5 Ways To Be a 21st Century Warrior-Scholar

The general idea of perfecting both body and mind appears to be about as old as time itself, and can be found in a wide variety of advanced cultures. The Greek philosophers would often talk about the need for physical fitness to have a fit mind as well, in a number of Asian cultures the idea of the warrior monk appears, and even in recent years “strong body, strong mind” is a slogan you’ll see on inspirational posters and gym badges.

As someone who has aspired to this general notion my entire life, but find very few monasteries and sword duels in 21st century America, I have attempted to learn all I can from the past and apply it to our modern age. And in the spirit of sharing wisdom, I’d like to highlight the most important aspects of living such a life. These fundamental principles are applicable to any age, any kind of person from any walk of life, anywhere in the world. It’s all about an approach to how to live, how to behave, how to think, not “you must do these exact things exactly as people hundreds or thousands of years ago did them.” Because, as I said, you don’t find many sword duels these days. But there are lots of gyms and sports and other ways of honing and perfecting your physical fitness. You can apply the same core lessons of the ideal to modern life, and that’s what I hope to share with you here.

So, here are what, in my experience, are the most important aspects to living the life of a warrior-scholar in the modern age. I feel they can be broken down into the following 5 major points.

1: Perfection of the body. Don’t simply strive to be fit, be as fit and physically skilled as you possibly can push yourself. And then beyond.

2: Perfection of the mind. Don’t simply be intelligent or intellectually skilled, learn all you can, push the limits of your knowledge, create whole new fields of study. Keep pushing until you can’t push any further… and then keep on pushing.

3: Self discipline and self reliance. Being able to rely on yourself is far more valuable than you’d think.

4: Honor. Integrity, trustworthiness, being reliable, keeping your word, all are simple things that go a long, long way to building truly lasting relationships and having a more profound impact on your world.

5: Finding balance between having a furious passion with laser-like focus, and also having broad interests without spreading yourself too thin.

Now, to briefly expand upon these. First, perfection of the body. To get personal for a second, I will share that I have done martial arts for effectively my entire life. However, I don’t think everyone, or even very many people at all, need to practice martial arts. However again, the lessons of perfecting yourself and pushing yourself beyond the limits, and discovering whole new levels beyond what you thought possible, that applies to any sort of fitness. So, for martial arts, you don’t want to just want to be fast, you want to be so fast they can’t even see you move. And then faster. And faster. Get as fast as humanly possible, and then break through that wall and do even better. But as I said, it doesn’t have to be martial arts. If your thing is, say, basketball, that’s fine too! Take dribbling the ball. You don’t just learn to dribble for a few seconds, you learn to dribble for as long as you can. And then go beyond. Hours. Days. With both hands, behind your back, between your legs, whatever. Keep finding a plateau of maximum achievement, and then plow through it. Constantly keep pushing, constantly improving. The whole real underlying point here is: you are never done improving. That is not a thing. There is always a new challenge, always someone better than you. Beat them. Improve yourself infinitely. Make it a part of who you are.

This may sound a bit silly, but, really. Make it a part of who you are. A perfect example I can draw from my own life was when I first began studying martial arts, the first six months, three hours a day, all they taught me was how to walk properly. Which at the time, I thought was freakin’ ridiculous. But I did it, and, much to my amazement, it actually affected everything else, not just in martial arts, but in my life. I almost never slip on ice or stub a toe or anything like that, because I have made it a part of who I am to always be aware of where my feet are, how my weight is distributed. It became a part of me. And every single step I take is building off those founding principles, and improving me a little bit every time. And, again, there will never be a maximum.

Now, I can hear some of you readers thinking something like “But does that mean I have to be those weirdos who go to the gym 15 times a week and eat so much protein they look like The Hulk?” No, not necessarily. If girth and power is not your goal, then that’s fine. You should have some muscle tone as part of being healthy, but, if you’re not the sort to bulk up, that’s fine. I’m not a soccer player, so I have no interest in perfecting my long distance kicking of a ball. It has no bearing on my life. But for the soccer player, A: that’s part of their job and thus affects their career and well-being, and B: it still is exercise, cardio, enhancing their breathing, heart rate, metabolism, all that good stuff. So, you find what works for you, what goals you have for your body, and make that aspect of your body the best freaking body on the planet.

Pretty much the exact same lecture applies to the mind, which is especially apropos since the notion of mind and body being intimately connected is central to the warrior-scholar lifestyle. Find what intellectual pursuits you want to pursue, be it computer coding, drawing, being a historian, an engineer, whatever, and study the crap out of it. Study until there is nothing left to study, then find new ways to study it. Improve it, enhance it, add to it, then study that. Then repeat. Really the point to both improving the body and mind topics is never, ever should you say “good enough.” There is no such thing as good enough anymore. There is ALWAYS room for improvement. My sifu (martial arts teacher) loved to quote this article from the late 19th century where the head of the US Patent office considered closing it, because he was convinced everything worth inventing had already been made. …Considering how you’re reading this, you can see that man was wildly incorrect. There is ALWAYS room for improvement. ALWAYS a new project, ALWAYS someone better than you. Beat them. Then someone else will beat you. Then beat them, too. And so on and so forth. Never ever stop, never ever think you are good enough. You might be fantastic, truly, and be proud of yourself! …but you could be better. So make it happen.

And note, don’t take this as negative: it absolutely isn’t. If you accomplish wonderful things, then that’s wonderful! Be happy and proud! ….Do more. And then more. And then more. And then… you get the idea. There is no such thing as being done, as being good enough, as being the best. There is ALWAYS a new level to aspire to, both physically and mentally.

Now, point 3: Self discipline. This one ties in rather neatly with the following, honor, similar to how 1 and 2 tied together. Self discipline and self reliance are key skills to have. And in brief, here’s why. For as much as I’m going to go on to talk about being reliable to others being a virtue in the next chunk, the sad fact is that, well, most people aren’t. Most people are unreliable, are liars, are lazy, are cheaters, whatever. So while it is good to assume people will live up to their word, and you don’t want to be overly paranoid or distrustful, knowing that you can fall back on yourself if the worst happens and still handle your problems? That is extremely important. I will again take an example from my own life, but one I hope is more broadly applicable to people. Medical knowledge. Having some basic first aid knowledge and understanding of how things work has saved my life on numerous occasions, and even the lives of others. Ideally, when an emergency happens, you can call paramedics, get to a hospital, etc. That’s exactly why those services exist. And of course doctors and EMTs etc. know more than I do about medicine. BUT. Having enough foundational knowledge to know how to clean my own cut so it doesn’t get infected, how to wrap a sprained ankle, how to make a splint, what over the counter drugs can help with the everyday ills of life, that saves unholy amounts of money for unnecessary doctors visits, and just makes life all-round easier. This can apply to a lot of things, and again sadly is not always possible. I can’t heal a bullet wound, but I can make sure it stays clean until the real professionals can attend to the problem. Similarly, if you’re working on, say, a project for work and your artist falls through on meeting the deadline for making a logo, that’s bad. And you don’t have any art skills to speak of. But, I’m sure with an hour of googling and a bit of effort, you can at least whip up a rough draft in something as simple as freakin’ MS Paint. It’s not ideal, but you can rely on yourself. Self reliance is really about not being helpless. You may not be super helpful, but you won’t be helpless.

Self discipline ties into this with having self control. Going back to kung fu again for a moment, there is this great quote I burned into my mind: The boat that floats in water also sinks in it. This applies to SO many things, but I’ll just give a couple quick examples so you get the idea. It’s not about living like a drill sergeant, it’s about self control. Want to go have a few drinks with your buddies after work? Sure! Have a few. But don’t get blackout drunk and get a DUI. Have self control. Have the self discipline to be able to stop yourself. The inverse is also true. Having the self discipline to stick to promises, deadlines, and other obligations is fundamental to being a good person, really. And as I said, it ties neatly into the next topic: Honor.

Honor. Since I covered a lot of this in the previous segment I’ll be brief, but, truly having a sense of honor and integrity and sticking to them is fundamental to being a good warrior-scholar. This should be more or less self explanatory but since I’ve met more people than I could possibly count who don’t seem to get this concept, I’ll do my best here: Consistently proving over and over that your word is true, that when you say you’ll do something you’ll actually do it, consistently showing that other people can rely on you, that you won’t betray someone for your own personal gain at their expense, these may hurt in the short term, but have massive long term payoffs. Example, it may feel good right now to blow off helping your buddy move and instead go to that party, which is way more fun. But, a year or two from now, when you want to move, he’s going to remember you didn’t help him, and blow off helping you move too. Or, consider this: who would you rather hire, the person who consistently makes deadlines and keeps their promises, or the person who blows off work early to go party with buddies and doesn’t show up on time or finish projects within a deadline? It’s a pretty easy choice, right? And who would you rather date, a lying cheater or a loyal lover? I don’t personally believe in Karma as a sort of supernatural force of the universe, but, broadly speaking its effects are pretty obvious. Be a crappy person, get crappy results. Be an honorable person, get honorable results. And, yes, this often is more difficult. But, well, life is hard. It just is. But I can promise you that the self satisfaction of knowing you’re a good person and can sleep at night feels much better than any one night stand cheating session ever will.

And, finally, the ability to find a balance in your life between obsessive intense focus and broad appeal. This one is a bit tricky, and truthfully one I think I and most people struggle the most with. Because as with the first two points of trying your absolute ass off to be the best, that requires extreme obsessive focus and determination, not getting distracted away from it. And that is a good thing! But, let’s be honest, nobody wants to be friends with the person who only has one thing in their life. Yes, it is absolutely vital to be the best in the world at your ‘thing’ (whatever that thing may be) but to have no other interests, hobbies, whatever, of any kind? Makes you rather one-dimensional. From what I’ve read of people like Musashi, and from conversations with hundreds of people over the years, the general best advice I’ve heard boils down to allocating resources. You know, you can devote 80% of your life to being the best of the best at x thing, but do also make time to explore other interests, other aspects of life. The trick is not to get too sidetracked on side projects. And really, that ties back into self discipline again, being able to stay on track of the important things, but also allow yourself to loosen up enough to have some fun and expand your horizons.

So, there. 5 fundamental points of how to apply the lifestyle of the warrior-scholar to modern 21st century life. It doesn’t have to be sword fights and monastic meditation, it can be soccer and computer coding. But the core principles of: Constantly improving body and mind, consistently having honor and self control, and being able to incorporate all these things into your life while adding variety too… These are a great foundation upon which to build a happier, healthier and more successful life.

Good luck to you all. I hope I have helped. Just remember: Never give up. My best friend loves to quote this observation that anyone is about 6 months of genuine effort away from being in the top 10–20% of the world at any given skill. It’s just that most people give up before that. You can do it. You just have to MAKE it happen.

Life is, broadly speaking, pretty hard. It just is. Life is effort. But that’s okay. Don’t be afraid of effort. Because as good as lounging around feels now, you wouldn’t believe how awesome real success and pride at your own accomplishments feels.

And to finish with what my father likes to say: “Don’t let it be a good day, MAKE it a good day.”