Being introduced to a new technique or curriculum, or achieving a belt milestone. Like leaf sprouts in a garden these exciting new bursts of growth are motivating indications that we’re progressing on the path. Each shiny new technique is a shiny new leaf sprout to be cared for, nurtured and built upon. Just like in the garden though, we need to also look past the new growth to how it got there.
Oftentimes we focus so much on the beauty and growth of the new leaf or technique that we forget where it grew from. We know they came from a stem, and the stem from the roots, but sometimes forget this in the obsession over the new growth. We forget the path to leaf sprout and focus on only it’s new growth.
Leaves and new techniques don’t grow by watering them, they grow by watering their roots.That new technique or series of techniques is super motivating as it shows our growth. But often we’ve recently discovered oma plata and focus only on all the sprouting branches that come from it, and lose the most probable trunks of entry to it’s cue.
How to improve your oma plata? Work the triangle who’s defense presented that oma plata cue. Work the spider guard set to set up that triangle to see it’s defense leading to oma plata. Best strategy to find all the fun and exciting places the new technique can take you is to see all the places it came from. What makes someone show that cue? And how does this fit into a bigger picture?
Like a leaf, if we can’t find the connection to it’s roots it’ll die out of our technical arsenal as one of those “i knew that once” techniques that tend to get backlogged along our journey. It’s fun to play with for awhile but forgotten shortly after. Either we didn’t put the work in to connect it, or we just weren’t ready for the connection yet. If we want to keep it, we need to connect it, and for a strong connection we must water the roots that connect.