A black belt only means you're an expert of the basics.
Growing up, I was a cocky, arrogant little pain in the A**. I learned martial arts, got rank in several of them, and engaged in many fights on the mat at competitions and in the streets. This perspective kept me going until I was about 18 or 19 years old when I realized that the police interact with you a little differently when you are an ‘ADULT” ( I put it in quotations because maybe chronologically and legally, I was an adult but in the sense of maturity, I was still a dumb kid!)
This reality check hit even harder when I joined the United States Navy as a corpsman. Hazing was a thing, and it was no joke; it didn't matter how tough or how well you could fight; you got you're a** handed to you.
Preparing for combat is a whole other beast than getting in a street fight. During one of our simulation combat scenarios, I realized that you must master the basics of your job and combat basics to stay alive.
I remember being humbled by one of my instructors, who said being arrogant would kill you. This immediately brought me back to a lesson my dad tried so hard to teach me. A black belt means you are just an expert of the basics.
I was forced to humble myself, but with that came a vital lesson that I carried to Afghanistan. it is critical that you stay humble and studious to…
