Happy Friday!
Val Worthington has a great post about being a white belt in something not specifically jiu jitsu related (in her case, Portuguese). It can be frustrating, to be sure- we want to be good at things, we want to master them, and something that higher belts need to understand is that just because you mastered this one thing, that doesn’t always translate to another part of your life, even if it does seem like something you’ve been exposed to enough that you would think that you should be a little better at it.
We in general, particularly as adults don’t learn very well by osmosis, and some abilities just don’t translate well into others: I’m a black belt in jiu jitsu, but a somewhat clumsy “white belt” in a variety of other activities, such as yoga, dodgeball, or walking down the street without tripping over my own two feet (trust me, it’s a thing).
I personally feel we should open ourselves to these experiences as much as we can. Will we constantly embrace these moments with joy? Probably not-it’s just not a part of our nature, we build an expectation that if we’ve mastered one thing we should be able to repeat that success in other parts of our lives. But we will have a much better time when we let go of our expectations and just enjoy the progress that we make in these new activities and experiences.
My parting thought is also this: we can try, and we can feel like we fail, but that’s not entirely true. The only time we actually fail is when we stop seeking to learn, when we stop trying all together. That is true failure.
That’s all I’ve got- have a great weekend everyone!
A Skirt on the Mat 