Dear Brothers & Sisters,

The will (ý chí) is the power of our mind to control our thinking and acting. Probably you all, through living experiences, have clearly understood your will and its power – you want to eat something, but your mind tells you not to eat because it’s not good for you, and you don’t eat.

The will is the ultimate function of the mind/heart. Without the will we can not control our eating to stay slim and healthy, or to study hard for the exam, or to remain calm and polite to a person who has just insulted us, or to rise up and live again after getting kicked off (đá giò lái) by our lover/spouse…

Each person is a long train and his/her will is the locomotive – without the locomotive the train simply stands still, dead.

So, brothers and sisters, pay attention to your will and, please, help your will be stronger day after day.

As any part of your body, you need to exercise your will regularly to make it stronger. You are not born with strong and fast muscles, so you need to learn and practice martial arts every day to be strong and fast as a martial arts master. Same thing with the will, you are born with an average will; you need to exercise your will every day to make it stronger.

Exercising the will is the simplest exercise of them all. All you need to do is to tell yourself either “yes” or “no” in each situation: Should I eat this, yes or no? Should I wake up and do physical exercise now, yes or no? Should I say “Thank you” and apologize to him, yes or no? Should I be calm and smile to him, yes or no? Should I fight back and give him a lesson, yes or no?…

In each situation, everyone of us knows what the right answer is – we all know what we should do and what we should not. Just give yourself the right answer and use your will to stick with that right answer, instead of succumbing to temptations to ignore the right answer.

That’s all. Simple task. But you need to do that in every single situation, all day, to train your will to be strong and unbeatable.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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