“Success is not final.  Failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts.”

                                                                                  - Winston Churchill

In my over four and a half decades of teaching and training in the martial arts, I have witnessed some incredible examples of students overcoming obstacles in their training and in their lives.  Injuries and illness, personal relationship challenges and financial difficulties are just a few of the difficulties I have seen my students be confronted with and overcome. 

While these instances are generally not experiences, we would intentionally ask for in our lives, they invariably are gifts as they help us to become better, stronger and more expanded than when we began our journey to confront them. 

One of my favorite stories to illustrate this comes from a student I had the honor of teaching for many years named Nabeel.

Nabeel came to our martial arts school when he was around 8 y...

“Success is not final.  Failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts.”

                                                                                  - Winston Churchill

In my over four and a half decades of teaching and training in the martial arts, I have witnessed some incredible examples of students overcoming obstacles in their training and in their lives.  Injuries and illness, personal relationship challenges and financial difficulties are just a few of the difficulties I have seen my students be confronted with and overcome. 

While these instances are generally not experiences, we would intentionally ask for in our lives, they invariably are gifts as they help us to become better, stronger and more expanded than when we began our journey to confront them. 

One of my favorite stories to illustrate this comes from a student I had the honor of teaching for many years named Nabeel.

Nabeel came to our martial arts school when he was around 8 y...