Ok, yeah sounds all nice, fuzzy and easy to say. For somebody that teaches martial arts, it is not as easy as just showing up and gently shoving in the general direction of somebodies expressed goal. That is not successful over the long run. Success, here, is defined as a long and enjoyable training in the martial arts.
Aiding somebody in reaching their goals is a wild mix of the students needs, wants, and desires, plus your agenda as a teacher. Now let’s complicate it by making it a moving target. Did your goals change as you progresses through he ranks, did you as a person morph, change and grow? Of course the answer is yes. The question is who is responsible for that transformation? Are you, the teacher responsible for the transformation, the other people in the school, a combination?
So helping others reach their goals is not a static target and yet we would hope that our discipline as a teacher will provide the laser like focus, the target that is needed to reach the goal. I would suggest to you that as an instructor that the target is not a target, but a path (although students still see it as a target). For students, know this, you will start with a target, but you and the target are going to change. Your goal will become a path if you stay long enough.
So let me get all Philosophy 101 here. For the students, the target forms the path and often you don’t know you are on the path for focus on the target. Instructors have had targets, but are on a path.
So helping somebody reach their goal is more complicated than just putting them through the paces, targets move, appear and disappear, agendas change, and when a good path rises, it should be chosen.
Do you have a place that you can point to where the target fell away and the path appeared? I would love to hear about it.
There ya go, a big cup of deep thought tea.
