Welcome to Episode #121 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Hero Worship in the Martial Arts.”
We all need teachers and role models in the martial arts… but can following a leader become harmful at some point? Is it possible to show a teacher too much respect?
YES! If we’re not careful, our humility as a student can be transformed into hero worship. Once that happens, it becomes impossible to maximize our skills and build true confidence. And without true confidence, your ability to defend yourself is greatly diminished.
Be careful! It’s happened to me… don’t let it happen to you!
In this episode, I’ll share a couple of stories that not only showed me the dangers of constantly seeking a teacher’s approval, but also helped me figure out how to train with a balance of humility and confidence. As a result, as you may know, I created and awarded myself my own black and white belt! 🙂
Here’s to healthy training habits and learning to become your own hero!
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Hero Worship in the Martial Arts
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, my friend. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. This is episode #121 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
Today, heroes, mentors, role models, teachers, we all have them in the martial arts and beyond. But when does following a leader become harmful?
When does admiration transform into adulation? And when does adulation transform into idolization?
Can you show too much respect for a teacher? When does respect transform into hero worship?
Now, yes, I still have teachers. I still seek guidance. That’s what teachers are for.
Teachers can inspire us to get started. Teachers can encourage us to keep going. And teachers can guide us to make sure we’re heading in the directions of our goals.
That’s all good. But I find in the martial arts that oftentimes teachers are elevated into gods. They’re glorified. They’re deified.
And I know this, of course, from my own personal feelings towards some teachers, particularly early on in my martial arts career. I also know this from listening and reading many interviews with martial artists, some famous, some not.
And I also know it from different martial artists that I’ve spoken to in person. You’ll hear people make comments like, oh, I’ll never be as good as my teacher. Or they will describe their teacher in legendary terms.
The stories that you hear are just incredible, unbelievable, often. They’ll say, oh, their skills. I still don’t understand how they could do what they did. It was almost magical.
And very simply, it puts yourself, these stories, in a place of being nothing. Oh, compared to my teacher, I’m nothing.
Now to all of that, I say stop it. Stop. Respect your teachers, of course. That’s not what I’m talking about. If a teacher changed your life, then of course you’re always going to have respect for them. Even a bad teacher.
A bad teacher meaning maybe they cheated you in some way. Maybe you had a difference of opinion and it broke up the relationship. Maybe politics got in the way. There are lots of stories of people falling out with their teacher. But you still respect them. Because if they changed your life, you still carry that lesson with you.
So, this isn’t about respect only. Respect is its own category. There’s a different topic to talk about though. And that’s just knowledge and skill.
I’m asking today, can you be better than your teacher? Are you better right now than your teacher?
Does that question come off as disrespectful right off the bat? I would say no. I would say no because learning is not a competition. Your teacher is on his or her own journey. They have their own stories to tell.
You’re on your own journey. You have your own goals that may be different from your teacher’s goals.
You certainly have different histories. You certainly have different training methodologies perhaps, or the amount of time that you can put into it.
So you’re not on the same exact journey. So it’s not fair to compare them. So I ask again, are you right now better than your teacher at something? It doesn’t have to be everything. But can you find some qualities, some attribute that you have that maybe your teacher does not?
Quick example just for myself, simple. When I was younger, I practiced a lot of high kicks. So I still have a lot of knowledge and some muscle memory of high kicking. And many of my teachers were in styles that didn’t practice high kicks.
So right off the bat, I can tell you, I am better and know more about kicking high than several of my teachers. It wasn’t worth talking about at the time. And they certainly never pointed it out, because that’s not why I was there learning from them. It was not the appropriate topic to discuss, and it wasn’t a competition. So it didn’t matter, irrelevant.
But what about you?
The reason I’m asking is because in your training, if our goal is to be the best we can be and to have a happy life, to be fulfilled, to get the most out of your training and your life, we have to reveal any self-limiting beliefs. I cannot walk around always thinking that I’m not as good as someone else.
Maybe, yes, of course, if there’s someone who is a professional martial artist and they’re training full-time and they’ve been doing it for decades, and maybe you’re a hobbyist and you only train for a couple of hours on a couple of things, well then sure, there will always be a long list of skills and attributes that you can say, yeah, my teacher is better than me at a lot of these things, all of these things.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for you to still be great or to achieve a higher level of skill than your teacher at at least one thing, something. That’s of course up to you to figure out what that would be. But I just want you to have the possibility in your head that as you train, that you’re not always lesser than, you’re not always a weaker, watered down version of your teacher.
And the reason for that is because self-defense is rooted in confidence. How can you possibly defend yourself if you don’t believe in what you can do, if you don’t believe that you have some skill? That’s not healthy.
There is ego that we need, healthy ego that says, I can do this, I can beat that guy, I am good enough.
Quick little story, I remember training with a guy and at that point we were both senior students in a style. And at one point we were doing pretty well, we had a good flow going, we felt pretty competent, you could feel good momentum coming on.
And he broke it. He broke the momentum by saying, I don’t know, he was saying, man, you know, that was good, but can you imagine how this would never work against our teacher?
And I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, like, what are you talking about?
He said, well, you know, I mean, that’s a really good move and, you know, we did it well, but if you imagine, can you imagine trying that against our teacher? He’d kill us.
And I just remember thinking, are you crazy? How ridiculous. What a crazy thing to say.
So you’re telling me if you went home right now and your teacher, the teacher, was beating your wife or beating your child, you wouldn’t be able to overcome him. You can’t even imagine a reality where you would destroy him and take him down.
Now maybe that sounds disrespectful to create that scenario in your head, but I don’t care. This is important.
You have to believe in your head that you could take out anybody who means you harm. You have to believe that. The opposite is damaging to you.
How can you walk around thinking that right off the bat, the people that you know in your own small circle, you can’t even beat them in a life and death situation?
No. I don’t care if it’s my teacher. I don’t care if my teacher’s got a knife. I don’t care if my teacher’s swinging a sword. If they mean me harm or the people that I love harm, I can visualize taking them down and taking them out with respect.
Now my friend, when I came back with that attitude, snorted. He didn’t accept that thought at all. He’s like, you’re crazy.
And I thought, what? Call me crazy if you want to. Call me delusional. But I would rather be delusional in my training than limited, self-limiting, believing that there’s no possibility of beating someone that I know, let alone some phantom that I don’t know, some future bad guy.
How do you feel about that? Who is the martial artist that you hold in the highest esteem? Whose skills do you have the most respect for? Can you visualize a scenario where you beat them?
If this guy broke into your home, if this guy was hurting someone you love, could you take them out? I hope that you can imagine, yes. Yes you could.
So limitations are dangerous to me if you’re training for self-defense. It opens the door to cult-like thinking.
The very idea that someone is better than you and you are always going to be lesser than them, that there is no possibility ever that you will be better than they are, is the most damaging belief system I can think of as a self-defense student. We’ve got to weed that out.
If you need a leader, need a leader, not just respect a leader and say, oh, I’d like to follow this leader and see what they’re doing, learn from them, copy them in some ways until I can find my own way, that’s healthy. But if you find yourself always needing a leader, needing validation, needing them to see you and say, you’re good at this, you’ve got skill.
If you can’t stand on your own, that’s a problem.
If you need to be connected to someone higher than you at all times, someone to always refer to or defer to and say, well, oh, I’m not that good, but he’s great and I’m part of their organization, his organization, therefore I have some abilities, but only because it’s his school, not because of my own work, not because of my own practice.
That scares me. It scares me that people put on a patch or wear a logo and think that’s the source of their skill, that’s the source of their confidence, that’s what makes them feel good about themselves as opposed to wearing their own patch, their own logo, carrying their own flag.
And again, I mean no disrespect to an organization or a teacher that you’re part of, but it should be balanced. It would be fantastic if you could be proud of your teacher, proud of your school, proud of your affiliation, but equally proud of yourself, if not more so.
Because that’s what this is all about. It’s your life. I cannot put the power in someone else’s hands to make me happy, to make me proud. It’s got to be on my own terms.
We’re talking about confidence here. Where does confidence come from?
Every martial arts, I think, has that somewhere in their marketing materials that you’re going to build confidence, come to the art, do this training, and you’re going to build confidence. But where does it come from?
Do you have confidence? Real confidence.
To me, that’s an uncomfortable question, because I’ve met so many nice people, good people, hard working people, loyal people, showing up, doing work, practicing, and yet when push comes to shove, maybe literally, they don’t have confidence in what they’re doing. Or they’re waiting for someone to tell them that they should have confidence in what they’re doing.
If you wait around, if you’re not careful, and you’re waiting around to get a teacher’s approval, if you are seeking validation, if you’re waiting for a teacher to tell you that you’re good, you may be in big trouble, because you may never get those words.
You may never hear the testimony from a teacher or that senior student that you look up to that you’re doing a great job. So, don’t set yourself up for that feeling that you’re not good enough, that you didn’t work hard enough. That’s not fair.
And, furthermore, there’s an ugly fact that we need to admit. Particularly in the martial arts, you may find some teachers who don’t want you to think that you are better than they are.
They don’t want you to think or believe that you could ever be better than they are. There are many teachers in the martial arts who enjoy creating a mystique around them. They enjoy being a little mysterious.
They enjoy being a little set off from the crowd. They like being held in the regard of being like a legend or almost godlike. That status is what feeds their confidence and feeds their ego.
But that does nothing for you. This creates a paradox, by the way. I’ve always wondered about this.
I call it the humility paradox. If I say, oh, my teacher, they’re amazing. I’ll never be as good as my teacher. And if your teacher then says the same thing about their teacher, oh, I could never be as good as my teacher. My teacher was perfect, I am imperfect. That means that your art is getting weaker and more watered down every generation.
What is the point of studying that art if you can’t maintain it or improve it? Your humility is actually an insult. Because what you’re saying is either you’re a terrible student because your teacher showed you what to do and I guess you failed.
You dropped the ball. You didn’t maintain the art. But that also is an insult to your teacher because apparently, since they’re the teacher, they didn’t do a good enough job with you. They didn’t share the right stuff, their timing was off, whatever.
However, if you are worse than your teacher, that’s an insult to your teacher and it’s an insult to you. You’ve both failed. So nobody wins when you have that level of humility.
On the other hand, if you say, oh yeah, I am as good as my teacher and your teacher says I am as good as my teacher, then that art might be worth studying because you are passing down something that’s staying strong. You are a strong student and you have a strong teacher and your art is also strong.
Everybody wins with a little less humility and a little more confidence, self generated confidence.
Now backing up a second, let me tell you the big story that brought all this into my head and compelled me to share. I have a story about the mystique factor and a younger student, me, who bought into that for a while, bought into the legendary stuff. Here’s how it went.
When I started in a particular art, I wasn’t training with the top guy. I was training with a senior student of the top guy. The top guy lived out of town, which was fine.
My senior student, my teacher, my direct teacher, was highly skilled and I thought a lot of him. Now my teacher spoke in hushed tones about his teacher, the top guy. That guy was a killer. That guy was a pioneer. Nobody can touch that guy.
So of course, as a young student, respecting my own teacher, who I can see has a bunch of skills, if he’s talking like that about his teacher, the top guy, I’m sold. I’m terrified of this guy. Wow, what a legend. And I get to meet him? I’m part of his organization? I get to wear his patch?
Ooh, I’m very excited. I’m proud to be there.
Now the only time I would see the top guy would be at belt tests. On a schedule, the teacher would come around and preside over belt tests. And those first couple of times, I couldn’t wait to be in the same room with this guy, this killer. And I was always disappointed because this top guy wouldn’t say anything. Wouldn’t do anything.
He would literally just watch the test. And then as soon as it was over, take off. That was it.
Now on the one hand, it was disappointing because I’m looking for wisdom. I’m looking for information. I’m looking for a demonstration of what this is supposed to look like beyond what my teacher is showing me.
But I never got that. But it did keep feeding the mystique. Oh, he didn’t say anything this time. Oh, he didn’t show anything this time, but maybe next time. Maybe if I just hang around a little longer, maybe if I build his trust a little more, maybe if I prove myself a little more.
Now, a big excitement came up, arose, when I got my hands on a video. It was a bootleg copy of a seminar from the top guy from a couple of years ago. I couldn’t wait to get that thing in my VCR at the time. Put that tape in, I was only allowed to have it for a week.
The person who gave it to me said, look, I got to have this back. Don’t tell anybody you have this. This was like top secret stuff. You weren’t supposed to see this. Here’s this seminar tape.
I popped this thing in and I watched it several times. Always looking for the magic. What does he say? What does he do? How does he move?
And I couldn’t find anything. I was very disappointed in the tape. He did say a couple of things and he did do a couple of things. So it was valuable for that. I’d never seen him say or hear him say anything or do anything. So it was something, but it wasn’t much.
So when I gave the tape back, I was a little disappointed until I found out there was a real seminar, a new seminar coming up, and I could attend it. I was at a rank where I was allowed to attend. Oh boy, inner circle stuff.
So I go to that seminar. I can’t wait. Turns out the top guy gave the exact same seminar that I’d seen on the tape. Made the same couple of talking points, showed the exact same couple of techniques that were on the tape. Nothing new.
But it’s worse than that because there was also no special moment, an off-video moment. There was no walking around and coming over to put his hand on my elbow to say, here, not there, or to say, that’s great, or to say, that’s terrible.
There was no any personalized commentary to let me know that he could see what I was doing. In other words, no praise, no correction, no validation, no nothing. And like before, like every belt test, when the seminar was done, he was gone.
Finally, and this is years in now, a black belt test. My black belt test. Now, I’ve got to drive out of town. This is at the main school.
Drive out of town, pay the big bucks, all the excitement and preparation that you can imagine and you’ve done yourself for a black belt test. Here we go.
Get up to the test. This is the last chance. What’s going to be different? Maybe something now is going to spill forth from this fellow.
No. Black belt tests, just longer tests, lots of work.
I did my part, but once again, the legend sat there, watched, only said a word or two at the end, didn’t demonstrate anything. There was nothing extra. Same old, same old.
And when it was all over, I had done my part, right? I sweated, I gritted my teeth, I got through all the requirements. And when it was over, he was lingering for a moment, because there were plenty of other students there and senior students.
So he wasn’t able perhaps to just bolt out the back door, because he had so many people from his affiliation there. And I saw him taking a picture with someone, a photo. And I thought, what the heck, I’ve kind of had enough of all this. This might be the last time I’m here. I would at least like to get a photo with the guy, the top guy.
And so I went over, waited my turn, and I just simply said, may I take a photo, sir? He didn’t answer with words, he just gave me a quick little nod. I stepped up next to him, stood there, and here’s how this goes.
The camera flashed, and while my eye was adjusting back to the normal light, he had already turned and was gone. Literally gone in a flash.
I was standing there, no handshake, no pat on the back, no look in the eye, nothing. Gone.
And I stood there thinking, what kind of teacher is this? Bigger question. What kind of person is this?
I just paid you money. I drove up here to pay you this honor, to support this school. I’ve been loyal for years. I’m wearing your patch, not even a handshake.
But wait, there is still the biggest question coming, the point of this whole episode. The question really wasn’t, what kind of teacher was he? The biggest question was, what kind of student am I?
What kind of person am I? Why did I need this person’s approval so badly?
Why am I seeking this person’s validation? I don’t even know him.
I have had no special memories with this person. I’ve only ever heard about him or seen him from afar. I’ve literally never touched the man.
So what am I looking for here? Why do I need this affirmation?
I don’t like the answers that I’m coming up with at the time on my drive back. So now I have to take a bigger view.
Why did I sign up in the first place? Why am I interested in martial arts? Why am I paying people for tests?
Why am I seeking teachers? Why am I practicing?
Was I looking for self-defense? Yes.
Self-control? Yes.
Get in shape? Yes.
Confidence? Kind of.
The thing is, I got everything I wanted. Self-defense, self-control, getting in shape. I got all that stuff. But the confidence was not really there.
Somehow I had been either because of my own personality that I came in with, or because of the culture of that type of training, that I was led to believe that I needed someone’s approval, someone’s validation. I needed someone to tell me, good job, that’s correct, you’re doing it right.
Or in short, yes, I see you. Yikes.
What a strange another paradox here. Wearing a black belt, seeing my name on a certificate, with the words confidence on it. Integrity and confidence and strength. And yet I don’t feel like that. I feel like I’m missing something.
That’s a huge problem. And I’m thankful to that whole system to have revealed it to me. This was the opposite of self-defense.
Because again, if self-defense is rooted in confidence, this didn’t actually give me confidence. Because my confidence at that time was hinged or linked to someone else’s opinion of my work, instead of my own opinion of my own work.
And that’s my big message for you today…
I’m hoping that you can validate yourself, that you have your own system of measurements that will prove to you that you’re doing good work and that you are on the right path and that you have this possibility of being great at what you do, whether or not anyone else ever sees it or tells you.
Maybe that’s a lot to ask. I really, when I think about this topic, I can’t help but think about the Wizard of Oz and how similar the Wizard of Oz can be to some martial arts teachers.
In the Wizard of Oz, if you recall, spoiler alert, at the end, they find the wizard and the wizard gives the scarecrow a diploma to prove that he has a brain. He gives the tin man a heart, a plastic heart clock, it ticks, to prove that the tin man has a heart. He gives the lion a medal to prove that he has courage.
And of course, the punchline is that those three characters demonstrated all of those traits in the adventure to come see the wizard. They already had all those attributes. The wizard was just there to affirm it, to validate it, to say, yes, you’re right, you have these things.
Which then brings us to Dorothy. If I recall correctly, Glinda, the good witch, tells Dorothy, Oh, you want to go home? You had the power to go home all along. All you had to do is click your heels three times and say there’s no place like home.
You had the power all along. You have the power.
You don’t have to wait for anyone to give you the power, certify the power, tell you about the power. It’s already within you.
So don’t wait for a sensei, for an idol, for a hero, for a good witch, to tell you that you’re doing great work. You should know.
You should know because you are getting results from your work. You have feedback from your practice. All you need to do is be honest about it, reflect it, reflect on it, and see if you’re getting what you expected.
When you are getting good results, keep doing that stuff. When you’re not, don’t.
But end the confusion of doing work, getting some results, but not judging them until someone else comes to help you to judge them. You know whether it’s working or not, either you’re getting punched in the face or you’re not.
That’s what I love about martial arts. Either you have a cut lip or you don’t. Either you just tapped out to a choke or you didn’t.
So that’s why you need your own measurement system to know how to judge your teacher. If you only rely on your teacher’s judgments about your progress, then that means you’re also allowing them to tell you how you should feel about them.
I need to have an independent inquiry into my own results. So I know if the teacher’s guidance is on point or not.
So again, self-defense, self-reliance, self-confidence. They all go together. And I hope that sounded respectful. Because I am still respectful to even the teacher who enrobed himself with mystique and didn’t shake my hand at the black belt test. I still have respect for that teacher.
And I still believe that they were very solid in what they can do. And that they deserve their legendary status. I’m not taking anything away from that person. I still respect them.
But I’ve learned to respect myself with or without them. And that’s the point. As a matter of fact, that’s why I gave myself a belt.
Where is it? Maybe you’ve seen me wear this. This is my own black and white belt. Half black, half white. My yin yang belt. And I made this myself. Because I wanted to represent that on the one hand, the white side says, I’m still a student. I’m still seeking teachers. I’m still seeking information. I’m still learning.
But on the other hand, on the other side, there’s black, which represents, I do have some skills. I do know some things. I have not been wasting my time.
By my own measurements, I’m not that bad at a few things. I’ve got some real skill. And so when I tie this on, I think that puts me in a very balanced place. I think that’s a healthy spot to be in.
And I hope you are too. So let me wrap this up.
I hope that you are training right now with no limiting beliefs. I hope that you are training with the possibility of greatness in what you can do.
And I hope that your heroes, your teachers, I hope that they would be proud of you and tell you that they are proud of you if you ever surpass them in anything or everything.
If your teacher is not the kind of person who would say something like that, that you are better than they are, that you have achieved more than they ever could, then maybe it’s time to choose a new teacher. Maybe it’s time to choose a new hero.
Okay, I wish you happy training, my friend. Trust in the work that you’re doing, be honest about the results that you’re getting, and build confidence in what you’re learning and who you’re becoming.
Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
