📺 Watch the video ”Does Martial Arts Build Character or Ego.”
Hi, everyone Aldin here today. I wanted to look at a point of asking the question: Does martial arts build character or does it grow my ego?
I’ve been looking at that question from the following perspective:
If I look back in my childhood and my teenage years, I have been primarily doing martial arts and picking the certain martial arts that I’m doing, like Tae kwon Do, Jeet Kune Do, Thai Boxing based on others’ opinions.
Choosing the Training Based on Other’s Opinions
I was doing martial arts based on what my friends were doing. They were in Muay Thai and telling me it’s a great martial art. They would say Muay Thau is ”a martial art for fighters. It’s a great way to become strong, and is mainly THE martial art.”
So I basically picked my martial arts, the way I train, and what I train based on the starting point of pleasing other people. I was mainly growing my mind – my not-self instead of using the martial arts to grow who I am. I neglected developing a deeper and better understanding of myself. As well as my mind, and my body. I neglected enhancing my relationship, to myself, to my world, and life around me.
Therefore, I’ve been looking at the questions:
- Does my martial arts grow me, or does it grow my ego?
- Can martial arts help me grow as a person, and liberate me as a person, as the individual in the way I express myself, and experience myself in my body, and in how I experience my daily life?
- Does the way I train, and do martial arts grow, enhance and strengthen the personalities/mind characters that I’ve established in my mind that server like a suit that I step into of “Yeah, I am a martial artist/Muay Thau fights” character or personality? Instead of growing such personalities in my mind it should grow me as a person/being.
Realign Your Starting Point in Martial Arts to Build Character
When I asked myself those questions I realized the self is not in there.
It’s important to me to continually asking myself “Does my martial art grow me, benefit me as the individual that I am? Or does it just grow the personalities that I’ve created in my mind?” Especially when I doubt myself, I must ask this. It helps me realign my starting point so martial arts benefits me and not my ego, and not-self.
