Translator: Staša M Božić Reviewer: Denise RQ
Javier Villarrubia: Let's continue with our next speaker.
He is going to tell us about Aikido.
He is an expert in networking, social media, communication
but he is going to talk about Aikido.
Whoever knows Aikido they'd connect it to martial arts.
It is a martial art indeed, but the problem is
whenever we speak about martial arts, we stick with the adjective martial,
and we think it is something used for fighting, for battle, for war.
However, that is not an important part of Aikido.
It is actually not an important part of any martial art.
The important part is that it is an art and, as such,
it completely pervades the lives of those who practice it.
I mean, it is not a set of techniques that help me defeat the enemy.
It is a lifestyle that enables me to fight against myself as I am my own enemy.
In fact, Aikido is one of the most recent martial arts,
therefore one of the arts to best incorporate all subsequent developments.
I'll leave you with him. (Applause)
José Ángel García: Good afternoon.
We all had some food, some wine, we are more optimistic this morning.
I am here to speak about, or rather connect, Aikido,
resilience, business management, and even attitude towards life.
Here is my Twitter profile,
in case you're curious or you want to call me every name under the sun.
Alright. What's a trauma?
Being fired from our jobs is not a trauma, though it could be.
Having a family member, or ourselves, go through a cancer...
We experience traumas even before we are born.
Remember where we come from: millions of sperm cells,
only one reaches an egg and we start to exist.
Our first trauma, the very first one, even though we do not remember
is birth itself.
Whoever watched a recording of a labor,
they know what trauma is.
You get out through a very tight place, you do not know what to expect out there,
and you wonder what will happen after you are out.
That is a trauma.
We're born with an innate ability
to not only experience traumas but also get over them.
This man, or the Sensei, or the founder of Aikido, throughout his life, well...
To get your mind around it, although Aikido is a martial art,
it is not a 200-year-old martial art like others.
Aikido was created between 1920 and 1960
when Morihei Ueshiba gathered
certain techniques that belonged to other disciplines to create a new one.
He experienced two highly significant traumas throughout his life.
He was marked, and as a result,
he created a martial art called Peace Fighters,
More about that later.
His first trauma happened when he was a little boy, skinny, and not too strong.
He watched a band of thugs beat his father up.
He could not do anything and the experience marked him.
The other thing that marked him,
and I understand it to be a major trauma,
was witnessing the atomic bombs being dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He understood that, first, one has to try to defend oneself
and second, that violence does not make much sense.
For that reason, he created the only martial art
that does not have any attack techniques.
An aikidoka always waits for the opponent to come towards him.
We can somehow invite the attack,
but we never attack, only defend ourselves.
I would like to share two statements that I consider essential:
first, resilience is not for apathetic and pessimistic people.
Resilience is a positive, active attitude that is essential to life,
and as the Sensei himself said,
it cannot be built on a yacht and a millionaire credit line.
That is not how one gets strong in spirit.
We get strong in spirit through traumas.
Traumas give us strength to get ahead in life, we should always remember that.
Second, life is there to be lived. Even traumas, everything.
We must learn to enjoy adversity. Why?
Because as Durban - an anthropologist - said,
we are, to some degree, linked to about 150 people
neighbours, university mates, friends, and if we have a problem,
we know there are 150 people to tell about it
and 150 direct solutions to get in return.
This means we may have a single problem, but near infinite possible solutions.
We should not focus on the problem and forget about the many solutions.
Just like in Aikido, it is about keeping distance.
Not engaging and putting up resistance,
but getting away and using the opponent's energy.
Aikido, and martial arts in general, foster positive human values:
respect, humility, serenity, understanding, tolerance.
Aikido, in addition to that, has a unique trait:
there are no Aikido competitions, championships, or regional titles.
The meetings that aikidokas attend to exchange techniques, knowledge & the like,
are regular meetings: a group of friends meet up at a dojo
and spend a weekend practicing for hours.
I tell you, it is exhausting, but it is not a competition.
We are not there to defeat anyone. We are there to share.
Problems. A classic.
We have a fantastic problem which we do not find that fantastic,
- we will see why later on -
that makes us feel the weight of the world on our shoulders.
I lost my job, I have to move elsewhere, a family member's sick; get overwhelmed.
What happens in Aikido?
We take advantage of the energy released by the problem,
our own energy, the opponent's energy,
and use all of it to destabilize them and get a positive outcome.
What we do then is guide the opponent and help them fall.
The intention in Aikido is not to hurt them. Why?
Because one of the principles is
that the opponent's energy combines with our own,
and we use it not to defeat them or land on top of them,
but to dissuade them, make them change their attitude.
In life, it is important to have a positive attitude.
So, when it comes to resilience and traumas, what should we do?
We should understand problems as sources of energy.
They activate our nerve cells. Fear makes us more aware.
We experience an internal chemical process
and we need to learn to take advantage of it in a positive way.
Not through depression and medication, but by using the energy in a positive way.
Why all this? Why use problems as a positive energy?
Because if we did not have any problems,
if our race had not had any performance limiting factors
throughout history, we would never have evolved.
Problems are a key evolutionary tool.
Is the current crisis a problem? Yes, it is.
But it is a golden opportunity to improve society and take it to a next level.
We shouldn't be negative, we shouldn't see this situation as a sinking ship.
It would be acceptable from time to time,
but we must take advantage of the situation and say: "Let's see.
What can we learn from this? What could be improved in companies and individuals?"
That is the right attitude.
That is also what one does in Aikido;
they use the opponent's energy as a tool for improvement.
Another important thing upon dealing with a problem or a trauma is distance.
And I use Aikido as a metaphor because I see it as a valuable metaphor.
We cannot approach a problem by thinking
because we are experiencing that problem in person.
We must step away. A piece of advice:
whenever I want to reflect upon anything, I never do it in my office.
I live in Bilbao. There is a beach nearby.
I take my car to the beach, turn off my cellphone
and start reflecting upon my problem.
Why? It's likely with that attitude and in that environment
I am much more clearheaded and I can come up with far more solutions.
Therefore, one must not focus on the problem, one must take distance,
and get some perspective to assess all possible solutions better.
Just like in Aikido: keep a distance, and keep a distance from the opponent.
Back in the days, when I started practicing martial arts,
I started with Karate Shotokan.
That discipline does have some attack techniques,
but eventually, you realise that, whenever you attack, you also get attacked
you get hit, punched, kicked, and that does not feel right.
The right attitude was, precisely, being able to defend myself
without attacking anyone; that is why I ended up practicing Aikido.
What should one do about problems and negative energy?
One needs to consider letting them flow.
I do not mean we need to forget about them,
but we do have to avoid getting involved.
We step aside and reflect upon them.
That is Aikido: let things flow, and do not fight your opponent.
You dodge him, you project... see the pictures.
They are by a Norwegian photographer whom I will name later on.
He is a very nice guy and is also involved in Aikido.
A next key thing. We live immersed in change.
Life is change all the way since birth.
I do not think anyone has had their picture taken
when they were 3 months old,
and still looked the same when they were 68.
If we stand by this principle,
we have to accept that change is the engine that powers human beings.
We change constantly.
If change is the engine, then resilience is its fuel.
If we have problems, alternatives, solutions,
and can take advantage of this energy as a positive thing and are resilient...
Being resilient does not mean enduring it all, like Epicurus.
It means being born with springs on one's feet
and knowing that when one hits rock bottom
it is possible to rise again.
And everyone sets their own limits.
I reached this point, and from here on, I evolve and grow.
That is what a resilient person does. It is the fuel for facing problems.
Life, as someone said earlier, is a journey,
but it is important to bear in mind
that it is an evolving journey, like river rapids.
All is never won, as all is never lost.
We can change companies, partners, even physical appearance,
but what really matters is our evolution to learn, to keep calm.
Something I am very interested in as a professional
is knowing that when I get back home and go to bed, I have a clean conscience.
If I have done something that I understand to be correct
and I can sleep soundly, I understand that any changes
undertaken throughout that day have been positive.
Which mistakes do we make?
We see problems as fundamentally negative.
I have a problem and it eats me up.
That is wrong, as I said earlier, problems are opportunities for improvement
opportunities to talk to others and gain new perspectives on any problem.
Since we are around only temporarily, we should seek advice.
An open mind would point us
to far more possible solutions and make problems shrink.
Our resilience level would increase exponentially, which means the glass...
I read a post by someone once, I do not know whether he is here today,
but it was curious because he posted it on Facebook
and it read: "the glass is always full
because in the first case it is half water, half air."
We should never think that the glass is half empty, we should be realistic.
That is the attitude we should face problems with.
The world is coming to an end, the world is over.
It looks like life is coming to an end too,
but at the end of the day,
problems are the only chance we get at reinventing ourselves.
Every time I visit a company - and I visit many companies -
I step into a factory, there are workers there
who have been on the same job for 20 years.
And when I see them, I feel truly sorry for them,
because they look sad, gray, miserable. Why?
Because they never had a chance to improve.
Some companies do give workers that chance,
but it's not a general tendency.
We need to take advantage of the positive energy
that comes along with change and problems.
Observe. Experiment. Why?
Because even worst case scenarios, such as a severe illness,
may be an opportunity to realize
that we have not spent enough time with someone,
we have not paid enough attention to them, we have not shown them our love.
That experience would be an essential life lesson.
According to Aikido, one must listen to oneself. Always.
One cannot only listen to their problems scream.
We must listen to our own self, our inner voice.
"What is the best I can do in this situation?" "What are my options?"
"Which one do I feel better about, or more comfortable with?"
That is the decision I must make.
It is called ki: the inner, vital energy.
Upon facing a trauma or a difficult situation,
we tend to choose the most comfortable way out
and it should not always be like that.
I have some friends who ended up going to work abroad.
They used to say: "It is hard for me to leave home",
and now they are happy, they met someone, they have children...
Why did it have to start as a trauma?
Does your inner self tell you that you may not evolve where you are?
Then travel, meet new people, go abroad.
Another thing humans do out of habit is
consider anyone who approaches us an enemy.
But those people are a chance to grow.
We should see anyone whom we have near as an opportunity to collaborate, to learn.
In the case of companies, to dream together; a great resource.
That is how we are evolving as a result of the crisis.
The future is collaborative.
The future does not lie in 'competing' but in 'co-ope-(Ra)-ting'.
To sum up: after the winter, the snowfalls, the closed roads,
at the end, this is the same tree, the same landscape.
When the winter is over, the sun always, always, always...
the sun always comes out. Spring always comes, summer comes.
We can get over our problems, no matter how big, but we need a positive attitude.
Even though the Aikido exhibition could not take place,
I would like to thank Aikikai Castellon Club.
They had a problem with their tatami and could not make it.
Also, thank you Sigurd for the pictures.
I hope that when you leave here today, your problems seem smaller,
and the solutions, bigger and better.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)