When I was a young apprentice in the kung fu school, I was always taught that it was good etiquette to hang swords with the handles on the left.

I was amused to learn there was a practical reason for this.

The reason was that if there was ever an intruder invading the school, and they lunged for a weapon, they would be grabbing it with the left hand. The odds are 90% that the intruder would be right-handed. This would mean they would either be wielding the weapon with the wrong hand, or they would have to spend crucial seconds fumbling with the sword to switch hands.

I always found it interesting how etiquette was built around this practical little idea.

While rival schools breaking into the dojo for a lethal showdown isn’t really a problem anymore these days, but there is still a valuable lesson to be learned.

I thought of this this morning when I grabbed a teapot off of the shelf to make myself tea.

Whether at the kung fu school or at home, I always shelve my tea pots with the spout to the left, so to automatically grab it with the right hand ready to pour.

I chuckled at myself realizing that, if a rival kung fu master ever invades for a lethal showdown, I am statistically reducing the odds of them grabbing a sword (probably not by much, but I’m having fun here, so just roll with it), while statistically increasing the odds they would choose to have tea instead.

I like tea, and I don’t like violence. It would be far better to have tea with an adversary then to have a duel. So I like this positioning, insignificant as it may seem.

The lesson here comes back to positioning, which I rant about a lot if you follow me for a while.

In Kung Fu, after you become highly proficient in the various moves, the punches, the kicks, and blocks… you start to think about position; the position of yourself, the position of your opponent, the position of things in your environment. Positioning of all 3 has a drastic effect on the outcome of any challenge or confrontation.

If you want success in your life, you need to factor in positioning. How you position yourself for the best odds of a successful outcome.

If you’ve ever worked in Real Estate in anyway you know this, you’ve heard it repeatedly, “location, location, location”. This applies to everything from the lot your house sits on to an intruder breaking in to your dojo in the middle of the night to assassinate you =-D

Position tools for your habits, both good and bad, accordingly. If you are on your phone too much, and it’s the first thing you grab in the morning when you wake up, then start putting it in another room when you go to bed.

If you want to start exercising in the morning, put your weights somewhere close, so you have to trip on the on your way to the coffee maker, so you are more likely to pick them up and use them while the coffee brews.

This won’t guarantee success every time, but it will statistically improve the odds of you engaging in the right activity over an extended period.

If you want to drink less and eat healthier, analyze your drive home and see if you can retrain your regular route. If you normally drive by more bars than grocery stores, see if you can make a habit of taking a new route that has you drive by more grocery stores than bars, so you are more likely to stop in for fresh produce than a drink.

On that same note, if you want to start eating healthier, train the habit of spending more time on the outside isles, and avoid zig zagging in the middle isles unless absolutely necessary.

Put things that create resistance in between you and bad habits, and try to make a path of least resistance between you and good habits.

Like I said, it won’t guarantee success instantly, but it will improve the odds of you building good habits and dropping bad ones over a long period of time.

Whenever you get an opportunity for self reflection, always spend some time to reflect on your position, and how you position things that are potential obstacles or opponents, and how you position tools for bag habits versus good habits.