I’ve Moved!

Source: blu:skin on Flickr

To all my faithful readers, I am happy to announce that Warrior Spirit has moved to a dedicated URL! Please update your links, and join me at the new address. The new address will allow me to install a bunch of features I’ve been wanting to implement, so hopefully it will lead to a better reading experience for all of you. While it gets set up, please excuse the construction; I’m still getting all the settings and visuals in place.

New address: www.khaledallen.com/warriorspirit

Why You Should Blow it All to Travel

Source: DragonWoman on Flickr

We know that travel is essential to a complete education. Traveling abroad teaches understanding of other people, cultures and communities, and these types of experiences offer young people a greater ability to be successful in today’s global society. – Michael Palmer

An old friend from my days interning at Forbes gave me some interesting advice today. As a well-established manager, she would have been able to make a very good argument for starting to seriously look at a career, putting down professional roots, building up my financial profile and really setting myself up for the long, steady path to independence and security. Instead, she pretty much recommended I risk it all and travel, try to work in some other countries, because, after all at my age and in this economic climate, there isn’t much to lose. Take the big risks while you’re young.

Simple Ways to Be Healthier

Source: KOREA.NET on flickr

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. -T’ien Yiheng

In the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time finding ways to be healthier without dedicating huge chunks of time or money that I don’t have. While a lot of the success I’ve come across has been the result of some pretty big changes, I have found that the most basic and important things come from small changes. Increased energy levels, better sleep, better digestion, feeling calmer and more relaxed, less pain, and better relationships have all been the result of the smaller, cheaper alternations I’ve made to my life. When these things fall off, problems occur. Here are some really small changes you can make to improve your life in noticeable ways.

Why We Love the Status Quo

Source: pobrecito33 on Flickr

Losses loom larger than corresponding gains

Would you rather make $100 with a small possibility of losing $75 instead, or would you rather make $25 with no potential to lose anything? If you are like most people, you would select the second option. This despite the fact that there is potentially greater benefit to the first option. This is because people will rather hold on to what they have now than risk losing it for something better. We worry that we’ll never get back to what we had. This phenomenon is called Loss Aversion in the fields of decision-making and economics.

The Importance of Listening

Source: Ro/wererabbit on Flickr

When we talk about something, we just talk about something, just the positive or the negative side, without trying to express some intellectual, one-sided idea. And we listen without trying to figure out some intellectual understanding, without trying ot understand from just a one-sided view. – Shunryu Suzuki

A friend of mine recently wrote a Facebook note in which he mentioned some thoughts on conversations. Specifically, he maintained that it was better to have few conversations, because most people aren’t very good at having conversations. Most people, states my friend, will be quick to follow random tangents in any discussion, never really making any headway on the issue you’d like to discuss. In the end, they are more concerned with their own agenda than participating in the conversation at hand.

Lessons on Friendship from Camp

Source: sausyn on Flickr

We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have to share the same box –Anon

I spent a great deal of my childhood at a wonderful summer camp in Northern Minnesota, where it seemed like everyone was a potential friend and all the friends you made were true friends. How great would that be in real life? So often the friends we make have agendas, or only hang around us at certain times and with certain people. There is often a sense of insincerity, or somewhat impure friendship. But at Summer Camp, the friends you made at horseback riding were just as good for sailing (assuming they could sail), and you could eat with them, camp with them, play games with them, or just sit and watch the lake together. There is a strange and wondrous ease about camp friends that is so rare and hard to find elsewhere.

Returning to the Dojo: The Importance of Martial Arts

Source: Pieter Baert on Flickr

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential. – Bruce Lee

Yesterday, I attended my first class of American Kenpo Karate in over five years. My old teacher told me in an e-mail to bring my old Gi, which I had kept, anticipating an eventual return to the art. When I went to dig it out from a trunk under my bed, I found my old belts, one soft, well-worn, and white, and the other stiff and bright, un-faded yellow. I grabbed the white belt and headed to class.

When I stepped into the dance studio where the class was being held, my old instructor, taller and leaner than I remembered, looked at me without recognition. It had been a long time. He was shocked at the growth he saw in me and had trouble connecting the old Khaled with the one who stood before him. And then he looked down and saw I was wearing my old white belt and asked, “Where’s your belt?”

Eliminating Distractions

Source: tychay on Flickr

If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes…. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future -and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. – Naht Hahn, Miracle of Mindfulness

Modern technology is a wonderful thing. It gives us access to more information than we could possibly ever hope to read and understand. It connects us to people all over the world and lets us share ideas and conversations with them on a whim. It puts the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips. As a college student, I was infinitely grateful for the fact that I could do almost all my research and class readings online without having to spend hours in the bookstacks looking for texts. At the click of a button, I could bring to my attention the latest psychological research and in the same breath skim an article on current events.

Freedom Through Discipline

Source: Laniee75 on Flickr

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” – Frank Herbert

I used to follow a very strict diet, and was religious about exercising. Rain or shine, groggy or energetic, sugar cravings or not, I followed my program. Ultimately, it turned out my particular program was a little intense and led to some problems, and so I have lately abandoned it for a more intuitive approach, meaning I do things when I feel like it, meaning I often don’t do what I’m supposed to do. At first, this felt liberating, but I’ve begun to realize that I have given up something very important by letting go of my confining routines: my freedom.

Do-It-Yourself Living

Source: Rob Joyce & Alex on Flickr

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there” – Robert M. Pirsig

I have lately started reading the very inspirational Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. This book is a collection of essays on Zen and it is both calming and enlightening to read. One of the overriding themes is the fact that Zen is not something external or alien to us. It already exists within us, in the nature of our minds, bodies, and spirits. Enlightenment is not found in some faraway spiritual realm, or even down the road. Rather, it is right there in your grasp. It is your grasp.