Why should I test if I don't feel ready?
I hear this question in the minds of our students all the time. I felt it myself so many times along the path to Black Belt. Am I testing before I have mastered my techniques?..Am I under pressure to test?..Am I not quite fully ready for my next belt?..Will I survive this pressure?
The truth is the answer to all of those questions was yes! I was testing before I mastered my techniques. Remember that your current colored belt is not the end of the road. You are only at the beginning of your journey, even at Black Belt. As Grand Master Han used to say to every Black Belt as he tied on their new belt, "Now your training begins!" Most of us are at the infant stage of our training. Remember, Grand Master Han has been training, not just teaching, but training for 66 years. How long have you been training?..Six months, a year, 5 years, it all seems relatively little compared to him doesn't it. So why do you expect perfection?
Trust your instructor. Chances are your instructor has seen many like you before. They have made the common mistake of holding students back until they eventually regress because of the lack of pressure. Pressure makes you stronger, remember pressure makes a chunk of coal into a diamond! You need pressure in your life, you need to live outside your comfort zone. It is in our nature as people to slip inside a comfort zone, to surround ourself with things that make our life more cushy and what we consider a shield from hardship is actually a barrier to further success. Maintaining your testing schedule is how your instructor keeps you under constant pressure. How does your instructor finish out your testing cycle? By saying things like,"It's almost testing time!","Work extra hard, push it and be ready!". How do they begin the week after testing? "No time to rest now, we have to get right to work on this new stuff, testing will be here in no time again!" Are those phrases familiar to you? They are to me, I heard them all of the time training with Master Ceth and Master Sherry. I remember the constant pressure, I remember being up all night the week AFTER testing, practicing my new form, feeling like the next testing was just around the corner! It was all a blur, it seemed like belts went by like days. I would just start to get comfortable at a level and would be kicked out of that level into a new level that seemed to kick my tail again! Now here's the kicker! I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. That pressure made me into the person I would need to be at a leadership level. I can think of many instances where I have wanted to quit or give up along the way and I have often thought back to those days when every day I was forced to step outside my comfort zone and survive. Pressure is good!
Am I ready for my next belt? Is that what you are really asking? Or are you asking am I as good as those at my next belt, or the person next to me at my next belt? If you are really asking am I ready for my next belt than you must consider yourself a better judge of that than your instructor, who by the way has seen many like you before you. If you are even on a subconscious level asking the latter than you must stop thinking those things all together. Guess what?..You may NEVER be the fastest, or the most flexible, or the best fighter. You have to beat out you! You have to constantly improve you, there is no way you can compare yourself to someone else and determine your readiness to level up. I promise your instructor is not doing that and it would be an amateurish thing for them to do if they did. If that were the case someone with great ability and poor work ethic could make it to Black Belt in no time while someone with great work ethic and little natural ability would never achieve that status. I ask you, who makes the better Black Belt?
Last but not least...You WILL survive this. Just as you will survive the other hardships in your life. This is a lesson we must beat into our heads. God never gives us more than we can handle! Unfortunately most of us have to learn this lesson the hard way. Never the less, it is always true...you can do more than you think you can...you can go farther than you think you can...every one of us has the ability to make the CHOICE to never give up. Trust your instructor, allow them to develop your warrior spirit. Let them make you strong so that you may make others like you in the future! Charge forward in your tests, in your life and never look back. Life mimics martial arts in many ways and one of which is without progress there is regress! There is no coasting!