Success & Failure
Success & Failure
“ I felt strong yesterday and today I feel like I am terrible.”
“Its an off day and I am not sure why”
“What am I doing wrong, my teacher is correcting moves that were good yesterday?!?”
Have you ever found yourself saying this to yourself? To your instructor?
I have been training now for almost 25 years and I absolutely feel this way sometimes. As I train, and teach I find that the more I learn the more I can become frustrated with my progress and the difficulty of the tasks in front of me. Do not get lazy or scared! This is part of your development as a martial artist and your training. When you signed up you heard or read that Tae Kwon Do would improve your ability to focus, multi-task, and manage yourself and your time more efficiently. This is where those abilities begin. This is where true endurance is developed.
Let’s imagine you are learning how to make pottery.
You arrive to your pottery teacher and the teacher introduces you to several different tools, and the process of making a pot. Your first completed work makes you extremely proud but you are very aware of all its flaws and where in the process those flaws were created. Your final product is not that pretty, nor refined and is not very sturdy. However, you made a pot and you feel proud of it. On the second project this pot looks better but when you started the project your teacher gave you some new tools and they didn’t all work the way you wanted them to. You made mistakes, you were not sure of how these tools worked, the movement of your hands was unsteady, unsure.
Success & Failure: The Grind.
This routine continues for years, each time you arrive to work, you work with your tools, with each completion you learn more about the tools you have, you practice with them and the skills grow. The pot you made on day one is almost unrecognizable to the pot that you last made. Your skills improve with careful practice, in fact you seem to remember the major failures better than the successes. When others see your work and compliment you on it, you may think in your mind of the faults instead of the refined portions of your work. You are an artist set on being the best version of yourself. Congratulations, you have found the essence of training – to try harder, to make improvements and to be better than you were the last time.
Success & Failure: The Take Away.
As you learn new skills, better processes, and experience some trial and error you will get to be more advanced. With each project your work looks better but you will become more aware of the flaws in each step, you will discover new processes and see where there is room to add or subtract in order to accomplish different goals. This is the process of development as a martial artist. Your teacher is showing you the tools, demonstrating the processes, methods, strategies and best practices that work for them. As a student you will experience some failures and discover parts of your form and technique that seem impossible to correct. Persevere! If you are working through a problem then you are training the right way. Remember the basics and you may find that you already know the answers to the problem.
Success & Failure Conclusion..
As new students become experienced students I know that I will lose some green belts who feel like they should progress faster. There will be purple belts that become frustrated with their technique. Some brown belts will quit because they are exhausted with the work. A student’s effort and perseverance will define them and their success or failure. That is what makes a Black Belt an earned commodity, not something given freely. You will find the information readily accessible should you look for it, but the work is up to you. Each step of the way you will experience success and failure, you may feel a plateau of growth, or experience a mountain of change rapidly, through it all the way that you respond and manage yourself is what makes you a martial artist. Remember to always keep training hard, and never give yourself the option to quit.