Which One Are You?

It's been my experience that many a new, prospective, or ex-students of wing tsun/chun, etc share the common perspective that wing chun takes a long time before it becomes practical, while other arts, say karate or kickboxing, take a significantly shorter amount of time for it to be useful.

When I started WT, this was the exact same thought I had - especially coming from a karate/kickboxing background.

Looking at that perspective now, I can confidently say that that's not true. The difference between the other arts and wing tsun is this.

In karate, you think you can use what you got.

In wing tsun, you KNOW what you have to improve on.

Because WT highlights what you don't know or what you can't pull off, it's easy to confuse that for not knowing anything. As such, people get discouraged and jump to the conclusion that 1) it doesn't work or 2) it's too hard to make practical. So the end result? they give up. If you give up, well then yea, your WT isn't going to work..ever.

I think, as with anything in life - work, play, art, picking up the ladies at the bar - a little bit of faith has to be thrown into the mix. Sometimes you just gotta believe. If you don't believe, you lack the confidence, this lowered self-esteem is transferred to the external world by your physical actions, people see this from you, and so do the women, my friends. She interprets your lack of confidence as being...a wussy. The result - you don't get her number! As with wing tsun, no confidence in your actions = hesitation = getting hit = wing tsun doesn't work.

It's really not as simple as saying that other arts can be applied sooner or that WT takes a long time before it's effective. It's an illusion based on our individual paradigms - our perspective in life. So you have two choices - accept that WT doesn't work or deny that WT doesn't work..and prove your paradigm wrong.

In this world there are passengers and there are drivers. Which one are you?

Until then.