EVERY Belt Counts!

One belt at a time.

Each belt rank is a great accomplishment. Honor the achievement and cherish the lessons that you learned. Don't place them behind or beneath you. The basic beginner skills are neither the easiest of all the skills, or the weakest of them. They actually are the most important because they are the foundation that your newer skills will be built upon.

As we progress to attain higher rankings and become "better", our basics will remain with us by either continuing to grow and validate our commitment, or slowly withering away to reveal our neglect and anxiousness. The reason that the basics can never become simple or unnecessary to us as we progress is, because as we practice to learn new skills to progress, we should still be practicing the old one's just as much to first become an expert with them, and then to master them. And even when we reach mastery, we should not stop because we then have the chance of doing that which has yet to be done with that skill.

We should be best at the skills that we have known the longest because we should always be working with them the longest out of all of our skills. We should know more about it than all of those that came after it.

No one should join the Martial Arts to become a Black Belt. Especially since they have no idea of what a Black Belt for that particular art even is. Instead, join a Martial Arts school to graciously become the first rank that is placed for you to become. And when you become, let's say a Yellow Belt, don't set your sights so fast on the next, higher belt. Think about what kind of Yellow belt you are and what kind of Yellow Belt you aren't. How well do you represent the position. Are you the best Yellow Belt ever or the worst? Or do you not even care because its just a lowly Yellow Belt that you have no true respect or understanding for?

Martial Arts manner is patience and gratitude. Take time to honor your accomplishment & development every time that you reach it. Stop and look back at your journey. Appreciate the acknowledgement of each belt rank as if each one was what you had the delusion of receiving a Black Belt is like. We must understand and feel deeply what it means to be every single belt ranking or we will never attain mentally, emotionally, and spiritually all that there is to be attained on the journey to a Black Belt, even if you happen to earn a Black Belt.

If our primary mission is to earn the highest rank in that Martial Art, we may someday get it if we work hard enough to get it because we want it. And that may also be the greatest thing that we get out of getting to it because that is exactly what has been the greatest thing to us on this journey. While focusing on getting that Black Belt we missed everything and everyone else around it.

If we can be strong enough to abandon ego, want, and entitlement when it comes to the Martial Arts, we will have experiences that will reveal to us that we actually never truly knew what it was that we wanted.