During my training a thought occurred to me.

'For what am I training? Toward which direction am I training? How have I changed after my training?'

People train martial arts for various reasons: to fight well, to get stronger, for self-defense, to lose weight, or to get healthier. I think men will mostly do martial arts yearning for the strength and power, and women for self-defense and diet. Aren't such reasons just a starting point, though? Shouldn't there be another long-term goal? Toward what direction should we train for?

I think what we can achieve through martial arts in the long-term is "the attitude to seek changes in our lives". Change means transition or alteration in the form or state of an object. So ultimately doing martial arts means to seek changes in life.

There are a lot of things we can get out of martial arts like the determination and practice of everyday training, the endurance to swallow the pain, the joy of victory, the bitterness of defeat, the virtue of humility which enables to lower myself, the rational choice for more efficient method, the sense of accomplishment and the list goes on. Changing oneself to become a better person through such positive effects should be the reasons which we train for.

The world is changing. Martial arts are not only about getting better at combat skills any longer. Seeking self changes through steady training. Causing positive change in both outside and inside by training martial arts. That is the what we, as martial artists should aim toward.