me started, that’s what keeps me going.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good stuff. Now, you brought up, let’s say, challenges with self-esteem. We hear about these, I want to say even more frequently than time to time, we hear about them periodically on this show but it doesn’t tend to happen so early on in the conversation so I wonder if we can unpack that a little bit.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Were you that aware at the time that that’s how you were feeling and looking at the world?
Jeremy Roadruck:
I knew that I was angry. I knew that I was defensive. I knew that I was worthless but I was always in the offense. It's either I'm 100% or I'm 0%. There's nothing in the middle. I don’t half step. My first class, I took a trial in the interview, we did a trial class and the warm up was jumping jacks, push-ups, sit ups, squats. 50 jumping jacks, 50 pushups, 50 sit-ups, 50 squats so I bust out of that warm up and I go to the bathroom and throw up and that was like my first class and Grandmaster Ming saw me go by and he was talking with one of my Kung Fu brothers and he was like oh, he’s not coming back and then, 3 months later, I was training 7 days a week so I was coming up for special training on Sundays, I was just always there because I had found a place that was just so welcoming and no judgment and the only person judging me is me and being in that environment, kind of like when you go to the hot tub and it's warm and you can relax so existentially, I had found a place where I can just be accepted and it really boggled my mind because, at one point, I was with Grandmaster Ming, I asked him, don’t you guys ever get tired of me? And he’s like why? Do you get tired of you? I was like, in my head, I was like, absolutely, I do. I hate being me and he had this ability and he still has that ability to ask these reflexive questions that put you back in to yourself and you kind of unravel and go well, dang it. Hard knock questions and then, you're going to go and unpack some stuff so, for me, my personal journey really was at 5 and 6 was when I shifted into what I call the teenage brain and I see this with my students. When you have that 5, 6, 7, 8 year old and because I said it doesn’t work, positional authority doesn’t work, they have a teenage brain, adults have them too, it's like a cat and you motivate a cat by what motivates a cat usually food, shelter, safety. With a dog, you can uses negative reinforcement with a dog. You can yell at the dog and they can oh, my bad, I messed up, I'm sorry, forgive me but if you yell at cats, cats are like dude, what's your problem and you can hit a dog, nudge a dog, kick a dog, get their attention, they understand that. Because for them, that’s kinetic communication. Oh hey, I'm sorry. I shouldn’t be doing that. If you ever watched Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer, he nudges the dog to get their attention on him instead of whatever they're fixated on. With a cat, you smack a cat, they look at you like what was that?! You do it a second time, they're done with you. They're not going to be safe around you, they're not going to be comfortable around you because negative reinforcement with a cat just makes them not like you. Negative reinforcement on a teenager does the same thing and so, at 5, 6 years old, because I said quit working and I was basically, we lived in Saudi Arabia, military family and I went out where I wasn’t supposed to be and I was abused by a security guard and then, a year later, when we came back in the States, I was abused again by a couple of kids off the street and I buried those memories for about 20 years. I would get flashes very rarely. I would get flashes that something happened that I wasn’t sure of and in reaction to that, because I buried those memories, but I knew I couldn’t trust anybody else with my safety so I created a series of unconscious games and the first one is I have to survive so, for me, at 6, 7 years old, literally every interaction with anybody else, unconsciously, it's life and death so if you ever play tic tac toe with a 7 year old who thinks he’s going to die if he makes a mistake or if he loses, that’s a lot of intensity and a lot of energy in a small person in a young body, young mind and it backs people up and it made me see the reaction people had to me was like I'm a freak. I'm too much and so, and I created another game which is I have to hide and I don’t know what I should be so I created a third game which is I had to become a mimic. I had to study what everyone else was doing so that I can cue my behavior off the people around me so I became very good at reading a situation and blending into it and kind of being a chameleon and disappearing because if no one notices me, I'm the safest and if I standout for any reason whatsoever, that could get me killed. I always had my back to a wall. Never let anybody get behind me. I always knew entrances and exits and so, the adults trying to get me do stuff, you're not going to kill me so you can just shut up. I'm not interested and so, it created a lot of barriers and a lot of resistance and I had a lot of practice in these games. My mom when I was 14, we got into a fight over washing dishes. I'm not going to wash your effing dishes, I slammed on down and she goes to hit me in the butt because she’s mad at me and I block her from hitting me even though I hadn’t started learning martial arts yet but I got an arm and a leg, kind of like a low block and then, she’s upset and she actually gave me, what I realized now, was a cry for help because people either give you a loving response or a cry for help and so she gave me a cry for help and what she said was what happened to you? You used to be so nice when you were 4. That was a request for help. The way I received that was we don’t like who you are, we don’t like what you are, we don’t like what you can do, we like you better when you were 4 years old and dependent on us for everything and incapable of anything. So, I received that as a rejection of who I was, the 14 year old me, and a preference for a 4 year old me and so, I gave my mom a cry for help which was I effing killed him, deal with it and I walked away and so, both of us were asking for help from each other but we were both caught up with our own stuff so it's like we had dirty glasses. We couldn’t see past our own filters to realize the other person’s part and how they were communicating and so, I just had all these different crashes, all these different moments that kind of went on until I was about 26. I started martial arts when I was 20, by 26, I realized I'm the first me my parents ever raised. If they do it again, they’ll do it right. Oh man! All of a sudden, all those baggage dropped. All these expectations, all these recriminations, all these I'm upset because they didn’t know to react to me differently because I never told them. I never shared with them because how are they supposed to know if I don’t let them know, duh. Shocking, blinding, flashingly obvious and so, I went on, as the memories came back, right around 26, 27, the memories started coming back and so then, I went into another 10 year journey to unlock and integrate the lesson and re-integrate myself because, when I was younger, I really was, in a large way, disassociated. I didn’t connect to my emotions, empathy didn’t show up in me until I was a teenager because I was living in that scare, living in that fear. I had the structures for empathy, I did care about things but I spent so much time disassociating and stepping back and keeping my emotions in check and martial arts really was the vehicle that opened it a lot at all. It really came down to one question that Grandmaster Ming asked me in May. His teacher, Grandmaster Moy Yat, had come for a workshop but I couldn’t make to the workshop because I was at the factory working that day but I made it to the social time afterwards. We call that Kung Fu lite where I take the stuff from the training floor and out into the way you lived your life and use those principles makes life easier so we’re playing pool and grandmaster Ming heard me say something to myself about myself out loud that was negative, derogatory and he stopped what he was doing, looked me in the eye and said, don’t talk to yourself like that and then, he went back to playing pool and the way he said it, his timing, his Kung Fu, who I represented him as in my life at that moment, it clicked for me in a way that I'm sure my parents had told me the same thing but it didn’t click the same way and it made me, I went back to the factory the next Monday and I'm paying attention to how I talk to myself, what am I thinking about, what I focus on and I realized I'm this giant jerk to me, how can I possibly be nice to anyone else? I'm not nice to me, of course, I'm going to be throwing this stuff everywhere and that was the beginning of, I started having different conversation and that was the nice part of being in a factory is I could work for hours and not have to talk to anyone. I had all this time inside my head to talk to me because the job was fairly repetitive and I'm on my feet 8 hours a day and I'm doing basically therapy on myself. There's a book called What to Say When You Talk to Yourself which we recommend for our students. it's required for our blackbelt and it gets into the different levels of self-talking. I deduced that book on my own, 10 years before I read it and when I read it, well, that would have saved time and that was actually, that book was introduced me by Grandmaster Steven Oliver of Mile High Karate and he uses that in his program as well. That’s where I got the idea from, is from him but that book, I give it to all my parents because listen to the language, listen to the way you speak and in my school, there's 5 levels of self-talk. In my school, we deliberately focus on level 4 which is the level of the better you. If I say don’t run, that’s level 3, and I focus on what I don’t want, being negative, usually doesn’t work so then, level 4 is like keep going, run. Focus on the thing you do want. Instead of saying don’t run, I would just say walk and so we get the parents to start using that language because the language you create, the language you use, it influences the way you live your life. Are you having a trouble? Are you having a challenge? Are you uncomfortable? Are you decimated? Are you destroyed? Those words literally have power to change how you show up emotionally. You change the word doesn’t change the reality of the moment, it just changes your resources so then, am I challenged by the situation or am I called to do something about the situation? Because those are 2 very different polarities inside the human psychology, inside the human mind and so, that was the tipping point was don’t talk to yourself like that and then, when I started doing on the deeper work on myself and my psychology, I went to several Tony Robins seminars but I also went and got certified in hypnotherapy, neurolinguistics programming, neurostrategies, timeline therapy like how do we build our model of the world internally and how do we change it? How do we get the belief systems, the BS, where we want to go and so, that was this other side outside the martial arts but it completely dovetails because the shaolin origins is a branch of Buddhism called Chan and a lot of the personal development stuff matches exactly to the conversations that we have when we talk about Chan and Buddhism. The nature of mind, the nature of attachment, how we create our own suffering is a decision we create. Nobody can make you suffer except you. You can experience pain. Other people can cause you pain but only you can suffer. Only you have that power and it's a story, it's a hypnosis that you can do yourself so then, that means we can change it and if we can change it, that means we can influence it with others by the way we talk to them, by the patterns we use with them and so, that’s now, I'm moving into coaching families and kids outside the martial arts. Outside the training floor, how can we take these life lessons and impact that and transform families in as little as a couple of weeks? Totally transform their relationship, their communication, their understanding, their appreciation. That’s the direction of my life is moving now. It's really, really exciting and so that’s where you can take those pain because we all have pain. We all have challenges and if we work through it, if we take our ish and work it into the soil, it becomes fertilizer and bring forth new life, new flowers, the earth. Give it all the garbage you want, what's it do? Makes flowers, makes trees, makes food. If we can have that earth energy, whatever garbage we have in our lives, great! Work through your garbage, work it through the soul of your life. Put new seeds, you’ll plant stronger roots and create better fruit.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It sounds like you have a pretty unique martial arts program out there. We’ve had a lot of people on the show talking about the things that they offer beyond, let’s say, physical and traditional martial arts instruction but you're talking about a lot of other things and it sounds, here, you used the word but it's bringing to mind holistic.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Correct!
Jeremy Lesniak:
Does it seem like an appropriate word to describe?
Jeremy Roadruck:
Yeah, yeah! So, the nature of shaolin, when it's taught correctly, when it's taught from a deep understanding is 3 things and it's the same thing you got to have to be a good fighter. You have to be practical. That means keep it simple. You have to be complete, means you got to deal with everything but then, it has to be spontaneous. There's no time to get ready or to prepare like the higher level in the system is to live practically and spontaneously and completely and so, when we do a demonstration, usually what happens is Sifu will say ok, I'm going to do this, you're going to do that, blindfold, do this part over here. Jeremy, you narrate. Yes, sir and then, we go and do a demonstration and we explain the different skills, the different things that we’re doing. None of it rehearsed, none of it practiced. We just go and do the skill because that’s Kung Fu. That’s our Kung Fu. There's no let me get ready, let me think about. You got to have the answer. They throw the punch, well, let me think, how would I deal with the punch? It's too late. You already got punched. Time and space have already moved on. You have to have a spontaneous reaction in the right moment of time and space so everything inside Buddhism, inside shaolin, all about time, space and energy. We have a layer of training for practical, simple stuff because I don’t need to give you a PhD dissertation to deal with simple attacks. I just have to give you simple results. I get attacked by 5 kids, ok great. I'm not going to go 3-dimensional time and space. I'm just going to blast them because I'm so much bigger and stronger. You have the attributes, use them. Somebody close to my size, oh wait, I can't be quick, I can't be silly. I got to be efficient and so, inside the Wing Chun system, the whole study is about efficiency. The problem with a lot of Wing Chun people is they get focused in on the human distance, the trapping range. They forget about heaven and earth. The long range, the close range so I want to come in and do this middle distance and if you're aware of the middle distance but you just drop under me and tackle, now I'm on earth, uh-oh. Lose by lack of experience or you come in close to me and I can fade out and I can deliver kicks and strikes again. Uh-oh, because I'm trying to chase this middle distance. That’s an attachment. We got to be aware of, there is your personal style, what you're comfortable it and that’s fantastic and you absolutely have to know that. That’s what we call the shunin or the little idea then there's the reality of actual, the reality of the moment. That’s the deinim, time, space and energy, not your personal opinion but even the little idea, the big idea, we got to get past both of those to no idea, just be spontaneous. What are you going to do? Control time and space? Connect to their center of gravity? Connect to their center? How are you going to do that? Throw a punch, throw a kick, attack me, let’s find out and it sounds like a cop out but it's actually the truth because I have a bunch of theory and screens and filters built into my body, built into my awareness and as you move through that time and space to connect with me, is your elbow out, is your elbow in, are you attacking high, attacking low, are you feinting, do you telegraph, does your shoulder roll forward or back, are you going one side, are you squaring up, are your level changed? That’s all reality and so, it happens, you don’t try to process it consciously. You just exist in it and then, your body moves according to the reality of the moment so we have a developmental process then we have what we call a skill challenge because you got to learn to internalize that stuff to a non-compliant opponent and this is all the reality of it and it has been that way for centuries and when the martial arts left the military and it went to the civilian world, the consequences became less. The SEALs put it best. Second place is first place loser. There's no second place in the battle field. You're dead and the bad idea is to die. Once the life and death consequence went away, you can have more ideas come out. More ways to explore, you can have more “silliness” because the consequences aren’t there so you got these guys that are doing no touch knockout, they're doing chi power with their students, it's actually a form of hypnosis and belief system validation and they go oh, I can fight anybody. I’ll put $5,000 down and they get knocked out and it's like because you're attached. You separated from the reality and you get wrapped up in your own ego, in your own head so again, go back to Master Chung go. He beats the crap out of me. He really cuts down that ego when you’ve got 10, 15, 20 people that can pound you in the next week without even really paying attention, it doesn’t matter what your intellectual capacity is. You also have to think about your physical and your emotional as well as your intellectual. It's not one or the other so with our basic students, we talk about strength, flexibility, endurance and the question for them is is that a physical thing, a mental thing or an emotional thing or a spiritual thing or even a financial thing and the kids are like, the parents are like uh, physical? Can you have mental flexibility? Oh, oh, yeah, yeah. You have emotional flexibility and you have different responses to situation. Somebody does something I don’t like. Kids do something inappropriate and I yell at them but can I laugh with them and have humor and have compassion so if it can be a physical or mental or emotional, could it be financial? If you have more money than you need at the moment, could that give you financial flexibility? Can you have flexibility in your relationships? I'm married to my wife. We don’t have to be together 24/7 so that physical base, you show me you have physical control, great. Now, that leads to mental, emotional, social, financial relationship. How do you control yourself in those dynamics and even in relationships, there's personal, professional and intimate. That’s different too. we’re realizing this is just the reality of our lives and the martial art gives us this great physical foundation and when your life is on the line, don’t waste time, combat; but when you're with your kids, don’t waste time. You lose 10 years, doesn’t matter how much money you have, you will never get those 10 years back and your kids go through literally the most growth from 0 to 10 is the most amazing changes and differences. 10 to 16, 17 is another set of huge amazing changes. 17 to 20-something, the changes slow down. They're still really cool because they're gaining new power and abilities. That critical window, once they're up moving and talking to 3, 4 until 14, 16. Those 10 years are literally the most important in your kids’ lives and the average American worker, breadwinner, father-person, that’s their critical working years. It's like a 10 to 12-year window where they're working, they're building their career, they're getting their finances solid and you lost time with your kid. I do a Facebook show Wednesday, 8:15 eastern standard and we go live eating dinner with my family and we talk about our magic moments of the week because every study ever done shows, when kids spend more time with their parents and they share values and they connect especially over food, the kids just perform better, their lives are better. They're emotionally more centered, they're more connected and so, that’s something we do deliberately and then, we model it for other families on purpose because sometimes people don’t know how to sit and have a healthy conversation. Put the screens away, look each other in the eyes and actually talk to each other and all of that comes from martial art. Be present. When a bad guy attacks you, you can't be distracted. You can't be thinking about oh, I'm going to do my laundry next week. You got someone trying to open your head. You got to be here. That’s that being practical. Be spontaneous. That’s the here and now is be spontaneous. Don’t be somewhere else. You got to be present. You got to be complete. That’s the reality. Any good fighter is going to understand that and go yeah, that makes sense. Even if they didn’t language it that way before, they're going to make sense and it simplifies so be practical, be spontaneous, be complete. You need that to be successful fighter. You need that to be a successful husband, daughter, wife, friend, business owner, human being. Do the opposite. Don’t be practical. Be impractical, live in fantasy land. What do you do if you get attacked by 37 ninjas with machine gun? That’s easy. You die. You make friends with 37 ninjas with machine guns, duh? Don’t make them mad. What is that idea? Be practical versus be impractical. I said being spontaneous. Schedule everything to death and never have time because you're too busy looking over your schedule to see if you have time to schedule the schedule. Like when I worked in the corporate world, let’s have a meeting about our meeting to find out why we’re not getting anything done. Maybe because I'm in 8 hours of meetings and I'm only here 8 hours a day. Maybe that’s why it's the problem and then, don’t be complete. Be incomplete. Leave stuff off. I don’t want to deal with that. That’s always a great idea so we see these patterns and for us, as we move through the layers of the system, we move through layers of efficiency, as you kind of gear up, you start to become more complete, more practical, more spontaneous so we have a 3-layer wondering, awareness and focus. We have no idea, you have no clue. Things just happen because the man is out to get me. I have never get a man-check, I’ll let you know. I've had a car repossessed. I've lived in my school but I never get a man-check so why do things happen. First step is illusion. No awareness of time and space and the second part, we call san kyun means separate. I see the time and the space and the energy that they're separate things so we break that into separate things called awareness and understanding. To say it another way, I don’t know what I don’t know. Awareness, I know what I don’t know. Understanding, I know what I know and the highest level, we call wang kyu, where Wing Chun came from is the idea of everlasting. I've internalized. Not only do I know what I want to do and I can actually do anything. That’s when time, space and energy become one. We call that focus. You're just in the moment. You don’t have to think to breathe, you just breathe. You don’t have to think the skill, you are the skill and that’s that unconscious competence. I don’t know what I know. I am the skill. You see that in the highest level athletes. That’s also the problem for some of the highest level athlete. They're horrible coaches because they’ve internalized the skill. They don’t know how they do it, they just do it. Why’d you do that? Because…as they think about it, because of these things. They lay out like these 87 things that they can't teach anyone so teachers are usually consciously competent. I know what I know and then, the highest level performers are usually unconsciously competent. I don’t know how I did that. I just did it so these are all part of the thoughts and part of the culture of our system. We’ve got schools now in 22 countries, 22 cities around the world because the idea integrates, it connects a lot of stuff together if that makes sense.
Jeremy Lesniak:‘
Twas a lot there and far more than we have time to unpack and of course, that’s the beauty of this show. We give a lot of space.
Jeremy Roadruck:
We can always do a second episode, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think we would need a lengthy series, my friend. I want to make sure that the people listening can understand and start to wrap their brain around your perspectives because you're talking on a number of different levels and a lot of what you're saying makes a lot of sense if you’ve experienced but for people who have not experienced some of these things, some of what you're saying might be a little intangible. You said woo-woo, I was going to be a little bit more respectful with the word because the things you're talking about are things I believe. Let’s say intangible, difficult to comprehend or imagine so give us a quick rundown. If somebody came and joined your school, what does the first few months look like with regard to what you're learning and how you're teaching it.
Jeremy Roadruck:
We tend to start to label different distances. There's different metaphor, right? It depends on a student if it's a child versus an adult, we’re going to back off the theory first and get more experience first but let me get you some hands-on, get you some understanding and then I’ll explain what was going on, the logic behind it versus trying to get you to understand everything and then you're going to be analyzing too much and never actually build anything so if I take somebody who comes in, they have no experience in martial art in the past. The first thing we’re going to talk about is the idea of self-control. Self-control is when my mind controls my body and my emotion and in our Kung Fu family, we have specific definitions for everything but we have specific meaning behind it and then, we want to get you the experience. This idea of self-control, my mind controls my body and my emotion, the way I explain that to my students because I do this in my actual first intro as they come in, I say hey, we’re going to do some interactive stuff and what I’d like you to do is that I’d like you to do is say some things back to me, make sure we’re on the same page. Can you handle that? They may say yes, sir, they may say uh-huh, they may nod their head, I let that go. Okay, great. Can you stand, shoulders up, nice and tall almost like a superhero and then repeat after me and say I feel terrible and they kind of look at me, maybe giggle and they're like I feel terrible? I’m like great, do you actually feel terrible or you feel good? I feel pretty good. Mom, Dad, they look terrible, they look pretty good? Pretty good! Absolutely! Now, can you hollow your chest, put your chin in the hole at the end of the floor, take a deep breath, let it out slow, flop your hands like a dead fish. By the way, I've never had a kid say dead fish don’t flop. They would ignore that but flop your hand like a dead fish, look at the ground, now, real slow say I feel wonderful and they say it and I say do you feel wonderful or do you feel kind of smooshed? Kind of smooshed. Me too! So, shoulders back, head up, nice and tall. Now, repeat after me, stand just like a superhero and repeat after me, I feel wonderful and they say, I feel wonderful and I say, which one felt the best? A) Standing up tall saying I feel terrible, B) all smooshed down saying I feel wonderful or C) standing up saying I feel wonderful and the kid will say C and I go fantastic. You just said yes, you speak Spanish and they kind of look at me, if they're a kid, they look at me kind of weird. Their parents might laugh. If they have a teenage brain, they might laugh at that joke or they’ll acknowledge I just made a joke and that’s one of my tests to find out if you're a teenage brain or a child brain because teenage brain handles language on two levels, child brain does not and I need to know that because how I run my intro, is it going to be traditional authority, are you part of the pack type of energy or is it going to be more like I'm dealing with a cat versus a dog. I got to know that because I got to explain things slightly different but then, what I’ll do next after I've done that little trial balloon is okay, nice and tall, pat yourself in the chest, do you feel weak or you feel strong? I feel strong. Great, now flop down, tap yourselves, stronger or weaker? Weaker. Fantastic, so when you're pushed down and you tap yourself and you feel, we call that negative energy when you feel small, sad and cold inside. Now, stand up nice and tall and tap yourself. Feel stronger? Now, we call that positive energy. You feel warm, you feel big, you feel happy inside. Which one do you like better? Small, sad, cold or warm, big happy? Most often, they’ll say warm, big, happy then I’ll say me too. Can we work on that together? And the kid will say yeah, nod or whatever and I’ll say give me a high-five. They give me a high-five, they turn to mom and dad and I’ll say we always get consent before we move forward. You can't coach someone who doesn’t want to be coached, who’s not asking for it and I'm going to use that later when I talk about consent and how we work with our students and touching the appropriate physical touch, good touch, bad touch, stranger danger, all that kind of stuff. that’ll be, remember when we did the intro and we talk about how we always get consent? We don’t just run up and give people hugs, we ask. Hey, can I give you a hug or we look at them and go hug? Or something. Get that acknowledged and their permission because then we’ll also talk about 5 love languages later, we’ll talk about making sure we don’t have to give great aunt Bertha a hug and a kiss when she smells like stink that overwhelms the kids. The kids should be the boss of their own body. No one should touch them without their permission and that ends with family get-togethers or church or whatever it may be. So, I have some areas that I can sidebar or base, again, teenage versus child. Teenage I’ll explain a little bit more on that consent side, child I won’t but then after we talk about this idea, I say to mom and dad, that’s where we begin. It's positive energy, negative energy because you can see it in a person. When their shoulders are back up, nice and tall, do you treat people bad or do you treat people good? Good, yeah me too but if you feel like garbage, how do you treat people? Bad or good? Bad. Yeah, that’s how most people do it. A black belt would be able to do it. Even if they feel bad, they can still treat other people well because they know how to control their emotion so we want to practice this standing up nice and tall, we call that positive energy because you can give what you have. Now, can you take your right hand, make a fist and can you say the body? Can you show me your left hand, make a palm, can you say the mind? Who should be in charge? The body or the mind? And I do that with my hands, I'm gesturing. I do this traditional Chinese bow or when my hands on this or my hands with the palm on top and they’ll show me that and then I’ll say who should be in charge? The body or either the mind? Fantastic, now put your hands in front of your heart. When we bow, we push our hands away and what we just did is the most important skill in martial arts. Can you say self-control? Fantastic, raise one finger in the air with their finger. Can you say self-control is when my mind controls my body and my emotions? And then, that right there becomes the base point. Once we have defined that, now the way we’re going to practice it, can you say yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am, no, ma’am? First 4 magic phrases, we have 28, that’s for mom and dad and if at home, you don’t want to be that formal, you can use yes, mom, no, mom, yes, dad, no, dad because little hinges swing big doors so we get accountable to what we say, makes it easier to be accountable with how we act because the words fill us closer to ourselves with what we got going on. We got our behavior under more control so I use sirs and ma’ams with everybody and I didn’t say sir and ma’am to anyone until I was in the army at 22 so it's this idea now. So, I say sir and ma’am is about my self-control. It's not about the other person controlling me. It's about me controlling me and that works, by the way, with kids and teenagers. They understand the game and I can get them to start saying so for the rest of our time together, can we work on sirs and ma’ams together and they’ll say yeah, whatever. Excuse me, how do we answer if we have self-control? Is that a yes, sir, no, sir? Yes, sir. Thank you, high-five, sir? I’ve been using sirs and ma’ams the whole time because that’s how I operate because I've already modeled what I wanted from them and that’s kind of the very, very beginning of how I work with people and I anchor in a couple key concepts. Self-control, my mind controls my body and my emotions, then we have skills we have to practice because then, I’ll test their understanding and I’ll go if I have somebody over here and they say something mean to you and you hear it and you get upset, is that self-control or is that ear control and I touch my ear and wiggle when I'm saying is that ear control and then they might say what they say but the goal is well, it's ear control. Exactly right, high-five, you're brilliant. If they say something mean to you is because they feel big inside or not so much? Not so much, Sir. Very good, Sir. I like that, high-five. You're exactly right. Now, you have a choice and you can accept that and feel bad with them which helps nobody or you can redirect it or you can ignore it. You blow their circuits, they say something mean to you, you say something nice back to them and it surprise them because they're treating people bad, they're expecting to be treated bad back and when you treat them nice, they're like wait, what? It's confusing and so, again, we have that choice and that’s where our real power is as martial artists. Basic level as I can be physically and that’s a wonderful skill, it's very important. Next level up, like me, we have an exchange of energy. Maybe it's argument, maybe it's probably not, I don’t know but I can change your mind, that’s the second level of achievement. The highest level, you hate me, you want to kill me, you want to destroy me, we have an interaction, I change your heart and we become friends, that’s the highest skill but mom and dad, before we start and change people’s hearts, we got to know how to change their mind and we got to learn how they can control their body for our own sake and so now, I'm layering in some of the deeper mindset stuff we’ll be doing over time because I don’t want to teach kids how to stop a bully, I want to help them be bullyproof. You can't bully me without permission. I don’t care about your opinion. Have a nice life, go F yourself. I don’t want a 7-year old to have that mindset but I want him to have that strength though, I don’t want the go F yourself. I just want them to just say your opinion doesn’t matter to me and I'm sorry you're in a bad place. Let me help you and we can be compassionate and so, that’s not even, we haven't even put hands on anything yet. This is just the basic psychology we are building into our students then when we start working on the physical skills, we’re going to be working on things like front kicks, jabs, crosses, bridge hands, high block, low block, inside, outside, middle blocks, jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts, hammer fists, wrist releases, basic movement on the ground, basic kicks. We got a variety of fundamental skills and then we’re working on getting them to build their coordination, their listening skills, answering yes, sir, yes, ma’am and becoming aware of that distance. Once they can do a punch in the air, once your space looks good, I want you to go hitting stuff because I want you to build your energy but ladies and gentleman, if you punch with your hand like this and you bend your wrist back, are you going to help your hand and you're going to build your punch or are you going to break your punch? Break your punch, sir. Exactly. We don’t want to start with too much energy until we have the proper alignment, then we create structure so moms, dads, we kind of need the guidelines before we start crashing into each other. Before we really start playing the game, we got to be clear on our guidelines. We have to be clear on our accountability. That makes sense, moms and dads? Thank you ladies, thank you gentlemen. So, again, I'm coaching the parents and then getting the kids to start self-assessing. I’ll have somebody throw a punch and wait, wait, everybody stop and take a look. Is this a good punch? Oh, it is a good punch. High five! You should go punch something with it but when we start punching, punching to explode or punching to touch? To touch, sir. Exactly, right. You can always control your energy and again, I'm pretty much framing the expectations and I got them out there, we start hitting some stuff. With the adults, because I have the Krav background, we’ll get out the tombstones which is like a half-size like a Muay Thai pad but has handles on the ends and we’ll work harder energy on those punches and those kicks. We’ll work wrist releases. With wrist releases, it's the idea to break free and take control of the moment with my hands free because I don’t want to be attached. I don’t want to grab the bad guy. If I grab you, I'm grabbing me and when high emotion, intelligence goes low, when you grab somebody and then you're on high emotions, it's very hard to let go. It's called weapon fixation. It happens with sticks and knives and guns. We’ll cover that in level 3 in black belt, pre-framing further into the program. There's this idea when we do the wrist releases, you grab me and I break free, I want to maintain my freedom and my flexibility and then, we’ll run through variations of different types of grabs. We’ll do punches and kicks and then randomly grab people. We’ll do chokes. Chokes against the wall, for the adults I’ll throw in bear hugs because I found out bear hug defense with 5-year olds was dangerous because they’ve got big heads and little bodies so I have to move that out but that’s kind of the foundation that we’re throwing in some of these ideas, some of the deeper wisdom to start planting seeds that we’ll harvest later and I just want to get in to the experience. Slow it down, show me the mirror, show somebody else how to do something. What could they do better? What could they do well? Teaching the students to be good finders, teaching them how to be strong on the inside leaders, let each other have chance to do things, how to encourage each other and then, we have to earn stripes at home doing things like reading and practicing martial arts and doing chores, working on self-discipline, healthy living so there's things I have to do outside of the martial arts school. They bring in a high level report card, they get awards. Adults bring in white papers they wrote for work, promotion, employee of the month. Those are things they earn bonus stripes for that too because I want to create an environment where we’re celebrating each other’s success because if I get excited for your success, it makes it easier for me to get excited for my own success and if I'm surrounded by people who are doing amazing, my peer group is amazing, for me to hang out with them unconsciously, I guess, I must be amazing too because they’re hanging out with me and I'm hanging out with them and like the things I would like so we’re all awesome and so, we create that emotional energy and then we’re doing burpees, jumping jacks, pushups, sit-ups, squats, planks, all different kinds of calisthenics to just work on our fitness and have fun, build our flexibility and that’s really a lot of fundamental. We don’t do sparring in our basic program because basic is about hurt the bad guy and get away. In our black belt training, we start getting into sparring because fighting skill takes more time versus control the situation and extricate yourself so we make a big distinction between self-defense versus fighting. Self-defense is safe. Fighting do damage. Self-defense, can I apologize and walk away? Is that self-defense? No, sir, yes sir. Yes, sir. Absolutely. Sometimes the best thing to do is just say my bad, I'm out and you leave. You walk into a room, everybody stops what they're doing and they stare at you and you're like oh, that’s right, I forgot. You turn right back around and walk out of the room. Not even going to have that conversation. I don’t need to be here. My safety is more important than my feelings or their ego or even my ego. Yeah, stay safe. Does that help kind of frame some of the more esoteric stuff into a little bit more tactical stuff or tangible?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely and I think the next piece and just, given the time, I'm guessing this is the last piece we’re going to get into today before we start to wind down. I suspect there are a lot of people listening who are saying yeah, this sounds good. It's resonating for them. I can visualize a lot of nods out there and for those people who are instructors or maybe, they're school owners, people who have some say over curriculum and they're looking at what you're saying, they're probably going to go to some of the links that we’re going to put up at the show notes and they're going to be following along and saying I want to do stuff like this, I want to start to bring some of these elements in to my programs. Where would you suggest they start?
Jeremy Roadruck:
Really, for me, it's how are you layering your life skills into your teaching format so that they are congruent so as an example, there's somebody I know in the martial arts, they go through 6 stances: Horse stance, front stance, back stance, point stance, slide stance, cross stance. They tie each of those stances to an emotion like horse stance is anger, front stance is jealousy, back stance is greed and I get what they're doing kind of but there's no actual correlation between that physical movement and that emotional state so what about in a sparring drill and you're too excited to hit someone, that could be greed or one of your classmates is leading class and you keep trying to cut them off because you want to lead the class, that could be jealousy. You kind of look at what is the behavior, the physical, and then, the mental the emotional, how do they link or how do they stack so they're congruent and they work together and then the second thing is look at the process you're using because I use a rotating curriculum so I have the, literally the entire school learning everything at the same time and that’s, not everybody in my Kung Fu family does that. They use more of a block 1, level, rank 1, grade 1. You’ve got so many requirements and then grade 2 is a progression of the same stuff and grade 3 is a progression so you have to go 1 to 3. In my basic, I have an A and I have a B and they're mutually independent so it's an example of Block A, we’re doing that right now, we’re doing jab-cross and ridge hand so jab and cross, lead straight, rear straight, ridge hands are circular strikes and then in Block B, we’re going to do hooks, upper cuts and hammer fists. So, by the end of that, as a basic student for fundamental self-defense, you’ve got jabs, crosses, hooks and hammer fist and ridge hands, you got a couple different tools to choose from to use to defense yourself based on distance, angle, on things like that but it's not like I'm doing 15 different combinations of whatever because in my black belt training, the first block is level 1. Level 1 is C, D, E, F and you can learn those in any sequence. You can do C, D, E, F; you can do D, E, F, C. You can do F, C, D, E. You got to have all 4 before you progress but you don’t have to have 1 before the other and so, we do strike combinations in that block as well and there’re 16 of them. 4 sets of 4. The first set is jab and cross, jab-cross with a step slide forward, jab-cross with a step side striking to the lead side, I'm sorry, to the back side and then, jab-cross circling to the opposite side so we have directional movement. 5 through 9 is jab-cross-hook, jab-cross-hook-hook, jab-cross-hook-uppercut, jab-cross-hook-hook-uppercut- uppercut. So, similar but a little bit different. That was 5 through 8. 9 through 12, that is hook-uppercut, make sure you cover because we’re on the hook of the front hand so you got to cover then throw the hook and the uppercut so cover-hook-uppercut, cover-hook-hook-uppercut, cover-hook-uppercut-uppercut, cover-hook-hook-uppercut- uppercut so, again, related to the previous but different and then the last set, 13 through 16, that is jab-backfist-jab-hammer fist-jab-spinning either backfist or hammer fist and then number 16 is cross-backfist or hammer fist, whichever you want. So, they're all related but they're different sequences. Now, somebody else could do, oh, we’re going to do a sequence where it's going to be like a jab or a cross and then, like a kick or a punch or a block and they're going to stack up a bunch of stuff. Just as yourself, what is it you're looking for. Do they really need that based on what layer of training you’re going through and then, the 3rd thing is just, how can you set it up where you have students helping each other as quick as possible because when they start showing other people how to do things, they internalize it faster, they internalize it deeper and you have to be careful you don’t build the ego of oh, I'm teaching class. No, no, you're just assisting your classmates but Sean Covey says it best which is if you want to learn anything, teach it so when you start explaining or regurgitating, it forces you to have internalized better and so, you just, what can I have my students show each other how to do? I can have an 8-year old teach a 7-year old how to do a jab-cross. All the details won’t be there, that’s not their job. Their job is to help get them in the ballpark. I or my instructors will come back and polish it and give the specific detail so when I have an 8-year old who can help a 7-year old, what happens to the 8-year old’s confidence and what about the pride mom and dad see when they see their 8-year old helping a 7-year old and then, I can take that and say and now, because you can do that with your classmates here, you can also do that at home with siblings, with mom and dad, at school with classmates and so, we’re creating that parallel track where we expand context. Instead of I have to go to the martial arts school to practice martial arts, my life starts to become a vehicle to practicing the principles of my martial arts. Whether it's a grappling system we call earth, whether it's a kick and punch system we call heaven, whether it's a joint control system we call human, whether it's a mix of all that stuff, it's all good. All of it has value. It's less about the mechanism, the mechanics of what you're doing, it's the culture you're creating and for me, that’s my area, I feel, is my area of genius. It's how do you cross-contextualize? I’m always available if people have questions. It took me quite a while to figure out my rotating curriculum and then, look at what you're getting. People are getting bored, they're getting frustrated, the whole school is not doing good on this part. That’s a call, you need to change it so be open to feedback and adjustment because it's not about being right, it's about getting the result and that allows you more freedom to adapt. The ancient Chinese didn’t do, they didn’t have clipboard so if I get attached to the clipboard, well, we don’t do that in our style or are there principles and concepts of blunt weapons that you can map over into a clipboard and you can kind of extrapolate so that way we’re not stuck on it has to be this certain way. I remember, I was at a workshop for National Association for Professional Martial Artists and they had Grandmaster Steven K. Hayes and he was talking about traditional uniforms and how people, these ones studied they have ritualized way of taking the uniform off and they would bow to it and do all these stuff and then, later you study Japanese culture and you realize the white outfit that they wore was actually what they wore under their robes so it's basically their underwear so you just folded up your tidy whities and bowed to your tidy whities. Dude. So you start to realize some of the culture, you start to let some things go. Helpful?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I'm digesting it. There's been a lot here and I'm…so, I’ll share this with you. You know from having a podcast, listeners, you may not realize this but in my role interviewer, I end up in kind of 2 different spots. I'm interviewing and I'm keeping the conversation going but I'm also listening and it can be challenging for me to switch back and forth between those two different mindsets and that’s a lot of what's been going on today is I'm trying to drink it all in but I'm trying to digest it quickly enough to respond to when it's time for my talk. Time for me to talk again, right? The words aren’t coming. I'm still back at like minute 20.
Jeremy Roadruck:
That’s a quality problem, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
It is, it is. It is a fantastic problem.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Yeah, so the moniker I have is the Kung Fu guy because, for us, everything is Kung Fu. Kung Fu is skill and ability developed through hard work over time so everything we do as a human being, if you can practice it and get better, that is Kung Fu. It's not violence, it's not fighting. It's literally everything. You can get better at breathing if you practice it, you can get better at pooping if you practice it so it's all skill and for us, it's very easy to jump at a different context so personal development, well, of course. Why did the ancient monks study fighting? Because the caliber of the person, not the caliber of the weapon that matters, right? and so, how do we elevate the human being, that’s really why the monks and shaolin started studying fighting in the first place is they found that it is the most efficient way to develop stronger, more focused, more disciplined people and basically, kill the ego. Get over yourself. Martial arts either kills the ego or builds the ego and our particular approach is kill the ego. Not through violence, not through force like I must destroy your ego but just, allowing you to start realizing the situation and go, oh, I'm separating myself from the reality of the moment. I'm causing my own headache, my own heartache. If I harmonize, life gets easier. Yeah! Yeah!
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome!
Jeremy Roadruck:
So, it's back to playing that game. It opens up to a lot, for me especially, literally, everything connects. I can take anything anywhere and I can teach it pretty much to anybody who speaks my language so I had a teacher ask me to stop teaching algebraic notation to 6 year olds because it was messing with her and I was only doing pluses and minuses but I was teaching them parenthetical, orders of operations but only using pluses and minuses and hiding the variable or playing detective games. For me, that was just fun but I also got in trouble with my teacher in second grade. I taught myself cursive 6 weeks early and I taught the girl next to me and I got in trouble but it's in the book. It's not hard.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, I get it. I can relate to it. I understand it completely. We’re going to have you back. I’d put money on that.
Jeremy Roadruck:
Ok, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Let’s wrap this one up and then, we can talk about next time and actually, there's something and I’ll disclose this here because it's the perfect time to talk about it. I'd be real brief but listeners, we’re looking to start reconnecting with the guests on specific topics so I'm asking all of you, what would you like us to have Sifu back to talk about. Not necessarily a part 2 as we extend this conversation but something a little more topic-based. Something that would go more on a Thursday show so let me know, social media, email. You guys know how to get to me. I’m going to ask you, Sifu, how do people find you? Social media, websites, email, whatever you got, let’s hear it.
Jeremy Roadruck:
I'm probably most active, my professional profile on Facebook, is Facebook.com/jeremyroadruck. That’s where I'm building back direction because we don’t have infinite likes and we usually have 500 friends or 5,000 friends. You can also find me at Facebook.com/jeremyr.thekungfuguy. I'm on LinkedIn. The only Jeremy Roadruck online so anywhere you type in. Jeremy Roadruck, you will find me. There's only about 2 or 300 of us in the world anyway. So, I'm on Facebook, a couple places. I'm on Instagram, @kungfuguyjeremy. I’m on YouTube, YouTube.com/kungfuguyjeremy and then, my main website is The Parenting Program and that’s where I'm building the direction for coaching families and kids and for me, really, it's about how to transform, how to give kids the ability to speak up and own their voice and create their own emotional safety because everything you see going on in the world is fear. People are terrified and they're reacting, living in effect and it's driving everybody crazy on some level so how do you have self-confidence? How do you create an emotional safety in yourself but also in others? Those two things will heal the world. I am a hundred percent certain on that and that’s my mission and so, the martial arts is one of the best ways to do it but I can’t teach everybody. I'm in Dayton, Ohio in a box. I got to get out of that box and that’s why the other vehicles.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Makes sense. Awesome and as we head out today, you’ve offered up some absolutely amazing stuff and stuff that I suspect people are going to be rewinding, maybe not literally because we don’t have cassette tapes anymore but rewinding and listening to it over again.
Jeremy Roadruck:
I said showing your age.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely! Showing my age. I have no problem doing that but if you send us out with some words of wisdom, if we were to digest this down into a brief nugget, what would you offer up to people?
Jeremy Roadruck:
Trade expectation for appreciation and what I mean is when you put expectation on yourself, when you put on expectations to others and they don’t live up to your expectations, you get upset for your rules about their behavior. If I expect my wife to do the dishes and she doesn’t, I get mad. If she expects me to do the dishes and I don’t, she gets mad. Versus if we appreciate, hey, I appreciate you doing that, she doesn’t have to do anything. In fact, if she does anything, I appreciate it. If we live in that place, both of us get to be a lot happier and we find a lot more reasons to be excited for ourselves and for other people and especially your children so tell people what they're doing right. It's easy to find out what they did wrong. Focus on what they're doing right and they do that, it's awesome. I appreciate that, thank you and watch the transformation yourself and the people around you because I lived in a place for a very long time, a lot of expectation and just angry all the time and again, you put your own suffering so again, appreciation is the key.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I love when a guest comes on and they really don’t even need me. I just kind of hang back and I get to listen, maybe ask a question or two and learn. It puts me in the same place as all of you out there and it's fun and that only happens when you have a really knowledgeable, really comfortable guest, so, Sifu Roadruck, thank you for being so knowledgeable and so comfortable here on martial arts radio. If you want to learn more about our guest for today’s episode, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com episode 446. You can see social media, links, web links, photos, transcripts, a whole bunch of good stuff and if you want to follow us on social media, we’re @whistlekick everywhere. You can support us by sharing this or another episode, leaving us a review somewhere or making a purchase at whistlekick.com. Don’t forget, use the code PODCAST15, it will get you 15% off everything over there. You can email me jeremy@whistlekick.com, we keep it simple but until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day!