I remember a time during one of my classes in my electrical engineering program when one of my professors was returning our graded midterm exams to us, and one student received an unpleasant surprise. He had received a deduction of five points on one of the problems! Now this class was on assembly language programming, so there were multiple different avenues that you could take to arrive at the same correct solution to a problem. This classmate of mine was puzzled as to why he lost points since he had a working solution to that programming problem. He then asked the professor and received an unsatisfying answer. The professor replied, “Your way is not wrong, it is just bad!”
While this statement was very blunt and it may seem difficult to pull a meaningful lesson from it, the main idea holds true to how we approach our martial arts training and even our professional careers. This idea is that depending on what level we are trying to reach, there are different expectations of us and how we perform certain tasks. While the answer to the problem was not wrong, there was a higher expectation of an electrical engineering student to find a more efficient way to arrive at that answer. An amateur and professional artist may be asked to paint the same thing. Without being told whose painting is whose, we should obviously be able to determine which came from the professional and which came from the amateur. While the amateur’s painting may be inherently good, we would be disappointed if we were told that it came from a professional. In the corporate world, what might be exceeding expectations for an entry level engineer is usually par for the course for a senior engineer
As martial artists, it is not only important to learn more advanced techniques, but it is also crucial to execute our basic techniques at a more advanced level. Even if we know which move comes next in a form, to truly advance, we must execute each move of that form at a certain level of proficiency, power, and speed appropriate to the level we aspire to attain. Just like the painting example above, a side kick performed by a green belt may be “correct”, but that same technique performed by a black belt might disappoint as it might be lacking in fluidity, power, speed, muscle alignment, and hip rotation. For a black belt, a technique might not be “wrong” but it might be poor based on the expectations that we have for that level. In a positive sense, there is always room to improve, but we can celebrate an intermediate and advanced student the same way even if exceeding expectations means different things for them and their technique
Maintaining expectations can be an exciting thing or a scary thing depending on our perspective. If we continue to push the bar higher, we will advance on an exciting journey, but if we stagnate, maintaining expectations can become stressful. At this point we need to prioritize. Are we putting in enough time and effort for the level we want to achieve? If not, we have a choice. We can realign our time and energy toward our goal or we can temper our expectations based on what is truly our priority at the time being.
What is something in your life that you really want to excel at? What do you need to do with your habits or lifestyle in order to reach the level you want to attain? What is standing in your way? If we can answer these three questions, you will be well on your way to meeting expectations and even advancing yourself in your area of desire!
