Sijo's Blog2010 Jul 28 - Animal MusingsIt seems simple enough; 5 Animal Style, Tiger, Panther (Leopard), Crane and Snake. Yet, when one spends a few decades contemplating why the Ancients choose these animals to represent the totality of Shaolin Kung Fu. This is not one of those cliché comment where you say you learn something new everyday; it is quite a rare and exciting occurrence when you stumble upon another hint from the old masters. It has been long clear to me that the 'System" of the 5 Animal had meaning within meaning within meaning (not to use the onion analogy because when you finish unwrapping the onion, nothing is left over). You have the Tiger that always Attacks directly, the Panther Attacks indirectly, the Crane Evades and the Snake Avoids. The Tiger has it all, Size, Power and Attitude, the Panther has it almost all but not enough so it needs a speciality. The Crane is beauty incarnate and the Snake is Knowledge personified. So what you say? There are many books written on being successful and how you can achieve success. Some that come to mind are the 7 Habits of Success by Steven Covey, Little Red Book of Success, 8 Secrets of Success and more. All these tell you how to be successful without considering who you are. What is even more interesting, none of these suggest how you can define, for yourself what success is to you. This creates a large group of people that chase success and feel like failures because they follow the wrong type of guide. How so you ask. Yin and Yang, opposites attract and thus often the style of success you are attracted to is not the style that allows you to succeed adequately (even if you have had a chance of defining what success for you means). I have always bee attracted to the Planning way of success. You define what you want, set goals, define who and what will help you and hinder you, etc. At work in a formal environment this worked for me, fairy well . . . on the surface. But as a Tiger, Alpha Male my method of success is defining very clearly what i want and then starting to do. All else will be fixed along the way. And this works for me. I call it See & Do; perfect for a Tiger Style person. All this other . . . c..p just doesn't work for me and is very cumbersome, even debilitating. So what are the different ways of succeeding? Well were back to the Animal Styles;
Ideally (Dragon) you use all these skills but reality is that you use one the most and supplement it the other three. In an ideal world, with copious amounts of time you would go through all aspects of the Animals; and it is good to have some experience. Put reality, life dictates be good at one thing at least before you are mediocre at many.
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