Staying On The Centerline – A Lesson In Kung Fu
Lol. This article was inspired by my Monday team training I did earlier this week. — originally, I wasn’t going to put this up, but I think that the concept behind this is so good that I just had to.
One of the core differences in this particular Kung Fu school I went to was that they had a completely different philosophy on how to structure movement than really anything that I had seen, and they were a bit eccentric about everything…
…for example, they didn’t let you stretch in class. They believed that you should just gradually warm up your body by moving in a way that you didn’t need to stretch — and it worked. One time, my brother Will was in class, and Will was really flexible (he can do the splits between two chairs — I think he’s missing his crotch, but not really sure).
Anyways, my brother’s legs start cramping because of this awkward stance they were making him stand in for hours on end, and he went down on the ground to do the splits. My instructor, Sifu Carlos Colorado (awesome, really knowledgeable, disciplined guy, by the way), said:
“Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!” as he charged across the room with his hands up in fight mode. My brother completely panicked and looked more scared than he ever had in his life — I burst into laughter, because Carlos was serious — no stretching in class! Lol.
He’s not quite as crazy about that stuff now, but he’s still pretty intense — one of the reasons I think he’s the best martial arts teacher I’ve ever had. In any case, in addition to being a little nuts, the philosophy in Wing Chun was that you don’t structure TECHNIQUES, you structure philosophy, physics, and body mechanics, and see what techniques fit into the principles that already govern the universe. It was a very different way of thinking.
As an example, one of the simple principles was called “Look at nothing, see everything” which is essentially what a boxer does when they watch your chest — it’s a transfer into peripheral vision that makes it so you don’t do dumb stuff, like watch someone’s fist when they’re swinging at you (there’s almost no easier way to get hit in the face than doing that). They did something a bit odd, though — they taught me to not just watch the chest, but to pull your vision back about six inches off of the chest, so everything was a bit blurry. When you do that, you can literally see someone’s whole body all at once, from their toes to their head, and it immediately speeds non-tactile reaction time (reactions based on visual input) by two to ten times. The coolest thing though, about doing that, is that when arms are flying at you and you can see someone’s whole body at once, not only is it not ‘scary’ at all, but even if they look really mean at you, you can kind of smile and laugh. Before this, as stupid as it was — I used to look into people’s eyes to ‘stare them down’. Lol. Hilarious when you think of how dumb that is.
Plus, if someone is really angry and you just look ‘zen’, it freaks them out a bit.
There are 108 principles that control all of the movements and techniques that build Wing Chun (I don’t know them all, and probably never will) and one of the core, most important concepts was called “The Centerline”. Actually, the centerline concept fit into a bigger principle that I’m not going to get into now, but it looks something like this:
Basically, if your attacks manipulate someone’s centerline, no matter where it is on their body — it affects their whole center of balance, and when someone doesn’t have any balance — they can’t attack or hit back with any leverage. That’s one of the reasons that Royce Gracie was taking out 300-pound huge boxers, and he’s a skinny 170 lbs guy — if they can’t get any ‘hit leverage’, he can break their arm while they struggle to accomplish nothing.
Simultaneously, if you hit someone towards the centerline (from any angle) it hurts more, causes more damage, and affects their whole body at the same time — it’s just gravity.
What does this have to do with Network Marketing?
In this industry, people are non-stop distracting themselves from the only things that matter in their business. Sometimes the reason is confusion, or lack of knowledge, and sometimes the reason is that they are afraid of the outcome if they do what they know they need to do.
The ‘centerline’ activities in this business are activities that lead you in a straight, direct path towards your goals with no interruptions — and there’s only a few things that will do that. Remember, in this business, all of our income is generated from product sales, whether it’s in our organization — personal sales, or selling info products — it’s all one person buying a product, and another person selling it.
The money goes to the person who sells the product (obviously, but you would wonder if people knew this by behavior) NOT the person who buys it. See my article on The Nature Of Making Money — now I’m not telling you to not buy things, sometimes you need to buy trainings, courses, products, books, coaching, etc., to LEARN how to get your business increasing sales — just remember that the ACTUAL ACT of buying doesn’t earn income — selling does.
Funny enough, people move in a crazy, convoluted path towards selling — spending ALL DAY tweeting, setting up, learning, educating themselves, listening to that Dani Johnson CD again and again, going to every possible webinar, putting another tweet up, making sure they have a nice suit to attend meetings, spending a little extra time combing their hair to look good at the presentation, practicing their breathing to make sure they sound good in presentations, visualizing having a Ferrari, looking at pictures of cool houses, searching Google for the Secret, getting pumped for when their huge downline manifests from thin air, buying another course — and OH! I forgot! I better re-listen to that Dani Johnson CD!
Lol. The ‘Centerline’ activities of selling, recruiting, and money making are these:
- Generating a contact list — whether it’s old school, new school, or ‘whatever’ (really there’s not much of a difference), you’re building a contact list all the time — because you can’t recruit without some kind of list. This could be from marketing OR meeting people, it really doesn’t matter, you’ve just got to master a method of doing it.
- Prospecting in some way — whether it’s picking up the phone or you find another magical way to do it — you’ve got to connect with human beings on a daily basis if you want to be rich. Nothing is sold if people aren’t moving through your pipeline.
- Getting people to see presentations/presenting/inviting people to presentations — For some reason, A LOT of people are trying to recruit without people ever seeing company presentations. How in the cotton-pickin heck are you going to get someone interested in your business if they never look at it? As they say in Amway: “Show the Plan”.
- Asking people to join after they look at it, and getting them into a good follow-up cycle (I prefer automated) if they don’t join then. In other words, if someone doesn’t join, make sure they’re in an autoresponder or some kind of follow-up, whether it’s direct mail/email/text messages, or something new — because a lot of people will enroll later, and I don’t have time to keep hassling the same five people again and again trying to pound a decision out of them.
Watch this training I did on Monday, I think you’ll enjoy it, I go over this in a lot more detail:
What are your thoughts, my friends?
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below.
Comments
John123
This is an interesting post! I never thought about how the principles of martial arts could be applied to network marketing. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Mike456
I’m not sure if I completely believe the idea that focusing on the centerline can help in every situation. Could you provide more examples or evidence to support this?
Susan789
Great post, David! I had never heard of the centerline concept before. It makes me wonder how I can apply these principles in my own business. Any tips?
Tom999
I really enjoyed reading this, but I think you could have provided more specific strategies related to network marketing. While the Kung Fu story is cool, I would have liked more actionable advice.
Alex321
Hey David! It’s been a while since we last spoke. I loved this post. Let me know when you’re free, and we can catch up over coffee!
Emily654
Funny enough, I recently had a similar problem with focus in my own business. This idea of the centerline resonates with me, and I’m excited to put it into practice. Thanks for the great read!
Mark765
This post reminds me of a tool I’ve been using for focus: the Pomodoro Technique. It’s been really helpful for me. You should check it out!
Kate876
Thank you for this post, David! I’ve learned so much about how important it is to stay focused on the things that truly matter in business.
