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| The seven virtues facing outward with five additional virtues on the inside. |
What Bushido isn't (Part 1) was about the opposites of the virtues of Bushido.
The idea was to explain what we want to avoid in order to enrich our understanding of the seven virtues.
In my post about Beyond Bushido, I defined and explained five additional virtues that expand on the seven virtues of Bushido. These are less about your actions and more about the internal character traits that motivate them.
Self-Respect over Self-Doubt
Self-Doubt will infect every part of your being if you let it.
Self-doubt is when you let your confidence slip and paranoia guides your own view of yourself.
When you doubt yourself, you'll question your own abilities, both mental and physical. Whenever you are trying to do anything slightly complex or difficult, your self-doubt will hold you back, slow you down and even stop you completely from achieving anything.
In order to achieve anything in life you must first believe you can. This means it's the doubt of capabilities that will actually be the thing that makes you incapable.
As the Buddha said: "Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."
The weapon of your unguarded thoughts is your self-doubt, it can and does cause more damage to your life than anything else you'd encounter.
Self-Control over Recklessness
Recklessness is thoughtlessness in overdrive.
Being reckless is acting without any thought. Recklessness is dangerous, not only to you, but to everyone around you.
Where thoughtlessness could possibly result in unfavourable situations, recklessness pretty much guarantees it.
When we act recklessly, we are acting without thought or control.
Having some self-control is essential to ensuring we don't make reckless decisions. Reckless decisions will never work out in the long term.
As martial artists, we have to be smart and thoughtful. In a serious situation where we have a responsibility to de-escalate things, any reckless act will only serve to escalate and make things more dangerous.
A Positive Mindset over Negativity
Negativity, at it worst, can make your world a dark, cold, lonely and sad place.
Only a fool always expects positive things to happen every single time, but negativity is believing that positive things will never happen.
Always expecting the worst is being truly pessimistic and it will colour your perception and change how you view the world. This will result in you reacting in a negative way, creating more and more negative situations.
Having an optimistic view will help you be happy and interact with the world around you in a more positive way. When you believe things are bight and good, things will be bright and good.
A realistic person knows that bad things sometimes happen, so it is best to not be ignorant and know that they do happen, but understand that it doesn't mean anything.
A naïve person is always finding meaning in the positives & negatives of situations and circumstance that aren't there. It's best to know that the world is neither for or against you, it just is. Don't place unnecessary meaning on things and you will find more happiness.
A healthy mindset is to keep your mind focused on the positives and expect the positives to happen, but prepare for possible negatives. That way you aren't caught unprepared.
Wisdom over Naivety
Naivety is your "default factory settings", life is about learning and growing.
There is nothing inherently bad about being naïve, we all lack knowledge and understanding about many things, but we should seek to be less naïve about our world in general.
The more we learn and the more experiences we have, the less naïve we should become about the world around us.
A naïve person will always make silly mistakes and will require the help of those around them. This is ok in certain circumstances.
For example, If you started in a new job recently, there will be some basic things you don't know and might need ask others about. However, if you have been working at the same place for 12 years and still need to ask people where the toilet is, you're obviously not paying attention.
In all situations it's best to learn and take in what is going on around you, be observant!
If people are frequently being attacked on the same street corner at the same time of day, then it's your own fault if you go there at that time and six thugs mug and beat you.
Calm Disposition over an Emotional Disposition
Emotions have a purpose, that purpose is not to control your actions & decisions.
Being Calm is essential to being a true warrior. It's also the most difficult thing to master for many people.
Many people let emotions rule their thought processes. Without self-disciple or self-control it's easy to react to situations emotionally, but this very rarely leads to a congruent outcome.
For martial artists having control over our emotions and being able to stay calm is very important.
If you've ever been in a situation where you needed to use your martial abilities,
you'd know that it's very emotionally charged. Letting those emotions get the better of you is never the path to the best possible outcome.
The aim is always to stay calm and logically and objectively evaluate the situation in order to be able to make the best decisions possible. When emotional a person is incapable od making any sort of rational wise decision.
Comment below to share any thoughts or opinions you might have. :)
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