Don’t get de escalation wrong! De escalation pertains to physical confrontation and eliminating it. We should, however, make sure we verbally escalate with people when we have a problem or something really just doesn’t feel right. For me, it took some years to understand this and it led me to hold grudges with people when I really didn’t need to! I internalized my issues and didn’t really stand up for myself because I did not want to start a fight or upset someone.
We need to call people on their bologna and be able to confront people when we feel that they have wronged us. Maybe we were the one that was actually at fault to begin with, but we fail to learn from these encounters if we do not confront people. Now don’t get me wrong, if this starts to get physical or it is headed in that direction, then we need to de-escalate. If we de-escalate ourselves before we talk to someone, however, we are saying to ourselves that our own opinions or feelings don’t matter, or finding a resolution isn’t worth it. If this is the case we can say that holding a grudge is healthy! We know that this is completely wrong.
Bruce Lee states that as people grow older, and transition from being a child to being an adult, they are not corrected on their bad behavior as much anymore. Just like how as a black belt we need to take responsibility for our own training and our own technique. Our instructors will not tell us absolutely everything anymore. Surely though, black belts make mistakes and adults still misbehave. This isn’t always intentional. I have ADHD and sometimes act out of the norm and may do something rude accidentally, but that is never my intention in my heart.
Just like you still want your instructor to help you with your technique as a black belt, make sure you call people out on their behavior. Your instructor will make you a better martial artist and you will hopefully make your friend or even yourself aware of their actions or your actions and make better of it.
One student of mine came in late to class last week and missed conditioning. I asked the other students that were on time if the student should make up the conditioning. Normally, when an instructor asks a question there is honestly no right answer, but here the right answer was to say yes, he should make up the conditioning because being late is rude. Stand up for yourself!
