Here’s a question for you: Do you consider yourself deserving of martial arts success?
That may seem like an odd question to ask but I believe it may be a pertinent one in a lot of people’s cases. Let me explain.
Not too long ago I went through a period in my training were I didn’t seem to make any real advancement. I wasn’t getting any worse but I wasn’t getting any better either. So I began to question why I seemed to be stuck in a training rut, so to speak. I began to examine myself and my training to see if I couldn’t move myself on from the seemingly static position I happened to find myself in. Was there a problem with the training? Did I need to change it in any way? I didn’t think so. The training was the same as it always was. By rights I should have been making steady progress but I wasn’t and to blame the training would be like a workman blaming his tools when he does a bad job. Everything I needed for advancement was there for me so I knew I had to look elsewhere for an answer to the problem.
I also considered the possibility that I had hit another training plateau but after some consideration I concluded that a plateau wasn’t the problem either. I was still enjoying the training; I had no real feelings of despondency over it. In fact I didn’t really exhibit any of the signs that go along with experiencing a training plateau (see my other article on training plateaus) so I decided that wasn’t the problem either. It had to be deeper than that.
So if it wasn’t the training holding me back and it wasn’t a plateau it could have only have been one other thing and that was myself. I was holding myself back, I realised, but how exactly? More to the point, why would I hold myself back? It seemed strange to me that I would deliberately obstruct my own advancement in the martial arts. I had put so much time and effort into it over the years, pushing myself, making sacrifices when necessary, so the idea that I would somehow unconsciously put barriers in the road of my success seemed not only implausible but a completely pointless exercise. And if indeed this was the case, how had I allowed such a destructive behaviour pattern to take hold of me, albeit on an unconscious level. What possible benefits would there be to such a strategy?
Fear of Success
I had heard of people fearing their own success, of deliberately denying themselves the right to success for fear of how things might change them in the future when they actually gained that success. The changes brought on by success, although probably all good, are too much for some people to take. It seems safer to just stay were you are right now because that’s what your used to and that’s the place were you feel most comfortable. It seemed I didn’t want to break out of my comfort zone. I didn’t like the idea of testing myself and my abilities and my commitment further because that meant putting myself on the line and in doing so, or the thought of doing so, scared me. I had to acknowledge that fear was holding me back from making progress in my training.
But there was something else as well, besides fear, something that lay deeper in my subconscious, something that affected how I thought about myself, that formed my beliefs about myself. Very quickly I realised that deep down I believed I was undeserving of any further success in the martial arts. Furthermore, as silly as it may seem, I had difficulty convincing myself half the time that I was even deserving of the success I already had. I was a black belt, but did I really deserve such status? There are many other black belts out there that are far more deserving of the belt than I am, that are far better than I am. At times I felt like a fraud, that I was someday going to be found out to be totally incompetent and unworthy of wearing that belt.
It may seem like I was being unnecessarily hard on myself and I was. I had worked hard over the years to attain the skills I had in my possession. Yes I could have tried harder at times but overall I had made the effort and had made significant advances as a martial artist. I knew this, but I also knew that my beliefs, irrational as they were, would continue to hold me back if I didn’t do something to change them. And in fact it wasn’t until I began to think about those beliefs and work out exactly why I held them that I started to make progress in my training again.
The way that I did that was to firstly confront the fear that I had been feeling in regards to my own future success. I began to visualize and think about what it would be like to be a better martial artist than I was now. I contemplated the benefits of having better technique, of having a deeper understanding of my art, of being a better teacher, of being a better student and of being a more competent and integral martial artist in general. I set about convincing myself that success is not only desirable but necessary. Staying on the same level and stagnating there was not an option and to do so would go against the point of life itself, which was to move forward and experience ever greater heights of consciousness. By staying where I was I would be undermining my purpose in life. By moving boldly forward I had very little to loose and everything to gain.
So by confronting that fear of success I had effectively primed myself to move forward. In doing so I had also given myself permission to move forward, permission to pursue my goals. The only question I had to answer now was: what do I have to do exactly in order to make the advancements in training that I wanted for myself?
Five Factors for Success
To answer that question I began to think about the structure of success in the martial arts and what beliefs and attitudes of mind held that structure together and pretty soon I pinpointed five key factors that are necessary for any real advancement to take place. Here are those factors:
1. Desire. If you want to truly be the best martial artist you can be then you have to really desire it. I knew it was no good me just idly wishing I was better because then I wouldn’t be motivated to do anything about it, at least not enough to make significant advancements in my training. I had to have a strong desire to succeed and move forward in a significant way in order to sufficiently motivate myself into taking the right actions to get the results I wanted. Weak desire would produce weak results so I stoked my desire by focusing on the benefits of moving forward. I thought about how good it would feel to have superior skill and technique and I thought about how much more fulfilled I would be as a martial artist. Thinking about where I wanted to be made me feel vital and alive, more so than just dwelling on the fact that I was stuck. I believe focusing constantly on the benefits of success is the key to maintaining the desire that will make it possible for you to experience those benefits. Further to this I believe that acting like you have already gained that success will bring it ever closer. As I have already mentioned in another article, seeing your success in some distant future will only serve to keep it there, forever out of your grasp. Acting right now like you already have that success will bring it about a lot quicker than if you constantly see it as being in some far away place in the future.
2. Commitment. I know that if I want to make real advancements in my training that I have to really commit myself to making them come about. When I looked at highly advanced martial artists and looked at how they were able to get so advanced I could see that in all cases they had fully committed themselves to getting were they are now. They didn’t make the least amount of effort to get to their positions, they made the maximum amount of effort it was possible for them to make, and I know I have to do the same if I want to make continued and significant progress. This doesn’t mean I have to sacrifice everything to get where I want to be, it just means that I have to make as much effort as I am capable of making within the confines of my life and everything else in it that is important to me. I believe in keeping things in context. An entire lifetime dedicated exclusively to the martial arts is beyond most people’s capability. When I say you have to commit yourself I mean you have to commit to the time you have given over for practice and study. Obviously the more time you give to the martial arts the more advancements you will make. When contemplating your goals, be realistic about the time you can spend pursuing them because this will decide on the type of goals you can set for yourself. Also, the amount of time you can dedicate to training will depend on how important the martial arts are to you. Obviously the amount of time you allocate can increase or decrease according to your needs and changing circumstances but overall it should remain on an even keel. What matters is that you use that time correctly and try to waste as little of it as possible.
3. Responsibility. In order to be master of your own destiny and to give yourself the greatest chance at success you have to take full responsibility for your own advancement. This means that you and only you, no one else, not even your sensei or instructor, is responsible for your situation. When you take full responsibility for your training advancement you soon realise that only you have the power to make or break yourself and your progress as a martial artist. It’s too easy to place blame elsewhere when things don’t go according to plan. Knowing it all lies with you however, forces you to make the effort and seek solutions to problems and find ways of making your goals a reality. Just knowing you can place blame elsewhere makes it all too easy to sit back and bemoan your situation or lack of progress. Using other people or other things as reasons for failure is not an option when you know only you can dictate your own success or failure. Taking responsibility involves stepping up to whatever challenges you have set for yourself (challenges based on previously mentioned realistic constraints) and doing all in your power to make sure you meet those challenges no matter about anything else. The vision for success comes from you so only you can make or break it.
4. Discipline. It takes a good deal of self-discipline to see your training goals through till the end. It’s through discipline that we are able to take the actions necessary to get us where we want to be. Being disciplined is turning up for practice even when you don’t feel like it. Being disciplined is having the ability to maintain your focus and keep in mind at all times why you are putting yourself to all this trouble. Of course you’re not a robot. Being human, you will have lapses in discipline occasionally, but in general you will have to push yourself as much as possible. Success is not gained by being lazy. There is hard work involved and there is no getting away from that. The good thing about discipline though is that it easy to apply if your desire to succeed is strong. If you’re motivation is high it won’t feel like too much of an effort to do what is necessary. In fact you may surprise yourself when you get going. I surprised myself when I started this blog. I have put a lot of time and effort into creating it and making sure it’s of good value to people. Working on it however, has never felt like a chore to me, simply because my desire to create something valuable for people has never waned. Similarly, when I have trained hard for something in the martial arts I felt the same way, simply because I had strong motivations and a powerful desire for success, without which I never would have achieved anything.
5. Patience. We live in a culture were instant gratification is valued more than sustained effort and hard work. If you want to succeed in the martial arts you must be able to think long term. It takes time and a lot of effort to reach a reasonable standard in the martial arts and its takes even more to reach the higher standards that most of us desire. The better you wish to become the more time you have to put in. Be prepared to invest years of your life in pursuit of excellence. That’s what it takes. To expect otherwise is just to kid yourself. It is therefore wise to cultivate the habit of patience within yourself, to form the habit of seeing things long term and not falling into the trap of wanting progress to happen overnight. Martial arts is a lifestyle, a long term commitment to the path of excellence; patience is therefore required to temper the inevitable bouts of frustration and negative feelings you will encounter over your perceived lack of progress. Patience will allow you to remain stable and committed to your long term goals.
Just by taking heed of the five things I have mentioned above I believe anyone can achieve success in the martial arts. All you have to do is define what martial arts success means to you and then apply those five key factors to you as a martial artist. These factors will help propel you into excellence. The only limits that exist are the ones you create yourself.
