Learn from others experience:

One thing that really pisses me off is when I am trying to work with someone and they tell me they know something already?! The thing is that if you already knew then I wouldn’t be over correcting them.

After doing the same thing over and over again for long periods of time we forget what it felt like the 1st day. In time we think we know something unlike day 1 when we were hungry for knowledge because we knew we knew nothing and we were excited for something new. This leads to a decline in performance. More times then not we miss the slide from peak performance to maintenance level. This is why it is good to have people with more experience then you around.

We all need a kick in the ass to wake us up to the reality of we don’t know it all. I try to stay as humble as possible in my training and teaching. I have found great success along my way but I know that what got me success today might not work tomorrow. Sound principles are my foundation. What changes is how I train these principles and apply them.

We are not the same person from day to day. Our mental and physical conditions change constantly. This causes us to react differently and changes are ability to deal with situations. When I broke my right hand I had to change my strategy for a while. I had to rely on other tools to deal with the same situations. Some days I don’t have the same mental toughness to deal with heavy contact. This makes me move more then absorb. The adjustments and issues can go on and on.

Our ability to maintain a beginners attitude in training is key to staying fresh in thought and attitude. We can never feel like we have been there and done that. Even if we have we still have a new opportunity to experience in a new time and a new way.

In Karate, people have grown to associate a black belt with mastery. This is not the intended case. In fact the black belt was to signify that one had progressed far enough to now be a student of a way. All the belts before were laying a foundation for learning. The black belt is not an end result but a true beginning for higher learning.

Many fighters I know that are now retired say the same thing. If they only knew what they do now when they were still fighting they would have been so much better then they were. The arrogance of youth has held many of us back. Only in time do we come to realize that there is always something to learn and there is always someone smarter then us out there.

It is the details that separate one experience from another. If we assume we know we will miss the fine points that separate what we did yesterday from today. Coming into each day like it our 1st will keep us open to the changes in life. We all progress as we move forward. We can appreciate the growth but we can’t allow it to stop by being foolish enough to think we know everything.