There are two types of martial arts students. Those who say they want to be a black belt, and those who say they want to become a black belt.
The ones who will find the greatest success are the ones that see their training as a lifelong journey; not as a destination and an end.
For everything in life there is a path. The ones who travel it best are those that understand that the path is the point. We shouldn’t be hurrying along with our eyes fixed on something at the end. We should walk along with our eyes wide open and our head on a swivel, soaking it all in.
Everything you pick up along the way helps build you into who you are and who you can become. Don’t waste the opportunities by missing out on the lessons that the experience offers you.
Those who love learning, will never be disappointed. Life is filled with lessons. Life is a lesson.
There was a study done a few years ago by Carol Dweck in relation to a person’s mindset.
The two mindsets to consider are a fixed mindset (e.g. you are talented or you are not) and growth mindset (e.g. with hard work, study, and effort you can achieve greatness).
Here’s an example of the concept from Dweck:
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.
So the importance of being a lifelong learner is backed by science. Your attitude towards learning makes all the difference.
Another concept to both help show the advantage of the growth mindset and to give an example of how to implement it is stacked learning. This is the idea of taking things you already know about or are learning at the same time and combining the principles from one to the other for exponential growth. Stack your learning and learn faster and better.
Whether it’s martial arts or your job, your family or other hobbies, a desire to learn will lead you to unexpected treasures. So always be searching. Always be seeking. Always be learning.
And you will succeed every day.
