​​Visit ToshiyukiIto.com!! 
"Evolve your spirit and body for a life time”.
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https://toshiyukiito.com

This website is going to be for our self improvement of mind, spirit, and body.
​I’m going to keep posting blogs about self improvement what I have learnt, such as mind skills, emotional control, personal growth, health & fitness, food, diet, motivation, etc, and  most importantly about "Life”.

The world we live in now is full of negative energy which causes bad effects to our mind, spirit, and body.
To not get affected by this bad environment, and stay strong and happy, we should all be proactive and try to sharpen our mind, spirit, and body everyday. 

Instead of becoming a person getting affected by environment, become a person to affect the environment!!
Let’s evolve our spirit and body all through our lives together, through this website and blogs!!

New website
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https://toshiyukiito.com

New blog page
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https://toshiyukiito.com/inspirational-blog/

I think this quote teaches us these things.
If you are always looking for an easy life from the beginning, usually you will end up with a harder one, because of always choosing the lazy or easy way, you don’t have the strength from overcoming hard times, so when you experience something difficult all of sudden, you can’t deal with it, and lose control.

There is no such thing as a life that’s free from difficulties, so you will experience hard times one day anyway.

Your problems will get harder and harder If you are always running away from them.
If you are always choosing the easy way and keep doing that, then that will become your habit, you get lazier, so then you start feeling that the easy things become harder.

On the other hand, if you are always challenging yourself, you will get stronger, and you will get used to doing that, so that harder things become easier to do.

For training, if you are always choosing the lazy and easy way, then you enter a competition, you will have a hard time. If you are being lazy, and not doing any exercises, and always having unhealthy easy take away foods, then it will feel hard just going up the stairs, after that it will feel hard just walking, next it will feel hard just getting up, and you will start having health problems, then you will have a hard life later on.
Instead of that, make a little effort to have better food, training hard and challenge your limit all the time, you will get stronger then everything will be easier.

Don’t choose the lazy and easy way, choose the harder way to get strength from overcoming every obstacle. Have good experiences and be a bigger person. Then you will have a better and happier life.

Ryoma Sakamoto ( 1836 –1867 ) was one of my heroes. 
About twenty five years ago, I came to Australia all alone. I didn’t know anyone, and couldn’t even speak any English at all. And one of the reasons for me to have this big challenge in a different country was that I was inspired by his story, I wanted to be like him with big dreams and big challenges.

He was a great pioneer in Japan’s history, but what I respect him the most for is his heart and his attitude.
Around his time, whenever they tried new things or tried to change something, it always became life threatening, people from the old government who did’t want change would try to kill them. 
Coming from those kinds of circumstances, his words and quotes are very powerful and realistic. 

The present time we are living in now, we are free. We can try most of things without someone trying to stop and kill us. So, we should try the hardest we can to accomplish something great using all of our passion and life energy.
Don’t spend your life being idle.    
Have big dreams and challenge big!

There is a lot of negative energy around us. 
You see bad incidents in the news all the time If you watch TV or the internet. Negative people always write negative comments and post on social media. You see a lot of grumpy, impatient, and angry people when you drive a car. You have to deal with negative people when you go to work, and they are always grumpy, whinging, complaining, making excuses, and criticising others. 
When you try to talk to them, they start to attack you with negative energy. If you attack back in a negative way, you make the negative energy bigger, then it usually ends up with conflict and a fight. 

Negative energy is contagious. You will be one of them too If you don’t be careful.
Best if you avoid negative energy, stay away from those people, and don’t  watch the news or internet. Although it is very hard to avoid them all living in this society. You can’t avoid them all the time. 

Negative energy is contagious but the good news is positive energy is contagious too. So, going to places or participating in activities regularly where there are a lot of positive people, you will get positive energy from them.
Then, when you encounter negative energy, let your positive energy out which is stronger than their negative energy to affect them. That doesn’t mean to persuade them or educate them. These kind of people usually don’t listen to other people anyway, so that would be a waste of your energy, and you might get their negative energy. What you should do is inspire them with your attitude and actions. Probably, they still won’t change, but that way, at least you don’t get affected by them and don’t have to waste your energy.
As you keep letting out your strong positive energy, they start feeling uncomfortable, and either they slowly change to a more positive attitude or they won’t be negative in front of you, and will probably go to different group where more negative people are.

Don’t get affected by negative energy, inspire them with your strong positive energy!!

My teacher Submission Arts Wrestling founder SHIHAN Hidetaka Aso used to tell us to strengthen our body all the time. 
Through physical training to strengthen our body, we will get benefits for our mind part as well, such as getting mental strength, and as our body is getting stronger, we will be getting confident.
But we have to be careful here, he said ” Strengthening the body is important but that doesn’t mean just go to the gym, and forget about Martial Arts training and just try to get big muscles. Some people end up making their body unbalanced which makes it easy to get tired, lose speed, unhealthy, etc, or get injuries from lifting heavy weights. That’s like putting the cart before the horse. A more important priority is to get a strong and tough body to fight against injuries and sickness, and achieve the ideal body for fighting. "

If you are getting sick or injured all the time, you can’t keep training, so can’t improve constantly. You need healthy and tough body with full of energy all the time.  And the ideal body for fighting is to be able to control your own body with swiftness, agility and flexible movements. 
Traditional Martial Arts exercises and body movement drills are the best way to attain this kind of body.

A long time ago, when I was training very hard for competitions and fights, and when I started feeling mentally and physically exhausted, I tried to think and tell myself these words “ I’m tough, I can get through this!! “ , “ It will be much harder at competitions if I get lazy now!! “ ,  “ My future opponents are training much harder than this!! " , “ This is a good opportunity to get one step up better and stronger!! “ ,  “ This is easy, I might have much harder times than this in my life later on!! “ ,  “ I’m the one laughing in the end!! “ .  
Extra power and energy came after I told myself those words.

Every time when I got through those hard training sessions, I felt like I was getting mentally and physically stronger and tougher.
 
This is not only when we train. Everyone is getting stronger and tougher by getting through hard and tough times in our everyday lives, then we become  bigger and stronger people, like our muscles grow bigger and stronger after weight training. If we put some pressures and stress on ourselves, we will be stronger and tougher. 
If you give up or run a way because it feels too hard, you will struggle at the same point all the time.
So, try to make a habit of thinking like this when you have a hard and tough time, either in training or in everyday life, and overcome them!! 
“ This is a good opportunity to get better and stronger if I get through it!! “

武の道は礼に始まり礼に終わる

​This means attaining good manners, respect, and courtesy is one of the most important priorities of Martial Arts. 
Every training session, we start and finish with respect and courtesy.
During training, show your respect and courtesy to thank and appreciate your training partners, teacher, and the dojo. If you don’t have your training partners, teacher, and place to train, you can’t even train and improve yourself. 

We practice fighting techniques which could be very dangerous without respecting each other.
When you are doing sparring etc, and your partner gets a strike or a submission on you, you should thank them, because you can realise what to fix.
In the old days, SAMURAI warriors respected each other even when they were killing each other in a battle. 
The good warriors were polite, and got respect and courtesy.
We should respect each other when we compete too. You learn a lot from competitions. Be polite, and show courtesy to your opponent, referee, organiser, etc. Without them, you can’t compete. Consider your opponent as a helper to make you better. So give 100% effort  to make that competition meaningful for you and your opponent.

Don’t forget “ The Way of Martial Arts begins and ends with respect and courtesy "

I hated being defeated in competitions in the early stage of my fighting career when I was teenager, because for my young and silly brain back in that time, I felt like all my technique, hard work, and even my presence itself got denied from being defeated.
I was crying all night, not talking to anyone for a few days every time I got defeated in fights. But as I had more and more experience, I realised I learnt much more when I got defeated than when I won. 
I found and realised a lot about what I had to fix when I got defeated, and easy to find what to focus on in training until next competition.
I would always find some technique and physical part to fix, but the biggest thing I learnt after being defeated was my mind. I felt like every time I got defeated, I was getting mentally tougher, I learnt more mind skills, and got wiser too.

Of course, winning competitions is the best way, and you should always try your hardest at training and your hardest at competition to win. You learn a lot from winning competitions too, also you get confident, but if you don’t be careful, you get an ego very easily from just winning only few fights, then your improvement will stop. That happened to me at one stage.
So, don’t stop learning from either winning or losing. 
Don’t waste those experiences. The most important thing I’ve learnt from being defeated was to stand up and fight again, attaining the never giving up spirit.   
If we keep running away because we are scared of being defeated or worry about failing, we can’t improve and we will achieve nothing. If you want to get better or achieve something great, you have to challenge someone better than you or challenge yourself with something hard. When your challenge is bigger, you will get better and you will have greater achievements.
Learning this kind of mindset from being a fighter is helping for my life a lot now

Dojo is simply translated as gym, club or place of training in English, but I want you to know more about the meaning of dojo, so you will know why I named our club MMA ITO DOJO. 

The word “ DOJO “ consists of two different KANJI characters, DO (道） and JO (場). 
“DO” means “Way", but also meaning long journey for attaining something great. “JO” means “Place”, but also meaning somewhere like church, temple, or sanctuary in this sense. So, “ DOJO “ means a sacred place where people get together with respect, peace, and happiness, learning and practicing to attain something great in their journey. And through this journey, we will improve ourselves to be better people. 

I want all my students and even myself to remember that, and respect the place, people, and equipments in the dojo, so we can continue to keep going in the right direction as Martial Artist and as humans

There are SAMURAI sayings in Edo age in Japan, “ Never forget to prepare yourself for battles even if you are in a safe and peaceful society. “ and “ Sharpen your sword everyday even if you will never have to use it. “

If something like conflicts or physical attacks happen all of a sudden, and your mind and skills are not prepared for it, you won’t  know what to do, you will panic, and won’t be able to control the situation.
If you are prepared all the time, you will be calm and confident, so most of time you won’t  even have to use your skills. 

There are dangers everywhere these days. 
Learn practical skills and train hard all the time to prepare yourself for dangerous situations.

This mindset is also good for fighters too, because sometimes your match up happens all of a sudden. 
If you are not prepared for the fight, you can’t take it, and you may miss a good  opportunity.
It’s good to be fit, then your mind and skills are prepared all the time for competitions.

Sharpen your sword everyday, and be prepared your mind, skills, and fitness all the time!!

Also, the other questions you should ask yourself when you experience negative things are “ What can I learn from this? “ and 
“ What is good about this experience? “ 
Be a good meaning maker.
Positive thinkers see an opportunity in every difficulty, negative thinkers see a difficulty in every opportunity. 

One more important thing you can do is going to see people who think big. Try to get involved with the group that is full of positive people, who have got big dreams and think things big. Then, find a role model, and always think if it was him, what would he think? or what would he do? 
Do you know this, if one champion came from one certain gym, it’s likely to get more champions from the same gym? There are a few different reasons for that such as they have a good trainer, good training partners etc, but I think the main reason is that, people get affected by a champion’s mindset, their attitude towards training , their big dreams and goals etc. So the other people become good fighters and champions as well.  
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Think big all the time, and don’t sweat every small thing!!

So, what we should do first is plan our dreams or goals.
Making it clear, what you really want or want to be. Those dreams or goals should be something that, when you think about it, you get so excited and happy.
Then, you should think about what action you need to take to achieve those dreams or goals.
After that, keep asking yourself “ What can I do right now to make it closer to those goals? “ 
Do this all the time. If you do this all the time, you can start seeing lots of positive things, good ideas, and good opportunities towards the goals, and you won’t see much or feel much of those small negative things.
If you change what you are focusing on, the world you see will change, your life will change. 
Even if you see or feel negative things, you should think about those dreams or goals, then ask yourself that question “ What can I do right now to make it closer to the goals? " Because questions immediately change what you are focusing on.  
Also, the other questions you should ask yourself when you experience negative things are…continue to part 3

Have you ever had this kind of experience?
After you bought a certain kind of thing like clothes or a car etc, then it seems as though everywhere you look, people are wearing the same kind of clothes, or have the same car.
You feel like everyone is copying you.
When you just had new born baby, you see people with babies, or pregnant women everywhere.
People see more of what they are focusing on.
If you are focusing on every small negative thing, you will see them more and more, then it will never stop.
According to research, the people who failed in life think about and focus on what they don’t want most of the time.
While the top achievers constantly think about and focus on what they do want.
What do you think about most of the time? worries? complaining? excuses? If you always think about or focus on negative things, the negative energy will take over your whole life.
So, what we should do is… continue to part 2