What is Monday Inspiration?

I started Monday Inspiration many years ago as a way to stay in contact with a group of Black belts whose lives had taken them away from the St. Louis area.  Wayne Johnson and Don Smith were two black belt instructors who were instrumental in mentoring me in the early days of developing my teaching philosophy and style.  They retired and moved out of the area at about the same time that Mike Krakauskas, Rich McDonald and Rob Matthews moved out of town for career related opportunities.  Mike and Rich both ended up in parts of Colorado and Rob went to San Francisco.  These three men had been students of mine since they were teenagers or young men.  They had grown from young students whose lives I had at least some measure of influence on to some of my best adult friends. At about the same time Major Bob Scott, one of our other long time black belts and a respected leader, was transferred to the Pentagon in Washington D.C.  Bob eventually retired to Florida at the rank of Colonel in The United States Army.

While Monday Motivation might have had a better ring to it I chose the name Monday Inspiration because I’ve always felt that motivation came from inside an individual and inspiration came from outside influences.  I don’t think you can really motivate someone else but I do believe you can inspire them to motivate themselves.

As a way to stay connected to these black belts I just started sending a weekly email to the six of them titled Monday Inspiration. The rules were simple.  Any one of us could send a message at anytime if we felt it was inspirational in some way.  It could be a favorite quote, an anecdotal story, or just something that we had experienced in our daily lives that we wanted to share.  It didn’t need to happen every Monday and it didn’t need to even be sent on a Monday.  Any day was fine and anything that anyone wanted to share was fine as long as it was purposeful.  It could be martial arts related but it didn’t need to be.  Sometimes long discussions were spawned that went in any number of directions, and sometimes not. It was a great way to continue teaching and sharing.  Over the years other members were added to the list and Monday Inspiration continued on in various forms for over ten years.

Monday Inspiration is now being reborn.  I’ll be using this space from time to time to share things that I think may be of value to all of our students.  If you like it please share it with your friends.