#110: Close Your Mind to Learn More [Video + Podcast]

Welcome to Episode #110 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Close Your Mind to Learn More.”

We all know that a martial arts student should keep an open mind, right? But should it stay open forever?

Is it possible that you can keep learning even when you close your mind to new information? Is it possible that you could learn MORE?

I SAY YES!

Of course, I didn’t always believe that, but a recent incident changed my mind for good. A lesson from my first Karate teacher broke a pattern of behavior that I wasn’t even aware of… and it was holding me back!

If you’d like to hear some unconventional advice that might just turn you from an empty cup into a full cup, I welcome you to listen or watch below.

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Close Your Mind to Learn More

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi ho, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #110 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Today, let me ask you a question. As you move through the world, do you feel your mind is open or closed? Do you see yourself as an empty cup or is your cup full?

I ask this because the answer seems obvious, right? I’ve preached many times that we should always be a student, always ready to learn.

So I would like to answer that I am an open-minded empty cup everywhere I go, particularly in my martial arts training. However, my friend, something happened not too long ago, an incident that made me rethink that.

This incident led to advice that I want to offer to you today that’s a little uncommon, a little unconventional. It’s a great reminder that advice, no matter where you get it, is contextual.

In one situation, the best advice might be to stand your ground and do not back down. In another situation, the best advice might be to let it go and walk away.

The right advice at the right time is your best chance for success. The wrong advice at the wrong time can get you killed.

So let’s for the moment open our mind to a little bit of advice that might be unconventional. Here’s the incident.

About a year ago now, I had the privilege to go train with my very first Karate teacher. He’s in his 70s now, but he’s a dedicated student and so his skills are very impressive. Always worth seeking him out.

I was blessed enough to have a few hours to work with him and in that time, as always, he would show me a technique. And since I’ve been around for a while, the pattern would go, oh, that technique is kind of cool. That’s very similar to a technique I’ve seen in another art. I would tell him and he would listen.

He would give me a concept and I would say, oh, you know what, in the Chinese arts, there’s a word for that. They call it– and then he stopped me. He interrupted. He actually said, “Stop. I don’t need that in my head. That’s just clutter.”

That’s the incident.

At first, I was shocked, right, completely taken aback because I’ve done this for years sharing notes, right? Of course, I am there as a student, so I’m there to learn. But as an older fellow who’s been around a little bit, I always feel maybe I can make their time feel better spent if I can offer something back as well.

Is that arrogant? I don’t know. It just feels friendly. But in this case, after all these years, he finally just told me stop. But more importantly, he said he didn’t want the information.

So my reaction was, whoa, do you mean to tell me you, one of my martial arts heroes, has a closed mind? You don’t want to learn something? And it took me, I’ll be honest, it took me a couple of weeks to actually figure this out and make peace with it.

What I figured out was, it’s a false choice to say whether your mind is open or is it closed. Perhaps there’s a third choice. What about just a focused mind?

He was telling me, I don’t need the information that you’re offering and it’s actually a distraction to my work.

It’s hard enough to get good at something, right? You need to be focused on it and work on it and have some faith in it. And if I come in and start saying, oh, look over here, look over there, it’s like this, it’s like that, it actually slows down his work. He’s already made his commitment to what he wants to be great at.

So I hadn’t really considered that before. And maybe now that I’m older, it’s the natural time to start thinking that way.

As I reflected on this incident, I realized that this pattern wasn’t just with him. It basically had repeated itself with every teacher I’ve ever had.

Again, I have always been of that school of thought thinking, I’m an empty cup. I have an open mind. I will learn from anyone, anytime, anywhere. That’s why I’m so cool.

But then I realized that over the years, with several different teachers, all of whom I respect, all of whom were absolutely worth spending time with and listening to and learning from, they were all uninterested in what I had to offer them. That pattern always showed up.

Someone would show something, I would respectfully add in, and I’m not a jerk, I’m not saying every single time, every single moment, but once in a while, I’d pick a moment like, wow, that is so similar to this other thing that I have seen. You might find this interesting, they call it this, or they do it this way.

But then it hit me, after this incident, where I was told to stop, that none of those teachers over the years had ever actually asked me a follow-up question.

They never said, tell me more, they never said, can you repeat that? Can you show me again? Hey, why don’t you take over the class for a moment, send me a link, what are you talking about? Never. I don’t recall any teacher ever asking me to repeat anything, they were always polite.

Now that I realize that that’s been that pattern, I realized this new advice, that perhaps there is a time to close your mind, to focus it, in a different wording. Because let me be clear, all of these teachers are really good at what they do.

Whether or not you agree with what they do, they are good at what they do. They are all intelligent, they were all hard workers, and none of them are delusional. Because I know right away you might think, oh well, they practice this narrow band of skills and they don’t even realize that they don’t know how to do something with that knife, or on the ground, or against multiples, or whatever they are doing, they are not doing something else and therefore they are vulnerable. They are incomplete. But they are not delusional and that’s the difference.

If you say, hey, I’m a boxer, that’s all I do, and I’ll never get attacked by a knife, well that’s delusional. Or if you say, there won’t be multiple people, well that’s delusional. I’ll never get taken to the ground, that’s delusional.

But all of these teachers, with the skills that they’ve chosen to develop and master, they’re not delusional. They know what they can do and they know what they can’t do. They know where they’ve spent their time and they know where they haven’t spent their time. And they’ll be the first ones to tell you that.

So how can you live with that vulnerability? Isn’t it true that more is better? As a student of the martial arts or life? Isn’t it always about learning more, learning more, more? Isn’t that a good thing?

No. That’s why this might be uncommon or unconventional advice. This is the old warning about being a jack of all trades and a master of none.

Especially nowadays, in the age of information, the internet, you can get multiple answers to any question or problem that you have. Whatever problem you have, you go searching for an answer and you can spend days, if not weeks, finding one approach, an alternative approach, another approach.

But when is it enough? When do you say, I’m good? Do you just keep searching forever on the same question, the same problem, forever?

Once you find the answer, once you solve a problem, shouldn’t that be enough? Why do you have to keep looking? Why do you keep searching?

For example, you want to learn martial arts, you want to learn how to kick. Your first teacher shows you how to throw a kick. Here’s your round kick and here’s how you get your power. Here’s how you keep your balance. Here’s how you protect yourself when you throw it. Great.

But then you come across another teacher and they do it a different way. Oh, it’s a different style. And over here, we put our foot this way, turn our hip at this timing, throw the weight at this moment. Oh.

Then you meet another teacher in that same style and they agree on some of that but not all of that and they have a little variation of that.

Well, let’s say you’ve got four different ways to throw a round kick now. Which is better? Should you practice four sets of 50 reps and each set is a different style of round kick or is it better to throw one style of round kick 200 times?

I’m not a math guy but I think that worked out. Four times 50 or one set of 200?

Or let’s say you’re worried about fighting on the ground. You don’t have a background in wrestling or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So you say, gosh, you know, the most fear I feel about being on the ground is if someone’s sitting on top of me, a mount, I’d like to solve that problem. How can I focus on, how can I escape a mount?

Now let’s say you had the resources, the money and the time, and you looked up a hundred champions in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You listed them, a hundred champions, and then you arranged to have 100 private lessons. One lesson with each of those champions, masters.

Would that be a good idea? Does that sound appealing to you? Would you like to do a hundred private lessons with a hundred different masters to ask them each that same question? Or would the first person that you met give you the answers that you needed? Gave you something to drill, gave you some concepts to go work on.

Should that be enough for you? Do you need the other 99? Can you cancel those? Or maybe you take the first two private lessons and you talk to two different masters. Should that be enough?

Now you have choices between this technique or that technique, this concept and that concept. Now you can maybe play them off of each other and use them as a combination. Great, at what point do you simply have too much information?

Do you remember that old song by The Police? Too much information running through my brain. Too much information driving me insane. You’re welcome, I didn’t sing that, but that was the thought.

Too much information starts working against you. Too many choices will actually hinder your skill development. Because first of all, there’s simply not enough time for you to practice everything. You can’t, that’s just not possible.

And as I’ve talked about in other podcasts, where does your confidence come from? Your confidence comes from being good at something. If you’re chasing a hundred different methods, you’ll never have confidence in any of them. There will always be a doubt that there was a better way. If I had just gone to one more lesson, there might have been a better technique, a bigger concept.

There are too many unknowns to ever feel confident in what you’re doing if you don’t spend the time doing it. If you don’t commit to something, you’ll never be good at anything. And if you’re not good at anything, you won’t have the bigger value of what martial arts training is supposed to give you, the confidence.

You stand up strong and feel comfortable in your space because you know you can do something.

It doesn’t mean you always win, ever. But you want to at least have a shot to feel good about what you’re doing. You have to have faith in what you’re doing. And the only way you can have faith in what you’re doing is to go deep. You take some information, you work it and work it and see where it leads you.

Now that first information you get may not be enough for you. It may not solve the problem. You might test it and it might fail. Then you can either go back to making that better or adding some more information. Now you do need another approach.

Fair enough. You tested it. You tried. You went deep as you could. That makes sense. But let’s just not forget that you want to develop your skills to the point when you have confidence because confidence is a technique unto itself. It may be more important than any specific technique.

The spirit with which you wield the weapon is more important than the weapon itself.

The spirit behind it is the engine. So whatever you are training, you’ve got to have faith in it. You have to have passion for it. You’ve got to be working it and testing it and getting to know it. That’s when it becomes effective for you.

Now that kind of leads me to this big idea or simple, simple but big. If you have a closed mind, yes, you will limit how much you learn. But it’s also true that if you have an endlessly open mind and you’re always learning something new, you are also limiting how much you can learn.

If you have a closed mind, then you will lack breadth. You will not be seeing far and wide. Maybe you’ll miss some of the big picture. But you’ll be able to go very, very deep into what you do. You’ll be able to master what you’ve chosen.

If you have an open mind, you will have the bigger picture. You will have a little bit of everything. You’ll see far and wide, but you will lack the depth. You won’t be great at any of those things. It’s just not possible.

So reflecting on your own practice, where do you fit in? How much of your mind is open? When is it closed? When do you have enough?

Part of the answer to that, if I may help, because I’m just reflecting on my own practice, is it’s going to come down to, well, how much time do you actually have to practice? How much energy do you have to practice?

What state is your body in? And what are your goals to begin with? How great did you want to become? And what did you want to be great at?

Why are you doing this?

No matter how you answer those questions, no matter what your goals are, how much time, energy, money, resources you have, if you’re a part-time student, and let’s say you’re practicing four or five hours a week, well, obviously, I think, obviously, if you’re a part-time student, you definitely have to choose only a couple of things to work on.

If you’re a searcher, if you’re keeping this open mind, and you’re always cross-training and looking for new things and new seminars, new teachers, new techniques, you’ll never be good at anything because you only have four or five hours a week to practice something. I would say it’s better for you to stick to those few things that you’ve already decided that you like and that work for you and just go as deeply as you can into those in that limited time that you have. That seems reasonable to me.

On the other hand, let’s say you’re a full-time martial artist. You can practice every day for several hours. Even then, you can never learn everything. You will never have the time to drill everything that you know, that you’ve seen, that you’ve been exposed to. Even a full-time, all-day martial artist for years and years cannot be a master of everything.

So we’re all in the same boat, whether you’re a part-time or full-time student. There’s just only so many hours in the day. Your body can only do so much. So we all must make choices. The difference just might be how many different choices you choose to put into your training.

If you’re a part-time student, you know I want to be good at my footwork, basic hand strikes, and maybe some low-level kicks. Okay.

If you’re a full-time student, hey, I’m going to also add some grappling in there, get back up to my feet, get out of chokes, that’s important to me, and some knife defense. Okay.

Hey, you’re a professional martial artist. It’s your all-day, everyday thing for your whole life. Maybe you can add a few more skills in there.

But at some point, no matter who you are, how you’re training, what your goals are, I think you’re going to have to make some choices, which then means closing your mind to other choices. At some point, the door has to close and say, I’ve got enough. And I’ll give you some examples.

Because I’m 52 now, and I have been in a cross-training mindset for all my whole life. So this is all new for me. If you’ve already hit these revelations, then good for you, you’re ahead of me.

But recently, I have been surprising myself with my attitude of closing my mind. For instance, I got three quick examples…

Number one. There’s a lovely gentleman here that I’ve met who loves Qigong, energy work, to be healthy and happy. And he has been very generous with his passion. He’s always trying to share a new Qigong set. Another variation.

Let me tell you the history of this. Let me show you how I’ve created this whole story around this Qigong set, beautiful, creative, and valuable work that he is offering me. And I have now continuously said to him, no, stop. I don’t want to know this.

Hearing those words come out of my head is shocking to me as someone who’s always preached, be an open mind, keep learning, be an empty cup. But I’m already happy. I’m already healthy. I already have practices, mind, body, energy, work practices in my training. So anything extra, I don’t have the bandwidth for.

There’s no reason for me at this point to learn another set, to learn another variation, to have more history or symbols or whatever is being offered. I simply don’t have the time in my life to explore all of those things.

I respect them. I say, okay, I see what you’re doing and that’s fitting in with your goals in your life. Beautiful. And I still feel we’re on the same path. But for me personally in my own practice, I don’t want that. I don’t need that. I’m good. I’ve got enough. Which is a blessing by the way.

So one, I’ve had to say no to him.

Number two. There are seminars all over the place, right? There are opportunities to train down south, up north, over here, over there. Lots of great people, great martial artists, highly skilled people. And I have some time. I could absolutely attend all of those seminars, if I wished. And I keep saying no.

A buddy will say, hey, you’re going to go to that seminar? No. No, I’m not. And that sounds crazy. Because when I was younger, I would go to every seminar I could. Every book, every video, show me, show me, show me.

No, not anymore. Why? Because I already have so much work to do.

Don’t forget, I feel blessed that I ever found one good teacher, let alone several good teachers. Each of them shared things with me. They’re passing things down to me.

In some cases, I’m a very, I’m one of a very small number of people that get that information. So where do I get off turning around saying, yeah, yeah, thanks for that. I’m off to find some more.

What was the point of gaining their trust? What was the point of creating a bond? What was the point if you’re just not even going to practice it or remember it? It’s an insult.

If you have these blessings of good teachings, the best way you can pay that homage is to practice them. Go deeply into them. See what you get out of them. At least you should do that before you go running off to find new stuff.

Number three. No to the Qigong, no to seminars, and no to history.

What I mean by that is when I started off in martial arts, when I was doing Taekwondo, I wanted to know everything about the history of Taekwondo. When I got into Aikido, what’s all this about? Where did this come from? How did it get like this?

When I got into Kung Fu, oh my gosh, this style is my favorite. Where does it come from? What part of China should I visit there? Down to Chinatown, looking through books, talking to old people. Give me as much information as I can get.

But time and time again, if you’ve done this, I’m sure you know, particularly in the Kung Fu, I hit a lot of dead ends. There’s a lot of fog in the history of martial arts.

But that’s true even just for my own family history. Forget about the Kung Fu for a second. Even just researching my own family history. Well, why did great grandpa come to this country?

What was their life like there? How many relatives do I have? What did they do for a living? What was his name again? Even my own personal family history is foggy and has huge blackouts in it, and I don’t know what’s going on. But at some point, the lineage doesn’t matter.

The history doesn’t matter. This is what I’ve come to realize.

What’s most important is what I’m doing today. I’m alive. I’m in the present. I need to make the most of this moment. Looking backwards is interesting at first. And just like I need to practice the information that’s been given to me by teachers, I also need to honor my ancestors, whether that’s the Kung Fu ancestors or my bloodline ancestors.

The best tribute I can pay them is to take what they’ve been passing down, what they sacrificed for, what they lived for, and run with it forward. Looking backwards is just slowing me down.

I know enough at this point. I’ve stopped looking into it. I don’t care about the research anymore. It doesn’t matter.

So all of those are just examples of how I’ve closed my mind. But again, I don’t like that false comparison between open or closed. I see it now as focused. That’s the third category. I am a more focused mind. I’m open to new experiences, but not necessarily outside what I’m focusing on.

When you focus on something, you’re going to have new experiences anyway. Going deep is going to dig up new ideas, new concepts, new techniques, new insights. There is still new in the old, if you keep tunneling deeper into it. That’s the main piece of advice I would like to offer you today.

Yeah, my mind is closed now increasingly. Not maybe on everything. It’s closed on gaining more and more and more width, but I am completely open to depth.

I’m not as interested anymore in what I can do for self-defense. What moves can I do? I’m more interested in how I’m doing things and ultimately why I’m doing things. And I don’t need to talk to anyone about that. I don’t need to read a book or see a video for that. I need to work. I need to practice on that.

So, hopefully, in that way, I will become just like my teachers, whom I respect. They all figured out the right time to make the choices on what they wanted to master and then focused on those things. And in their dedication to looking for depth now, over-breath, and in seeing their role modeling of how they’ve achieved excellence with that formula, I can only offer the same advice to you.

Now, of course, we started off by talking about empty cup, full cup. And just to be more specific, let’s revisit the old tale, historical or fable.

This whole idea of the cup, of course, comes from the old story of a Zen master. And he’s visited by a scholar, a teacher, who wants to learn more about Zen. And as they’re spending time together, the scholar is the one doing all the talking, sharing experiences, telling stories, offering advice. And the master is in the position of just listening to him.

So, the master decides to serve tea, puts down the two cups, pours the tea, and once the visitor’s cup is full, keeps pouring, keeps pouring, it’s spilling out, it’s spilling out, until the scholar says, stop, what are you doing? The cup is full.

The symbolism there, of course, the Zen master says, you are like this cup. How can I fill you with anything new if you’re already full, if you’re already running over? The utility of the cup is that it’s empty, that it can take in something new.

So that’s the story, of course. And I would offer today, if we’re going to break down that story a little deeper, that story pertains, in my mind, to beginners. The scholar in that story is the beginner. You’ve just started martial arts, you’ve just started in life, whatever your pursuit is, you’re the beginner.

As a beginner, yes, you should not be going in with a full cup, with preordained beliefs, with any kinds of prejudice at all. You should be just a blank slate, an empty cup, so that you can search and find.

The second level, then you become a practitioner. You’ve sought out information as a beginner. You found something, a teacher, a bit of information, an experience. Now you’re going to practice that information.

So, now your cup should be full. You fill your cup, in my mind, with that stuff. If your first style is Karate and you’re doing that form of these techniques, then focus your brain on that. Fill your cup with that.

It’s no time to be empty right now. You need to have faith and work and test that information. If it fails you, if that information that you’ve been working on is not answering your problem, is not meeting your need, that’s the time to then empty your cup.

Now you can spill out some of that. Because you already drank it. You filled your cup, you drank it, and now it’s upsetting your stomach. Something’s not right. You need more, something healthier.

I’m mixing up as many metaphors as I can here.

If you run into trouble, then you have to fill your cup again. But at some point, as you get older, as you practice, as you’ve worked with several people, you might find that you got enough. And I would say at that point, you don’t need a cup. Again, it’s a false choice.

Are you an empty cup? Are you a full cup? How about I don’t even have a cup? Because what I filled it with was nourishing enough that I don’t need anything else. I’m good.

In fact, I would like to change that story. I would like to have that story end differently. I would like the scholar to say, stop, you’re spilling it everywhere. What are you doing?

And the Zen master says, well, you were just like this cup. I can’t give you anything if you’re full.

And the scholar says, yes, you’re right, you’re right. And then the scholar picks up the teapot and says, let me pour you some tea. And there’s no cup there. He says, well, aren’t you going to drink any tea with me?

And the master says, no, I’m good. I think that would be a fuller story. And a little more helpful. Because the old story just put me in, I must always have an empty mind. I must always be an empty cup to be noble. And at this point, no.

I think it’s the choices that you make and the work that you’ve done to verify the value of those choices that is most noble. So this is what I’m offering to you.

Remember, advice is relative. So depending on where you are in your journey, in your development, this may be a time for you to be an empty cup, because you’re just getting started or because your needs are not being met. Okay, time to open your mind, empty your cup.

On the other hand, you might be in a place where you feel you really have enough. You know what you need to work on, you enjoy what you work on, and it’s meeting your goals. You don’t really need anything more. So for you, I would say, take that pressure off yourself that you’re missing something or doubting what you’re doing like it’s a waste of time. It’s not.

Keep going deeper into what you’re doing. Enjoy every minute of it. Get as much out of it as you can. Drink it up. Because ultimately, that’s what’s going to lead to confidence, which is more important than any technique that you’re practicing.

It’s a little tricky, but that’s the way it is, in my opinion.

So, if you can do that, if you can, come to the place in your life where you feel very good about your choices. And like my Karate teacher, you can tell yourself to stop. You don’t need to search anymore.

If you can feel that and now dedicate yourself to not being distracted by what other people are doing, and you can start to focus going deeper into that focused mind, I think you might be surprised to find out that you actually have everything you ever wanted. Not by searching far and wide, but by looking right where you are with what you have, respecting it, appreciating it, working it, until the day you die.

That, my friend, might be unconventional advice, but I think it’s the right advice.

Okay, back into the world we go. And as we go off into the world, let’s remember to choose a mindset that will work for us, not against us.

In my way of thinking, positivity is the mindset. I have closed my mind to all other options. So I hope you’ll join me when I say, smiles up my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.