Oct 14, 2016
Have you ever played role-playing games (RPGs,) on table-top or video?
Games like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and others allow you to create and customize characters that improve as you play through the story.
The characters have different archetypes and abilities. There are warriors, mages, rogues, archers, etc.
One of those archetypes is the 'warrior monk' or 'fighting monk,' loosely based on Shaolin monks.
His character backstory is one of asceticism, stoicism, constant improvement, deep study, internal and external harmony.
He fights unarmored with his bare hands and starts off weaker than other characters.
As the game progresses and he gains experience, his unarmed strikes can kill enemies in one strike, he becomes so agile that nothing can hit him and so resilient that he is immune to magical and elemental attacks.
How would you re-create the warrior monk in real life?
It's a question I've been dwelling on ever since I became a father.
What personality traits will you instill in them?
What knowledge should they learn?
What martial arts would they study?
My guest today is uniquely qualified to speak on these issues.
Meet Ed Latimore - 13-1 professional boxer, undergraduate physics student, author, and blogger, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He writes about martial arts, self-improvement, and effective learning at http://edlatimore.com
Ed has published three short works:
The Four Confidences (a free ebook on how to be more confident, available on his website)
Twitter Poems and Insights (a collection of poems from Twitter on self-improvement with explanations and action steps)
How to Catch and Kill a Crackhead (a humorous work of fiction based on Ed's experiences growing up in the 'hood.)
He is currently working on his 4th book.
Follow him on Twitter - @edlatimore
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