Misery Not Required

Tori

If this is your first article here, you might want to consider reading them chronologically instead. Or not. Maybe they offer something different read another way!

Writing about the lessons I’ve learned about Competence studying my fellow martial artists, I’ve been trying to select people with traits that are “martial arts themed.” If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ve seen an article about which of those traits I think you might reasonably expect to learn from MA training. One of the marketing “skills” you hear thrown around is “discipline.” I believe that to express Competence in the world, discipline is essential. Whether the marketing is true and you can learn discipline through martial arts training, iffy proposition. But I’ll present a correlation. Good or great martial artists have discipline, and Competent people also have it. The best example I can possibly present you is Tori.

But first, about discipline. I think there’s a bootstrapping problem. If you walk in the door to any martial arts school with no discipline, (unless you’re a child and have a parent providing some compulsion as a substitute) I think MA won’t magically bestow discipline of any kind.

I do think that if you walk in the door with even a shred of half-assed discipline, and want a goal badly enough, that the structure of training in most styles (measurable achievements, cohort colleagues, strong examples of what “just a little more work” can achieve, peer pressure, pride) can add up to discipline. Whether it takes the place of discipline or whether you learn and grow it and it becomes a transferrable skill I am not certain.

What I mean by discipline is a growing capacity to do hard things, things you don’t want to do, unhappy things, painful things, boring things, over long periods. I mean becoming a person who, when presented with a goal deemed worthy of putting shoulder to wheel, will not have to worry about their own willingness/ability to keep turning the wheel for as long as it takes. Tori might describe it differently (I’ll tell you a story about that, keep reading).

As a Competence foundational skill, believing in one’s own ability to “do the work” or “put in the dirt time” or overcome obstacles is a prerequisite to being actually able to do those things. If you don’t believe you can do something, you cannot do it.

Showing you can put in the work is also prerequisite to the kind of trust others must have in you to succeed in the sorts of goals Competent people tend to excel at. Your team must believe that you’ll keep your commitments, and they will believe because they’ve seen you do it.

Discipline is a foundational prerequisite to developing more challenging advanced skills of almost any kind because those require dirt time, failure, and practice (discipline) to attain. Think about learning almost any large discipline, a new language, programming, project management, or any serious attainment in a martial art.

I don’t think MA training can give you that discipline if you don’t start with it, I’ve got no examples to offer though I know a whole lot (hundreds at least) of training colleagues’ origin stories. But if you have a little stick-to-it-iveness, and a serious amount of desire, then MA training in many styles can ratchet up your discipline a whole lot.

So let’s talk about that in a Competence context by telling you a bit about Tori.

When I was early in my training in my main style, I saw that a school in a distant state was having a seminar with this 5th degree black-belt who I’d only heard of. I was particularly focused on remediating my ham-fisted lack of agility at the time (to give a geeky analogy, by nature I’m a Barbarian sort of fighter, very “Hulk SMASH” and I was training to be a Ninja. Hijinks often ensued.) This teacher was a rare high-ranking woman, which would have been interesting enough to drag me across the country for a seminar. But this teacher is also a slight, lithe person with no big bulgy muscles, and when the big guys I trained with talked about her, they actually cringed a little. The recognizable cringe of remembered pain. They also told stories about that pain. She could whup the big dogs, some way other than by being one. I wanted to learn that.

The seminar was more than I expected. I used notes from that seminar for many years to improve my agility, to consider different ways to strike, to work on making my body not just one big lump of stuff, but a collection of little lumps of stuff that could move in an independent (but coordinated) sort of way. I could never aspire to be Tori, and she never wanted that for her students, but I learned to move in my own way with much more freedom because she helped.

I enjoyed being a sponge when Tori taught. Over the years I encountered her at other seminars we both attended. Tori is a “noticer.” Tori spots people and remembers them and enjoys connecting with them. When we showed up to the same places she made a point of talking with me, and we eventually became friends. She’s not one to insert unsought advice, but I recall one discussion with her that stands out. I was frustrated at a seminar (“frustrated” is probably the word many people would use to describe me for the first, oh, decade or so, of training in my primary martial art.) She asked if I wanted an observation, and I did. I very much did. She asked me “why do you think it has to be hard?”

When I described discipline to you, it was with my view of it. I tend to think that things worth doing are hard. I describe discipline as “dirt time.” “Willingness to do unpleasant things.” I associate discipline with misery, by default. But Tori’s words that day set me thinking in new ways that have unfolded over the years in ways that made me a better martial artist (skill, not muscle) and better at life (it’s ok to enjoy the work it takes to achieve a goal! Extra misery is not required.) Even the notion that just relaxing is also an important way to spend time, it is not a waste of time, didn’t seem real to me for many years. But I could recognize that Tori achieved goals relentlessly, but not miserably. “Frustrated” is a word that very seldom applies to Tori’s approach to accomplishment.

Let me tell you about Tori, and about discipline. When you think of that word, is there any profession that comes to mind, perhaps more than almost other? For me “dancer” might top the list. Tori was a Broadway performer. Her dancing predated her martial arts training, and gave her a foundation it would be hard to match. Tori wasn’t born with command of every tiniest muscle, incredible sense of her body’s movement in space, ability to move any part with the speed and power she chose to a hairsbreadth, and uncanny flexibility and adaptability to use a toe, or a hip, or a shoulder-blade as effectively as many of us struggle to use a hand. Tori put in the blood, sweat, and tears of a professional dancer to gain the capacity to use her body as she chose. Tori has a formidable singing voice, which takes training and work, but grants skill in using breath, which is essential in martial arts. I didn’t know Tori at that time, how she did the “bootstrapping” of discipline I don’t know. But she has it by the truckload.

Being even outstanding at these skills (dancing, singing, martial arts) might make Tori an example of competence (small-c). I’m woefully leaving out quite a few highly-skilled martial artist friends from these articles. People who would make your mouth drop when they practice their art, but who are “specialized.” Typically people who are excellent at one thing because they specialize in it are worthy of respect for that, but don’t make the examples I need for this series. Tori is an exception to that. Her ability to get to Broadway-quality skill in dance, singing, acting, was apparently only a jumping-off point for her. She could specialize and still have an array of these other traits. Tori’s Competence has let her parlay specialized extreme skill into success in innumerable endeavors. We still have yet to see any sort of plateau.

After performing for several years, Tori took a turn. She married, and while raising her family, Tori “stayed home” in the sense that she was one of those Moms who make other Moms feel inadequate. She raised two accomplished sons, entertained and kept a welcoming home for her Producer husband, and oh, by the way, became accomplished in two martial arts. Renowned in the one she and I share. At one time she was the second highest-ranked woman in our style.

Let me pause. I don’t often care for rating women separately from men at anything, I think it supports the wrong assumption that women are second-class. But Martial Arts, almost any style, is 100% a boys club activity. Aside from rare pockets of women-owned schools or women-led styles, what’s taught is meant for men. The movements are designed by and for men. The people deciding who “meets the standard” are men (or women who have become so acclimated to the way the men do it that they see what the men see. (“How many lights?”) I say this from personal experience enforcing that sort of culture.) So I speak to women’s ranks separately, because they are arbitrarily low. Ubiquitously. Maybe not in the low ranks where the stakes are also low. But the few women who get to high ranks in most arts, the ones who continue to wade then to swim through the ocean of nonsense to continue ranking up, I have to mentally add two or three ranks to them when comparing with men in the same style in order to see parity. So when I say Tori was the “second-highest ranked woman,” what I mean is that she was one of our finest practitioners.

Tori also taught well. She could improve people regardless of their size or shape or ability. She inspired all sorts of students in the years she taught, and continues to inspire martial artists to this day, though she doesn’t spend much time on the mat anymore.

Back to discipline, and Competence. When I say that Tori hasn’t shown any signs of plateau, what I mean is that from an outside-observer perspective, she’s climbed to some daunting peaks, but keeps finding the mountain to have higher ones. Tori has an array of these Competence skills. I could have chosen any number of them. She is a shining example of discipline. From Broadway, and acting, to homemaker and martial artist, when her kids became adults, and she’d done what she wanted to do as a teacher, she moved on. Tori had a line of clothing. She wrote a book one self-defense. She is now (as of this writing) prepping the fourth book in an acclaimed book series, has another novel in a different genre releasing in the Spring. It seems likely (cross all of your fingers) that we’ll be seeing her first book series morphing up to TV or cinema.

I’ve described the output of discipline, but not how discipline manifests with Tori.

Consider folks you know who dabble. We all have friends who “want” to do things. (Heck, which of us doesn’t have a list of things we might want to do? Learn a language, write a book, travel, take up a craft…). The difference between seeing a goal and achieving it, if it’s a difficult one like “write a book” or “appear on Broadway” is discipline. Talent doesn’t hurt, right, but talent isn’t enough.

When Tori decided that her next accomplishment after “phenomenal martial artist” would be “published novelist” she didn’t go plink at a computer in her free time. Tori researched tools, she interrogated people who had written novels. She hung out with people who were working on the same things. She set aside an aggressive writing schedule and made it her job. Tori wrote, got feedback, rewrote, got feedback. She networked. She worked with agents. She did the work of self-promotion that is utterly essential if you want to succeed as an author and not just have a publication or two that no one reads. But she’s collaborative. Tori promotes her friends. She gives away others’ books in her popular newsletter. She pumps up independent bookshops. Tori is well aware that winning means the people around her also winning.

Look at that last paragraph. Written by someone who likes to equate “discipline” with “capacity for misery.” But Tori, who surely must have a huge capacity to work through misery, doesn’t approach life that way. Tori organizes. She applies other Competence skills. So Tori’s writing includes tea, and beauty, and changing position to keep her physical state comfortable and her body engaged. So her writing can happen with endurance and peak mental state. Tori does the work to promote her books, but she does it by connecting with her beloved independent bookstores. Her first book (pre-Pandemic) included a nationwide tour of wonderful little stores where she had friends in the community. She mixed work with pleasure to the benefit of all. She promotes those little stores, and they promote her. She visits her friends, and her friends joyfully help, and love reading and sharing her books. Tori has no shame about “ease” and has no truck with misery for the sake of it. Who could possibly question her methods?

Tori is not one to leave anything to chance. In this description, if you’ve been reading the other articles, you’ll see those other Competence skills coming out. I picked discipline, because for Tori that is the engine. Her willingness to say “ok, I spent my childhood and young adulthood becoming the best singer, dancer, actor I could be. Now I’m going to be the best mother. Also the best martial artist. Ok, pivoting now…I’ve got books to write, and I’m going to make them the best they can be and send them into the world with the best possible chance for everyone to find and read them.” Resilience yes, collaboration, giving credit, sharing skills, building up others…all of that. But the trait today is that Competent people keep going. Where most folks might aim high and may reach some part of their goals. Where little-c competent people might reach one single very high peak if they’re lucky. Tori aims high, doesn’t give in to self-doubt, knows from experience that she can set a rigorous path, and keeps up the trek over years. When she’s aimed herself at a peak, she’ll keep those steps going day after day. Keeping on the path is discipline. But she chooses a beautiful path. She keeps hiking until she’s standing on a goal…looking up at the next one. Always with a gorgeous view in all directions.