49. Cashflow drinks tea

☳/☱ Somebody once asked me if there is a way to learn an activity and get good at it without using a teacher (of sorts), books, school (of sorts) or any audio-visual aids? ☵/☴ As a martial artist I have been pondering on this as part of my Baguazhang 八卦掌 practice because for me, martial arts is my way of life. ☶/☶ As a tea 茶 trader I have also been wondering about it, because, let's face it: Most business people have not gone to business school. It is all on-the-fly learn-as-we-go. And even if we did go to a school, there is always the part called: Experience, the getting there of. ☰/☳ Which means for tea drinkers 茶酒徒, that in order to get good at making our cuppa, we must go through the pain of getting scalded (hopefully just once), over- or under-brewing, or just plainly sucking at making a decent cup of tea 茶... Eventually though, with persistence that suck-job turns into something close to divine. ☷/☲ For martial artists it is the same. Only instead of a scalding, life becomes the House of Pain. And the beatings never come from the place where we want them to come from. No. That would would be too easy and as martial artists that would be playing into our strengths. It's the funny reason why after we have learnt to protect ourselves, nearl ☱/☵ Instead the House of Pain is delivered to where we are weakest in our lives. And for most people that would be either our relationships, finances or both. Yes, there are others. But for most people it has something to do with money in one form or another. A thing that is real (陰 yin) and not real (陽 yang) at the same time and is at the centre of our daily lives whether we admit to it or not. ☲/☷ So stress, don't stress. Enjoy Tea Time equals Me Time, or don't. Experience is teaching me to face the pain anyway and learn what needs to be learnt. Which is that life doesn't really care how we learn it, so as we choose the method of learning rather than let it decide for us. For example, I have a friend named Josh. He's always complaining about his cashflow being negative even when he's doing everything right. It seemed like the world was out to get him. And this had been going on for years. So one day, I says to him: Since your problem is always about cashflow and I know this because that is the word you always use to name the problem, why don't you try just reading a book on cashflow? Just start reading and see what happens. And sure enough, a week or so later, he started seeing an improvement to his cashflow. ☴/☰ So what happened? Not much. Other than he took a stand on his life and started the process of consciously taking control of it, just like he did with his martial arts. Now Josh is open to meeting people who can advise him on getting and keeping a positive cashflow. Freeing him from a huge part of his daily stresses. And the moral of the story is: Yes. There are other ways to get good at one's craft. But sometimes it is better to just learn in a pleasant teacher-student setting, where there is some pre-defined outcome parameters, rather than going in cold!