Kids Martial Arts and Confidence

Kids martial arts classes and failure

I think that building confidence is the art of failure.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive but stick with me for a minute. I think that building confidence is building competence in what you do and in order to find out what that is you have to proceed down a new path that is unfamiliar. In essence you have to learn what you don’t know and that entails not being good at something the first time. Building confidence is about feeling secure in who you are, in what you do. There are a lot of people who need to feel confident and need to feel like they can win. Whenever this idea pops into my head I always go back to a Sam Harris article: The Pleasures of Drowning.

There’s a good story in it of a master aikidoka who apparently is so confident in his technique of felling opponents without touching them that when he engages with someone who is not a complicit student or follower he has a stark experience. It’s unfortunate that it had to happen that way but in the end my guess is that the master probably learned a lot about his art.

I don’t necessarily advocate that kids should fail on purpose because failing, or succeeding for that matter, without any struggle isn’t beneficial. It’s a fine line because failing often can be discouraging and winning all the time will create a hubristic demeanor. We all experience this in our stages of life: in some cases we feel defeated and in other cases we feel overly confident.

Kids martial arts and cleaning your room

I notice that my child has gained a lot of extra confidence in her kids martial arts class and it has worked for her and against her some times since starting. Some days when I tell her to clean her room she will argue with me about the merits of cleaning her room and it becomes almost ontological when she debates. In the end she still has to clean her room. I’ve been able to leverage what she learns in her kids martial arts class so that she will clean her room to practice. She will clear a space on the floor where once was a mess of toys so we can roll and she can teach me what she has learned in her kids martial arts class. She was sure of herself and confident prior to taking kids martial arts class, I feel fortunate she has that personality trait. Occasionally, however, hubris surfaces somewhat profoundly. There are times when she, too, has a stark experience with reality. The way I approach it when she is discouraged or upset about something is to be sure that she is aware that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but she can continually learn and grow from those experiences. I see that she is learning humility and gaining confidence in her ability to learn in her kids martial arts class. There’s real value in that ebb and flow of learning from mistakes and feeling good about when you work hard to keep moving forward and reaching a new level…that builds confidence.

She just thinks it’s exciting and fun.