At some point—perhaps sooner than you’d like—you’ll have to coach yourself.
Either your coach won’t be as attentive as they could be, or you’ll have absorbed their game, or you just don’t mesh interpersonally.
If you want to keep growing, you’re going to have to sort it out yourself.
But that doesn’t mean abandoning external coaching. Everyone on the mats has a lesson to offer, from the brand-new white belt to gnarled veteran.
The brand-new white belt might react in an inexplicable way that generates a new observation. The gnarled veteran’s game may be frozen in time, but they draw from a deep well of knowledge. The hungry purple belt or athletic blue belt will remind you what it’s like to burn.
The self-coaching happens when you determine if and how to integrate these lessons.
Is the inexplicable reaction something you’re likely to encounter again?
Is the gnarled veteran’s technique timeless or unsound against the current dynamism of the game?
Were you complacent in your roll with the purple belt, or are they simply a decade younger and thirty pounds heavier than you?
Only you can answer these questions.
But their salience tends to fade with the answering.
Category: Inner Work
Tag: Awareness
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