What has brought you the most joy or strength this year? 

Dhcamad | Kaikohe

Dhcamad shares how fighting has made him calmer, kinder and mentally strong, with his greatest reward being witnessing complete life transformations of the people he trains.

“I’ve been fighting professionally for 13 years. Just from Japan, from the beginning stages, I just learned to love it. It’s become my hobby, my passion, and we’ve started a team here. So, yeah, the passion is helping people through fighting. Fighting’s quite a high pressure sport. Tests you emotionally. Physically, it pushes you to the ultimate limit. And then you have to kind of learn how to control your emotions, your body, your everything, your mind. So yeah, it’s made me more of a controlled, calm person. I would say I’m a nice guy. I try to be nice to everybody, but fighting, although maybe some people think it’s a violent thing, it’s made me nicer. Because there’s nothing to prove. Yeah, just to try and be kind to everybody.

So I understand why people may have a negative opinion or feeling about fighting. People that don’t understand it when they hear fighting, the image is violent or aggressive. And it is, it still is. But if you do it in the right way, in a positive way, then it can change lives. And I know it because I’ve seen it. I’ve actually seen it completely do a, I don’t know if you say 180 or 360, but a complete turn of life. To two years ago and to where this person is now, you wouldn’t know the two different characters from each other. Completely changed a life.

For me, that’s the payoff for what I do. For me it’s not about money – I don’t charge, it’s not that. The payoff is seeing the change, the positive change in people and that is 100%, that’s more for me than any amount of money. To see someone improve their life. This for me keeps me straight. Keeps me balanced, healthy, strong. Know how to handle myself and then also healthy in the mind. Yeah, happy. Happy with who I am. Happy with life. But this is a big part of my life. The fighting, yep cool, I love it but fighting is really nothing, compared to those things that matter.

What gives me joy not this year, every year from forever since I’ve been alive is Heavenly Father, yeah? Putting God first. My family. Coming from a good family, my mum and dad, being raised by good parents and having good examples. And then also my family, yeah? My wife Izumi and my children. That’s my happiness. My real happiness, the stuff that matters, that counts.”