Meditation of the Week: Frequently Inspect Your Own Achievements
Have you ever known a person who reaches back to a past event over 20 years ago and says something to the effect , “I remember when I accomplished….” Tang Soo Do’s ninth attitude requirement is to frequently inspect your own achievements. Even our best achievements could be improved upon. We should take a measure of pride in a job well done, but we cannot allow that accomplishment to become a reason to stop working on improvement.
Paul, in Philippians 3, was talking about a similar principle. He measured all that he had accomplished as loss compared to the glory of knowing Christ Jesus. His ultimate goal was to be evaluated at the end of his life as one who was righteous – not because of anything he had done, but because of his faith and desire to reflect the character of Christ in his work. His end goal, that which is to be the goal of every Christian, was to join Jesus in the resurrection – death has no power over those who belong to Christ. I love how Paul summed up his life. He wrote, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13–14, emphasis mine). Paul knows his accomplished, he lists them in detail in chapter 2, but he equates them to rubbish compared to Christ.
When you make an advancement and an accomplishment in Tang Soo Do, enjoy the gain, but teach someone else so he/she can join you. Also, look to the next goal because there is always somewhere to go and to improve.
SOAR Tang Soo Do 