Five elements of success

We aim to achieve success in the true meaning.

What is “Success”?

What most people seek for in this society is “success.”

However, how many of them have a specific definition of “success?”

It seems that a lot of people pursue “success” while they do not know what it really is,

with the result that they are in an endless cycle where they run after something obscure.

Probably making much money is a typical example of success that comes up to most people,

but we sometimes hear a tragic news about some celebrities ending it all.

So it is easy to say “being rich” or “being famous” is not the proper definition of “success.”

Likewise, “graduating from a good university,” “working is a big company,” “having enough free time,” “having a spouse and children,” “living in a mansion and wearing high brands,” “being unique,” “being a leader,” “having a lot of friends,”　”knowing many things,” and all of those kinds of things are wrong or imperfect.

If we set a wrong goal in marathon, we reach nowhere.

The same thing can be said in our “success.”

Five elements of “success”

Then what is the true definition of “success?”

In Shinkiryu we are taught that the true “success” is the fulfillment of those five elements below:

1. Mentally healthy
2. Physically healthy
3. Having good relationships with your environment
4. Having ambitions
5. Economically wealthy

The order indicates the priority.

And we cultivate ourselves to fulfill them through the Japanese martial arts in Shinkiryu.

1. Mentally healthy

Before anything, we need to practice keeping a healthy mentality.

Without it, you cannot control your behaviors well, and lack of mental healthiness makes you blind to the positive in daily life which leads you to unhappy.

It can be said that the reason is the lack of mental stability of some seemingly successful people’s suicides.

It is the first priority to get and keep a healthy mental for your holistic and true “success.”

When you do the Japanese martial arts, mentality or spirituality plays an essential role.

Healthy mentality or spirituality strengthen your body, makes you react much faster, and release opponent’s fighting mood.

If you would like to be a better martial artist, you need to acquire how to control your mentality, which significant in “success.”

2. Physically healthy

The second important thing is a healthy body.

If you are in a bad condition (for example, arthralgia or diabetes), you cannot enjoy all of the activities you do.

What if you have a child or a grandchild who is running around, but you can barely walk?

Many people hope that they can play around or do every activity vigorously as much as possible.

Being physically healthy is not something we can overlook when you want the real “success.”

To keep a healthy body, you have to work out, take care of your body frequently, have a proper sleep, get enough nutrients, and so forth, and in Shinkiryu we learn about those things as well.

Especially at Kappo(Healing) class, we learn about body maintenance in detail.

3. Having good relationships with your environment

Next you should have good relationships with your environment, which includes human relations, an atmosphere you are living in, your working place, and something like that.

It might be easy to imagine you will get more satisfied if you make good relationships with those around you,

but we have an explanation of this in terms of Bushi-do.

In Bushi or Samurai society, they put great importance on courtesy.

One of the main reasons behind it is that they will not create an enemy, which is the best way that we can avoid any conflicts without fighting.

This idea seems still valid in the current era.

Relationships not only with people but also with other factors in environment are also considerable.

Since we are just a part of nature, it is needless to say we are influenced a lot by our environment in every sense.

In the Japanese martial arts, we have to understand how to interact with people or opponents, and we have to learn how to harmonize with our environment so that we perform well.

Those practice will definitely lead you to the true “success” in your life.

4. Having ambitions

Being ambitious is also a key to “success.”

It is important to be satisfied with who you are and what you have, without ambition you cannot grow and improve yourself.

As you can realize from a tree, all of the things in nature are growing. Even human babies are growing maybe without intending to do so.

We have to grow and that is a law of nature. That is why we need ambitions.

If we do not have ambitions, we may not grow and we are even capable of losing a motivation to live.

So we need to be ambitious for the true “success.”

When you practice at Shinkiryu, you will set some goals including small ones and big ones, which will make you used to be ambitious in life.

5. Economically wealthy

Finally you may as well seek to be economically wealthy.

Now we are living in the world of capitalism, economic wealth is not something we can disregard.

Money is a kind of power in this society, and we need it to do a variety of things, such as saving people through operations.

At Shinkiryu we also learn fundamental parts of economy based on the laws of nature.

What we have to emphasize here is that money is surely important but not only one important thing.

And we can say that economic wealth may not be something you should pursue.

We mean that if you fulfill the first 4 elements of “success,” you should be earning relatively much money without intending to earn.

In Shinkiryu we suggest that you should fulfill those five elements in the correct order, and we aim to achieve them through daily practices for a “success” in the true meaning.