Make the Effort to Understand Those That are Different From You

For the entirety of my career as a chief instructor, I have mainly worked with college aged students at a university. As I am currently only 25 years old as of the writing of this article. That means I have always worked with those of a similar age demographic and thus similar level of physical and mental ability of myself. People tend to gravitate and see others that are similar to them more than those are different from them, and I have to say early on as an 18 year old instructor, I struggled to connect and teach those that were adults older than I was in their 40’s and 50’s while assisting at other schools.

What was my problem? I, in my physical prime, struggled to understand what those older than me were dealing with physically, their limitations and their point of view with respect to training. This made the students feel like they were unseen and ignored in a way. Because of this, they became frustrated and discouraged with their training. 

While technical challenges like doing an excellent, high side kick, junmp kicks, or a deep stance may seem to be level set on the surface, folks will see these challenges as easier or more difficult depending on their circumstances. In David Brooks’ How to Know a Person, he says, “I’ve learned over these years that hard conversations are hard because people in different life circumstances construct very different realities. It’s not only that they have different opinions about the same world; they literally see different worlds… How you see a situation depends on what you are capable of doing in a situation (Brooks 118)”. Brooks then provides examples of how athletes finds hills less steep to walk over. Those who just consumed an energy drink found hills less steep than the those that did not. Finally, those that were overweight perceived distances as longer as those that were not overweight.

Different people will perceive training differently based on how they are, and to be a good and empathetic instructor, we must understand this. We must take the time to understand many, many points of view and different challenges that others face. Older students may have physical challenges, while younger youth students may have challenges with committing forms to memory or becoming distracted with only the parts of training that they enjoy. As I’ve learned to understand these different points of view throughout my 20’s I can say that not only are those that I work with more happy and less frustrated , but I am also more happy and less frustrated as an instructor. Those that I work with feel seen and I am not as blind to their needs as before! 

Sources:

Brooks, David. How to Know a Person. Random House, 2023.