When I was a kid, I was taught a great deal of various things by my dad. Some of the things he taught me were not remembered, others I held onto, and still others just did not suit me. There was one thing in specific that sticks out greatly, even now (10-15 years later). It was the theory of "The Battle Within". Essentially he described it as this, when I am going through life each day, there is an internal structure. There is you (A martial arts master), versus another martial arts master in a tournament. Each tournament lasts 1 week, and there is one fight per day. So a total of 7 fights in any specific tournament. The "Battle" represents good and bad. If you are acting good during a specific day at a given time, you start winning the fight, if you start to do something bad you are losing the fight. Essentially as you do good/bad stuff throughout the day and make good/bad decisions it affects this internal struggle. At the end of the day, it tallies up everything you did good, and bad. If the good outweighed the bad, you win the battle. If the bad outweighed the good, you lose the battle. Essentially the goal is to try to win each and every battle, so you can win every tournament. Essentially if you lose a total of 2 times in a given week, then your out of the tournament.

There were more things to it, but that is the general idea. The main reason he created this theory and passed it onto me was because of my love for martial arts. It was something I liked a lot, and peaked my interest at that age. Subsequently my childhood behavior throughout the next 3-4 years improved drastically. I am not sure if this will be of value to anyone, but it could help you in your daily struggles to do the right thing. On top of that, if you have children who love martial arts, who knows...it might help. It never hurts to try. Worse is they'll laugh at you and walk away.

There were many other similar things my dad has taught me throughout me life. But for some reason, this one thing sticks out. It had the greatest affect on my lifestyle, and the way that I acted. It was a good experience. I wasn't particularly bad at school...but I had some behavior issues (at any stage).