My Black Belt In Karate: A Personal Narrative Of My Life

One of the most important things that happened to me in my life was when I earned my black belt in karate. This was a long journey that took several year of my life to achieve. Getting my black belt and the process it took gave me the physical and mental toughness for me to be able to do several things that I do today in sports. During my journey I learned valuable things that are really important in life. I learned to have commitment and to persevere.

The first thing that the process taught me was commitment. The way that I learned this was from the time I started I had a goal. That goal was to earn my black belt. For 3 years I would go to the karate school 2-3 times a week to learn the requirements for my black belt candidate training. When I got to the final belt before candidate training I knew that the journey was close to a finish and that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The other thing that I knew was that the final stretch would not be easy.

On top of that every saturday me and my graduation class had to run 3 miles in the freezing cold. It would have been so easy for me to just give up and walk out the door, but then I thought how all the work I put in would be all for nothing, and so I finished it at age of 10 to receive my black belt. A good example of how this affected me later in life was in the summer and during the football season of my freshman year I had to work my butt off in the heat at 6 in the morning when I probably would rather sleep, but I did and I received a great season of football