Reflection
I’m Logen, the person behind Way Of Ninja and Day Of Ninja. My vision for this journey involves achieving the mental and physical aspects of being a modern warrior. This means cross-training in Aikido, movement skills (in parkour and MovNat), street calisthenic and running; as for the mental aspect, I’m working on enhancing my emotional intelligence to better deal with life’s challenges and conflicts.
Achievements
- Got my 1st Kyu (Black-gold belt) for Aikido
- Completed every obstacle race organised in Singapore in 2015 (including the Spartan Race)
- Attained the Gold Award for both the old and new military fitness test (IPPT)
- Started to take up street calisthenics seriously
- Worked on my sports anxiety by exposing myself to other dojos and public training environments
- Trained in Aikido as a guest at Taipei, Taiwan
- Widened my perspective on Aikido styles by attending the SG50 Aikido Seminar – demonstrations by 6 senseis/shihans
On hindsight, I am generally happy with the progress I made this year. But my earlier dissatisfaction and impatience with the perceived miniscule magnitude of my achievements has caused the setbacks in the following section.
Setbacks
- Shoulder injury
- Feeling burnt out by August
- Forgoing sleep resulting in slow recovery and clumsiness
- Getting melancholic
2015 started out well and was promising. But circumstances changed. I did not expect that a change in jobscope would cause much stress. Instead of adjusting my goals, I pushed on. This wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t working on so many goals in different aspects of my life.
At a certain stage, I started to doubt my abilities and had melancholic mood swings. Still, I doubled my efforts and forewent sleep. This resulted in my burnout in August and later a shoulder injury, causing me to stop activities for a month and feel hopeless.
The next time round, I intend to focus on one vision and work on a few key goals. No longer will be planning every detail at every step; the plan needs to adapt to circumstance. And I need and want to sleep more.
