Open minded

We are the results of the past, but even more important the imagination of the future

Four years ago, when my eldest son, who was 17 years old, asked me to allow him sign up Evolve MMA, as he needed parents' consent to join. I was very concerned.  MMA gave me impression of violence and injury...... I was so not ready to let my boys go through it.

Four year has passed now, not only my eldest son, the second son also joined to train BJJ.  Today, I, from skeptical to enthusiastic,  am the No. 1. fan of them, and perhaps No.1 BJJ mum in Singapore.

That taught me a good lesson.  We should always be open minded.

Whatever we had in the past, gives us good experiential knowledge; but what holds in future, we can only imagine.  

I received this in my mail box this morning, I thought is good to share:

"According to research done by Dr. Daniel Gilbert of Harvard, people are really bad at predicting who they will be in the future. The reason is simple: it’s far easier to remember the past than to imagine the future.

Because we don’t take the time to imagine the future, we assume that things will pretty much be the same in ten years as they are now. We even erroneously believe we will be the same person in ten years as we are right now. Gilbert and others call this The End of History Illusion, and what it means is this:

• We recognize that we’ve gone through some big changes in our past
• We see our current selves as the finished and evolved version of ourselves
• We assume that in the future, we will mostly be who we are now

If you look back on who you were ten years ago, you will likely see some differences. You were probably in a different situation. You probably had different goals. You likely had different friends and hobbies. Of course, some of what you were doing is probably still the same as ten years ago.

As people get older, they tend to change less over ten year periods of time.

From age 15 to 25, you’re going to see some big change.

From 25 to 35, you’re likely to see some big changes as well.

But from 35 to 45, the rapidity of change tends to slow down for most people"

I have been learning along side with my two sons in their journey of BJJ with watchful eyes.  I can feel their passion, their dedication and commitment in BJJ, mostly, this sport has ignited their imagination on  what they want to be in the future.  That opens a wonderful world for them.  So much potentials they can see for themselves, and automatically, so much self discipline come out all by themselves.