満は損を招く
Man wa son wo maneku
Arrogance leads to downfall. - Proverb
The best martial artists cultivate a Zero-based mindset. It is often thought that nurumayu (微温湯) or “complacency” is the martial artists greatest opponent but the true villain is kyoman (驕慢) or “arrogance.” Interestingly, the word kyoman is made up of the two kanji for “pride” and “laziness.” Understanding this, martial artists know that arrogance leads to complacency and complacency ushers in defeat. Sometimes, this arrogance is subtle and not always overt but is just something that unknowingly creeps in over time. This possibly happens because of the unspoken fact that most martial artists will never have to use the skills that they cultivate. Therefore, a martial artist assiduously trains for an inevitability that will most likely never happen. Sometimes, once we realize that the inevitable is never going to happen, we unknowingly contract subtle arrogance. Subtle arrogance is not really an overt arrogance which is focused on being better than others but rather an arrogance that creates complacency because we stop improving ourselves because we become used to thinking that we are “so far ahead” of everyone else. Realizing that this subtle arrogance could happen, the good martial artist creates constructs to circumvent it. One strategy is to have a Zero-based mindset. A Zero-based mindset is the habit of waking up every day thinking that we are at zero and must re-build ourselves regardless of what we achieved in the past. In Buddhism, this could be known as shoshin (初心) or “the beginner’s mindset.” Regardless of what we call it, this mindset is a forced humility of sorts where we pretend to be starting at nothing. This mentality keeps us hungry and helps to enable us to put in the work. The problem with a Zero-based mindset is that it can come from a dark place because the easiest way to create this mindset is to think that we have to work because we are “loser” with a victim based mentality. Thinking you are a loser is problematic because it can become habit forming and detrimental over time. Martial artists aren’t victims and so everything has to be done from a place of positivity where curiosity and wonderment are paramount. With this curious mindset we think, “I wonder how far I can go?” This enables us to focus more on starting from zero than being zero. In Japanese, ryoutounoinoko (遼東の豕) means “to take pride in something mundane” but the literal translation is “to be so ignorant of the outside world that we think that we are one-in-a-million when we really are more like one-in-five.” That’s the rub, we have to think that we are one-in-a-million so that we can take pride in the everyday mundaneness of continuous training for an inevitability which may never come. In the martial arts, arrogance is the presumption that once we achieve a certain level and are good that we will always be good and we can agura wo kaku (胡座をかく) or “rest on our laurels.” To rest on our laurels is “to be so satisfied with what one has already achieved that one makes no further effort.” Martial artists never rest on their laurels and that’s why the best martial artists cultivate a Zero-based mindset.
Today’s goal: William Pollard said, “The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”
Watch this short video of Jocko Willink talking about Zero mindset