If you're involved in the martial arts then perhaps you know a little about fighting your personality. If not, you should know that fighting here is really a metaphor for any task you do in life, from working your job to driving your car. Either way, it's more likely you are fighting your personality and thus not fighting your personality. Caught up in the act of fighting the way you think you should fight, or comparing yourself to another, you fight not only your opponent but your inner self, your own personality. Confused yet?

We have all heard these true yet cliche pieces of wisdom dispensed as advice. Fight your own fight. Become your enemy. Know yourself. Know your enemy. These and others are the often contradictory, kernels Confuciunism carefully constructed to keep us all in awe of our masters. If you're like me, you've spent a certain amount of your copious free time pondering their individual meanings. If you're like me then you've also been on the wrong track. As it turns out the answer lies in the Ying-Yang symbol painted on the wall of your school, or sewn to your uniform or perhaps tattooed to your body.

Duality
The underlying principal of duality touches much of what we broadly term as eastern philosophy and is key to understanding this aforementioned wisdom and ultimately yourself. The general principal is that to fully understand any one thing you must also understand all that it is not. Thus, you can not know black with out knowing white (and all the other colors for that matter). And so it's by design that this advice is contradictory and yes even confusing. If you look at this advice as sets rather than separate pieces you will start to see the relation.

Connecting the Pieces
In thinking about becoming your enemy you must also be thinking about fighting your own fight. The two are connected. They are in fact a metaphor for the personality of fighting. (Personality in this case refers to all the variables the mechanics a technique may have, from attitude, to expression, to timing, to element. - more on elements in a later piece). Thus knowing or understanding, "becoming," your opponent's personality allows you to adapt your own personality appropriately, assuming of course you are aware of your personality in the first place. You must understand both to truly know either one and thus have success.

Becoming Aware In the First Place
Becoming aware is the journey. That is to say it is the discovery of who you are. It's often said that "the big man must learn to fight as the little man" and "the little man must learn to fight as the big man". And yet it is also said that "no man can expect to fight as another." All are true. Again, a set of statements that contradict each other. yet have greater meaning as a set. If understanding anything is an exercise in Duality, then it is also true that all things have a dual nature. This is true of you, me, and everybody else for that matter. The personalities of the big man and the little man are in all of us to one degree or another regardless of physical size, as are the aspects of male and female. This, however, often goes unrealized. It is often these alternate aspects of our own personalities that we dislike and block or compensate for.

Stopping the Fight by Coming to Terms
If you've been involved in the martial arts for a long time and still think you're training just to become a better fighter, you are likely not seeing great progress, or rather have plateaued at some point of advancement that has been hard to surpass. This is because you are still focused on your ego, still fighting your demons. In each of us there are aspects of our personalities that we dislike, are uncomfortable with, block, mask, deny and otherwise disrespect. Discovering what these are in your personality and understanding them is the path of coming to terms. Luckily the very act of training in the martial arts is an exercise designed to do just that. As you explore these dark sides of yourself, you may feel as though you are stepping backward both in your understanding and your physical performance. You may feel as though you are uneasy with the very act of exploration, apprehensive to abandon past conceptions in favor of new realizations. This is normal, and in fact the feeling is the very fear that we've been fighting all along. This fear is like a self-defense mechanism to protect the ego. It's in place to protect our self image, such it might always be just as we have become comfortable with. Think of this fear like the pain of physical exercise. We accept that knowing it makes us stronger in the end. We look at it as an indicator of progress, even though for a time it may leave us stiff and sore. As you begin to accept this new pain, you will also begin know and accept your demons and your personality. So, you see once you stop fighting who you really are, you are on your way to becoming. Through coming to terms with your inhibitions, fears, and alternate aspects you will express yourself more freely and this will come out in your fighting... You'll be fighting your personality.