This essay was written by one of SSOMA's middle school students. Her story reveals the reasons why martial arts has helped her tremendously.

 

Being able to do anything

 

 

 

        I believe that with self- control and confidence, I can do anything that I want to do and be who I want to be. I learned this when I joined Sarah’s School of martial arts, which has helped me in gaining confidence and it got me back to my feet. From that class, I learned more new skills that I could use in real life situation, learned how to defend myself better. The moment I got there, I fell in love with the environment and class there.

 

        At that time, I was doing Jiu Jitsu with my partner on the dojo of my karate class and my instructor was giving some advice to us. I was smiling, bocking and defending myself at the same time. I was having some fun even though I was having hard time to get my partner to omoplata. At first, I was looking down on myself because I couldn’t do some stuff like others but I got it through by telling myself I can do it. When I think about this day and event, it makes me feel I want to do this again with more power and I feel my confidence coming back every time when I hear my instructor voice telling me that I can do it inside.    Before this, I thought that Karate was for boys and that I was not good like others. I also thought that there were two kinds of people; good and bad. Now I know that I am wrong, I know that Karate is for everybody, I am good at something that I can be proud of and there are good and bad people with mix.

 

        Some values that were important to me back then were wisdom, faith, respect and creativity. Back then, before I joined karate I thought that I lacked creativity and thought that creativity only comes from arts and crafts. Now I know that all these thought that I had about creativity are not true. Some values that are important to me now are skill, confidence, success, self- control and patience.

 

The main reasons that I took martial arts was to be able to communicate with others and feel good about myself, look what I have accomplished! I feel that I have more control and choices on what I want to do. I have used this values for everything that goes on my life. For instance, when I had this test in history, at first I was overwhelmed but I told myself that I can do it and I am going to do better.

 

I believe that with these skills and values I can succeed at anything as long as I have my power with me which is my confidence. I believe that it’s important to keep on following your dreams and not second thought yourself; always go with your first choice. These are the things that I believe in which has helped me over time and made me feel good about myself.