Welcome to Episode #116 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “You Got This.”
Confidence is a tricky commodity. If you have too much—trouble. If you have too little—trouble!
Especially in the martial arts, place too much faith in your skills, you might wind up dead. But place NO faith in your skills, you might also wind up dead!
With those high stakes in mind, let’s discuss the effort to find the right balance between confidence and humility. Along the way, we’ll look at the Dunning-Kruger effect, belt tests, self-defense demos, and a few tips to get more out of your training.
(For all you Boy Scouts out there, there’s also a shout out for the Totin’ Chip award!)
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You Got This!
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TRANSCRIPT
Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #116 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
Today, I wanna talk about confidence. We all want to say, I got this…
Do you know how to do that? I got it.
Can you do that? I got it.
But sometimes that’s just not true!
On the other hand, sometimes you might think you can’t do something. You think you don’t know enough when you actually do.
Now, this problem of having either too much confidence or not enough confidence can hold you back not just in martial arts, but in every part of your life.
If you can’t get an honest assessment, if you don’t have a clear picture of where you stand with your knowledge and your skills, then how can you set appropriate goals for yourself?
How do you know which teachers to seek out? Which information that you need? Which questions to ask? What to practice?
We have to have a clear picture of where we stand. So let’s see if we can talk about this a little bit and maybe we can help straighten out our next steps in life.
Now, to start, I’d like to back up a little bit to when I was a lad. Back to when I was a Boy Scout. Yes, I was a Boy Scout.
Now, in the Boy Scouts, they have an award called the Totin’ Chip Award. And it’s not so much like a ribbon. It’s a badge. But at the time, it was just a card, a card that you could either put in your pocket or into a wallet.
I didn’t have a wallet back then, so I had to earn my leather working merit badge by creating a wallet. Then I had something to put my Totin’ Chip card into. Very clever.
Anyway, the Totin’ Chip award is given when you can demonstrate proper safety handling of an ax, a hatchet, a saw, and a knife. So anything with a blade, you have to show that you know how to handle them. They’re not toys, they’re tools.
And one of the coolest rules that I remember from that training was, and by the way, it strikes me now that having a bunch of kids in the woods with maybe one adult supervisor for a weekend running around chopping things up and setting fires was a wonderful time. I hope they still do that.
But one of the rules that I remember the most was when you wanted to hand someone else a blade, let’s say an ax, if I was going to hand you an ax, one I’d make sure the blade was not facing either one of us, I would offer you the handle and I would say, got it?
And you would reach out, extend and hold on to that handle and then you would say, got it. And then and only then would I let go and let you have it.
So this was a process to make sure there was no gray area. I wasn’t just handing it out into space, presuming you had it and then I let it go too early. And if I’m trying to receive it, I’m not just saying, yeah, yeah, and just holding it, then I didn’t really have it. Now it falls, cuts off one of our toes or cleaves my shin.
It’s a good safety guideline. I believe nowadays they’ve changed the verbal cueing. I think nowadays you offer it to someone and they say, thank you, and then you can say, you’re welcome.
I believe they’ve updated the words, but the idea is the same. Trust, but verify. That is the safest course.
I’m going to trust that you’re going to receive this, and I’m going to trust that you’re giving this to me. On both sides, we’re going to verify it with some verbal cueing.
I think that’s a really good example of how you can take some of the vagueness out of any exchange. If I’m a student or a teacher, I want to make sure that the information going back and forth is clearly received.
As a teacher, let’s say I’m in class, and I’m teaching you how to throw a punch, and I say, okay, put your chin down, set your shoulder this way, put your thumb here, turn this way, breathe that way. Got it?
And as a student, you say, got it. Now, do you really? Probably not.
No, I just listed off maybe, let’s say, five tips to throw a decent punch. When the student then says, yeah, I got it, what are they talking about?
Can they throw the punch all of a sudden? They know how to throw the punch? No.
We have to first of all realize that the transmission of knowledge is broken up into two pieces. There’s the actual information, the idea, the concept, the concept, and then there’s the actual skill, the doing, the performing, the executing of that knowledge.
So right off the bat, if you are giving someone something, information-wise, say, hey, can you throw this punch? Yep, I got it. You as a teacher have to know they don’t have the skill, they’ve just got the knowledge.
But really, they don’t even have that knowledge yet because most tips have to be felt and experienced to truly understand the words that they just received. There are levels to the knowledge.
That’s why I think keeping a notebook is so important because when you have a notebook, you can write down things that you don’t fully understand yet. You have a surface level understanding from where you are today. But five years from now, you’ll go back, read that same information and you’ll have a deeper insight, same words, deeper experience of what those words actually meant.
So the point is, your knowledge and understanding is relative to where you are in life at that moment. So when you say, you got it, on the one hand, you’re talking about the knowledge. I understand what you’re saying.
But what about your skill level now? What can you execute? Because that’s a separate question.
If a teacher says, you have it, you got it, and you say, yeah, I got it. Maybe the next good question would be, can you do it? Because that at least lets us know we’re talking about two different things, understanding and being able to perform it, capability.
When it comes to the skill, and you’ve just learned it, of course, you don’t know how to do it. Not to the specifications that your teacher just said. It’s going to take time, repetition, it takes effort, it’s going to take attention, some more corrections, work, sweat. That’s how you build the skill.
So again, it’s relative. Your skill level is relative to the amount of work you’ve been doing. And it’s endless. There’s always another level that you can get better, which is why if you say, I got it when it comes to skill, can you throw that punch? Yeah, I got it. You’re not exactly accurate, because there’s always another level you can make it better. There’s always a deeper level of understanding.
When you compare martial arts, let’s say you take boxing and Choy Li Fut. Now, on paper, one art, boxing, might look very simple. There’s a small number of strikes that are allowed, small number of guards, positions, limited number of footwork drills you’ll probably do.
Choy Li Fut has got hundreds of forms, weapons, the kicks. There’s just a much longer list of movements that you would have to know. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s a simple art, I would say like boxing, or it’s a more complex art like Choy Li Fut. Either way, there are levels, there are nuances. You can always make something better.
I’m not slighting boxing when I say it’s simpler. It’s just as complex as any other skill, because you can go on and on forever, practicing and learning and increasing your timing and your spatial awareness and combination cleverness. It’s unlimited.
And of course, the same goes whether you’re a chef. Just because you graduated culinary school doesn’t mean you don’t learn anything more about cooking, right?
Whether you’re a surgeon. Hey, I don’t want a surgeon who stopped looking at other research papers or studying other techniques once they got out of medical school. I want someone who’s up to date, who’s paying attention to everything else that’s going on. Making his skills better or her skills.
And certainly as a parent, as a friend, we can always be looking at how we handle people, how we deal with people to make our relationships better. Right? Right.
Now, I get it. It’s a human quirk. We all want to say, I got it. So I don’t have to keep working. I don’t want to feel like I don’t know anything. So once I do know anything, something, I want to jump on that and feel fully confident and then maybe have some relief that I’m not an ignoramus anymore. A little is a lot more than nothing. Even a little.
So if you had never studied martial arts, you don’t know anything about martial arts. Even that first month of training in whatever style you do, that jump in knowledge and experience is huge because you’re comparing it to nothing. One day of class is more than nothing.
And if you’ve had anxiety about not knowing anything about martial arts and now you’ve got a month of classes under your belt, wow, you think you really know something. And that’s okay. It gets you in the right direction.
You’ve got some confidence, but the mistake, of course, will be to think that you’re not going to learn anything more if you stay two months or ten years or fifty years.
Now, you can see this human quirk in kids easily. They don’t know how much knowledge there is out there or how much experience is in front of them. So they’ll very quickly think they know everything, particularly when I’ve worked with kids in the martial arts, when it’s coming near time for a belt test, and they’ll say, Oh, can I test for my new belt? And I’ll say, OK, well, let’s see the moves that you’re required to know.
And they can’t do them at all. They’re no good. And they still think they’re OK. They’re the one who asked in the first place, Can I test for a new belt?
I’m like, Well, let’s see the moves. Is that the right move? No, it’s not the right move. You’re doing it wrong. So here, let me show, let me help you. Here, try it again. Better. Okay, you’re getting there. Okay, there. Now, that was a good one. And then they still think, Okay, so now can I test?
They’re confused, thinking that, Oh, now that they have a clearer piece of knowledge, that means they also have the skill. Whereas, I, an older person and the teacher, I’m thinking, No, no, I need you to now take that knowledge, go turn it into a skill that becomes a habit, so that if I put you in a pressurized situation, like a belt test, or God forbid, a real life situation, that skill would be there.
But the kids, they don’t get that. Unfortunately, many adults don’t get that. It’s the same thing.
Many adults, certainly in the martial arts, walk around with an attitude of, been there, done that. Yeah, I did that style. Yeah, I already earned that belt. As if it’s it, that’s it. And there’s nothing more for them to learn, which is crazy, right?
This is a word I’ve been using lately. They have talk-nique, but not technique. They can talk a really good game.
When I’ve worked with teachers in the past, and even some high-ranking people, people who’ve owned schools, and they’re up on the wall, they’ve got all kinds of diplomas and certificates, but they’re just not that good, in my opinion.
Okay, granted, it’s my time on camera, so that’s what I’m saying.
I look at it and I think, that’s not the level of skill that you are demonstrating that I would expect when I look at all of those certificates and pictures of you on the wall. There’s a disconnect here.
Your talk-nique is very strong, but your technique doesn’t seem so.
And that would be even if they’ve had a school, maybe for decades, and I’ll watch them teach, and I just don’t think their teaching style is very good. They seem to be kind of self-absorbed, they don’t really have a good system in place, they’re not giving good feedback, they’re not paying attention.
And yet, they would say that they’re a professional teacher, they are a professional martial artist, they’re really great at both of those things. And I’m looking at it like, no, there’s a disconnect here.
And again, the problem here is that some people see learning as a checkbox. Oh, you got your high school diploma, check. You graduated college, check. You got your black belt, check. And that diploma, that certificate, that award, that new belt is seen as a period or an exclamation point.
But it’s not.
It’s just dot dot dot… an ellipsis. It’s to be continued. You are engaging in a process, a practice, and it never ends. There is no end to it. If you’re a true student, it never ends.
So, when people come on so strong, like, yeah, I got that, yeah, I know what I’m doing. Be careful with that. If you’re the one talking like that, don’t let your technique outdo your technique. Be careful.
And again, I’m a human being, so I have the same flaw, quirk. I’ve been doing martial arts for 30 years, over 30 years. So don’t you think I want to say, I got this, I know what I’m doing. I don’t say that.
I’m very careful about that because on either side, you’re probably wrong. If you think you know everything, you’re wrong. If you think you know nothing, you’re wrong.
I think there’s that great Bruce Lee quote. Someone asks, hey, are you a great martial artist? And he says something like, if I tell you that I’m great, you’ll think I’m bragging. If I tell you I don’t do anything, I’m no good, then you’ll know I’m lying.
We have to try to find that balance in the middle. And this, of course, brings up what you’ve probably heard of already, the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Now, I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t speak to the solidity of their research methods or how their studies have been criticized by current psychology, but as a popular term, the Dunning-Kruger effect is basically the idea that most people overestimate their level of competence.
People who don’t know much think they know more than they do. And on the flip side, the people who are truly skilled and who are truly competent usually feel insecure about it and feel that everyone else knows as much as they do or more, and they feel that they’re not that good at things.
So it’s this odd, again, the human character.
The people who know a little think they know a lot, and the people who know a lot end up thinking they don’t know so much.
Either way, you can end up in trouble with that kind of thinking on either extreme.
So of course, I’m curious about how you assess yourself. Where do you need knowledge? Where do you need more skill? Where do you need information? Where do you need practice?
As much as you can, I think it’s helpful to reflect on your level so you know where you are. And I would encourage you to find a balance. Find the balance between confidence and humility.
Yes, you should have confidence in the experiences that you’ve already had in the past. But at the same time, you should have the humility to know that you haven’t experienced everything. You haven’t seen everything.
So there is an unlimited amount of new that can come to you. You are still capable of learning. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I think that’s where you want to be. I think that’s where you don’t get into trouble.
The minute that you think this dichotomy between confidence and humility doesn’t exist, that you either think you’re a loser, you don’t know anything, or you think you’re the greatest in the world and you can’t learn anything more, that’s when you’re going to get into trouble. And maybe not just for you, but for the people around you.
For example, have you ever seen a self-defense demonstration online or in person that just wasn’t very good? Now again, I don’t want to come off judgy, but I have some experience that leads me to believe when I see other people sometimes executing a technique or a demonstration, I think that could be done better.
Particularly when they play metal music while they’re demonstrating, or they’ve got a cocky grin on their face, or they’re laughing while they do it and they say it’s easy.
Here’s a choke defense. It’s easy. Do this, do that.
Now to me, that doesn’t, that hurts people to see something done poorly. And the problem is here that the demonstrator thinks they have it.
If you said, oh, do you know how to get out of a choke? Oh yeah, I got it. In fact, I’m so confident I’m going to show it.
Okay, so you’ve got maybe someone who doesn’t know that much leading. They’re the one putting themselves in the spotlight to say, look at me, I’ll show you how this is done. And you’re looking at it thinking, man, it looks to me like a strong wind could knock you down. That’s trouble.
On the other hand, there can be someone who’s got lots of experience and has spent a good deal of time studying and practicing and experimenting, and they have something good to offer, but they don’t want to deal with criticism, they don’t feel they’re that good, they see everyone else doing the flashy videos, and they don’t think they’re good enough for that.
So they hide, and they help no one. So this is the dilemma.
If you don’t have the balance right between what you know and what you don’t know, you could be hurting people or helping no one.
Another example, let’s say as a student, as you’re trying to learn, maybe you walk into a school, you run into another martial artist, and they say, oh, do you know how to do an armbar, this new kind of cool armbar? Now if your ego or your just miscalculations of your own skill lead you to say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that, I can do an armbar, I know how to do that. That’s it, you just closed the door.
Now this other person who is just going to probably show you something has no reason to pursue you anymore, like, oh, okay, great, you know how to do an armbar, we both know.
Whereas if you’re a little more humble and they say, hey, you want to see how to do an armbar? And you say, sure, I’d love to see how you do an armbar. Now the door is open, they can excitedly share what they have, and you as a student have access to new information, perhaps, and it only takes that subtle little change of how they maybe grip something or say something that really makes an impact on how you do it for the rest of your life. It’s worth it to try.
It’s that idea maybe of Socratic irony, Socrates, the philosopher, the idea that you go in to an argument playing dumb. Don’t come in thinking that you know everything or letting people see that you know everything. You come in saying, I don’t know, what are you talking about? What is it that we’re arguing about? You let the other person share what they’ve got and then you know better what angle to argue and then you know better who you’re dealing with.
So that might be a little more aggressive, but I think just as a student to learn, you want to leave that door open. And by having the humility to say, I don’t know, I’d like to see how you do it, then you’ve got a chance to learn something.
One more example, belt tests, particularly traditional styles, Karate, Taekwondo. When you have a belt test and you have to know certain number of forms or memorized combinations, maybe vocabulary and history, maybe you have to demonstrate a board break, you can do some sparring, you can have a long list of requirements.
And as a teacher, they come to you and they say, well, your test is, your due date is coming up, you got it, you know all the material, how do you feel? You could be, again, trouble. You could say, oh yeah, I got it, no problem. Which borders on cocky, like, oh yeah, you think you got it.
But the truth is, maybe your form is not that good. Maybe you try to break that extra stack of boards and you smash your hand. I’ve seen all of these things happen and fallen victim to it myself, victim of my own ego.
And I can say that on that end of the spectrum, when you think, yeah, I got this, no problem, that can really shatter you. That can be ego, identity, shattering. Because you went in with all this hubris and confidence, and then you made a mistake in your form.
And it’s not just a mistake for you. It’s a crack in your identity. Because you said, I have this. I am perfect. I know everything. And then in front of everybody, you don’t.
I’ve fractured my wrist trying to break boards that I shouldn’t be breaking. It’s embarrassing, but it’s a great lesson, right?
On the other hand, if your teacher says, okay, well, I’ve seen you working hard over here, you’re ready for the test? And you think, oh, no way. I don’t want to take a chance of making a mistake. I know I’m not perfect. I keep getting hit when I’m sparring. I’m afraid of breaking those boards. You’re just full of anxiety.
You have not been building confidence in your work. And if you’re not forced to test, you probably would never test. You’d just be a white belt for the rest of your life. That’s also a problem. Now, you’re missing out on the sense of achievement that you could have had. Now you’re missing out on getting to the next level and learning new information that builds on the current information that you’re making better.
So again, the problem here is not having a solid, clear assessment of where you stand in your knowledge base and in your skill sets.
We want ultimately to have balance between confidence and humility. When someone says to you, I’ll give you my formula, when someone says to you, you got it? I think there’s a yes and a no. Anytime there’s a challenge to what I can do, there’s a yes and a no.
You got it? I might say, yes, I am better than I was, but no, I’m not as good as I could be. Feel the balance there? Giving myself credit for what I’ve done, but leaving the door open for improvement.
You can say, yes, I’ve improved, but no, I’m not done improving. That’s fair. That seems balanced.
Yes, I’m on the right track, but no, I haven’t gotten where I want to go yet. Nice, balanced. You feel that?
It’s a lot better than saying, oh, no, no, I’m not ready, or saying, yeah, I got this. Better.
You can say, yes, I’ve got some of this. You could even say, yes, I’ve got a lot of this, but no, I don’t have all of it yet. Oh, nice answer. Practice saying that one.
Yes, I’ve got some of this, but not all of it. It’s never wrong to say that.
Yes, I’ve got as much as I can understand and do today, but no, not as much as I will have tomorrow.
Nice. Yes, but I’m still learning. Yes, I have something, but I am still learning more. You get the idea. Practice this feeling of balance.
I always want you to be proud of the work and the research that you’ve done in the past, but at the same time, I want you to be hopeful and excited about the future. Because there is no limit to how much you can learn. There is no limit to how many fields you can find success in.
Got it?
Okay, I hope that ramble will lead you to reflect on what you really know and what you can really do. Then I hope you’ll be able to set some appropriate goals to take the next steps towards a happy life.
Until next time, keep reflecting, my friend, and keep fighting for a happy life.
