In my opinion, the recipe for improvement (or one of them, at least) for BJJ is this: a willingness to learn, a stubborn conviction to improve, with a pinch of hope- all tied together with a gi and a ton of medical tape.
While running the risk of sounding like a Pollyanna, I really do think that hope plays a role in your improvement, and one that isn’t really talked about. Constantly being down on yourself- doubting your technique, your progress, assuming failure at every turn is sort of self-defeating. That doesn’t mean walking around with a huge ego, but there’s a difference between humility and a detrimental, self-fulfilling prophesy sort of mentality.
Hope is what keeps us going: it’s one of the reasons we keep drilling, we keep slapping hands and starting a match after we’ve tapped, one of the reasons we get up after a loss in a tournament- we look forward to the day when we progress and even succeed where we have failed before. And we do progress, but in jiu jitsu improvements don’t tend to happen in leaps and bounds, but rather inches and centimeters, so hope is even all that more crucial, since there are times when it seems like our progress is standing still.
That’s all I’ve got for today folks- have a great day everyone!
A Skirt on the Mat 