Mini Ep. 46: Beginner's Mind

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free, go to BJJmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And in this week's mini episode, I want to talk about an important mindset concept, beginner's mind. Now, you may be familiar with this terminology. I first encountered it learning about Zen Buddhism, but it's certainly not unique to Zen Buddhism. It comes up all over the place. A lot of Jiu-Jitsu practitioners talk about this as well. Rafael Lovato Jr. has talked about the importance of being a forever student or a forever white belt, and those are very much in line with the concept of beginner's mind. Speaker 1: The concept is very simple. It tells us that we should approach every learning opportunity as if we were a total beginner. The reason why is because when we come into something as a beginner, everything is new and exciting and novel, and that makes it easy to learn and have fun. Think of how children learn. They're beginners to so many of the things that they do. They're not impeded by the curse of knowledge or experience. Everything is a new and novel opportunity, and that makes it easy to be playful and to be joyful and to learn. And as we get older and more experienced, we can lose that childlike nature that helps us keep a beginner's mind and helps us learn more effectively. Speaker 1: The reason why having a beginner's mind is so helpful for learning is because it helps us put our ego on pause. Ego isn't as bad a thing as people sometimes make it out to be in Jiu-Jitsu. To some extent, we need our ego to survive and to thrive, but at the end of the day, our ego can also impede our ability to learn. Absorbing new information can be seen as a threat to the ego because it's an admission that there's something you didn't know. And the bigger your ego is, the harder it's going to be to absorb new information. So to maximize our learning, we should always listen, talk, and act like a beginner. And that's applicable regardless of your experience level, whether you're a white belt or a black belt. Speaker 1: I would actually say that this lesson is especially important if you are more experienced, because the more experienced you get, the less likely you are to be able to maintain a beginner's mind. For a variety of reasons, as you get experienced, it can be hard to keep that playful, childlike, open, curious nature that is so emblematic of a beginner's mind. And there's a lot of reasons for this. One reason is because in a sport like Jiu-Jitsu, ultimately, at the end of the day, if we are rolling to win, then there's going to be a winner and a loser, and our ego doesn't like it when we're the loser. So we are incentivized to position ourselves as a winner. Speaker 1: Part of the way that that can manifest is by avoiding opportunities where you might lose or you might look bad. This can result in situations where more senior belts will avoid situations that make them look like they're not so great at Jiu-Jitsu, or make them look like they don't know everything. You see this sometimes with coaches who are afraid to branch out into new techniques. They kind of stick to things that they've always done. Part of that could be because they're used to what they've always done, they're good at it, and if they try something new, they try a different and more modern aspect of the game, they may discover that they look bad by comparison because they're new at it. And for a lot of coaches who are really experienced, they don't like to look bad, so that can result in them avoiding those situations. Speaker 1: Similarly, if you've ever seen a black belt duck rolls with a super athletic blue belt, I mean, part of that could be safety, but it could also be because they don't want to be visibly challenged or defeated by a blue belt. That can be a hit to the ego. If you're an experienced grappler, you may perceive it as embarrassing to lose to someone who is less experienced than you. All of this, of course, is silly. We should be excited when a less experienced person or junior belt is able to challenge us on the mats. That's a sign that they're growing, and if we were coaching them, that's a sign that we did a good job coaching. Speaker 1: However, this is often easier said than done. Once you get experienced on the mats and you're wearing a belt that designates a rank, that implies that you should be experienced, it's easy to feel like you need to be good at this and you need to be winning all of the time. And that can make it very hard to put yourself in positions where you might not look like the expert. So the big thing that beginner's mind teaches us is that we want to avoid that trap of trying to look like the expert at all times. We want to make sure that we're open to the possibility of being a beginner again, because that's how we grow and that's how we get better at stuff. Speaker 1: There's a few ways that you can more effectively apply a beginner's mind if you're struggling. One thing that I've done, if I am just having a day where I feel like I don't want to look bad, I'm really concerned about being humbled or embarrassed on the mats, I will just bite the bullet and make myself look bad. So what I will sometimes do, the first roll of the day, I will partner up with someone that I should normally be able to beat, and I will let them win. That's not to say I'll just roll over and do nothing, but I'll put up a reasonable effort. However, my intent is to make sure that throughout the roll, ultimately my training partner wins. I want to make sure that this is done somewhat publicly so other people can see it. After the roll, I want to smile, thank the person, and specifically give them a specific, genuine compliment about what they did during the roll. Speaker 1: Once this has happened, your ego has taken a pretty serious shot. And that makes it a lot easier for you then to emotionally open up and have more of a beginner's mind throughout the rest of the training session. So if you're the type of person who struggles to maintain a beginner's mind, there's a bit of advice that I could give you. Intentionally lose the first round when you're training, do so in a public way, and then be gracious about it and thank the other person for the training opportunity and compliment them on their work. If you do this, my experience has been that this can really help shelf the ego for the rest of the day, and then you can get back to focusing on learning. Speaker 1: So there you go, a really simple mindset concept that is critical for getting good at Jiu-Jitsu and especially continuing to get good as you get more experienced. If you want to learn more about beginner's mind or any of the other mental models that we talk about on the show, we've got a whole database of these concepts on our website. Of course, we also have full-length podcast episodes, plus mini episodes like this that cover these things in detail, and we've also got our newsletter, which I really recommend everyone sign up for. That, plus BJJ Mental Models Premium, is all available at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.