The way you approach your training today, will not be the same in ten years. Will you be training in ten years? If yes, you’ll likely be a black belt.

I’ve now been a black belt for a little over a year. And I don’t look at practice the same as I did as a white or blue belt. As a purple belt, my perspective changed, and it kept changing as I advanced (and aged). And that’s to be expected. In ten years, your view of many, if not most, topics should change. That’s growth, education, maturity, etc.

Whatever you believe, give yourself permission to change. Actually, give yourself the exhortation to change. Whether it’s a belief about jiu-jitsu, politics, religion, TV shows, sports, or anything at all that you spend any energy thinking about, be willing to change your mind.

I used to have Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “foolish consistency” passage taped on my bathroom mirror:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day.

Open your eyes.

Grow up.

Don’t be held back by rules you or someone else made before you learned better.¹