Preparing for your black belt test in a way that is sacred, extraordinary, and that brings about personal and community transformation.
The UBBT Project asks martial artists from around the world to come together, on-line, and LIVE an amazing black belt test for an entire year +.
This is a process that has the potential to challenge the participant physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.
On one level, the UBBT is completely about the participant –as anyone who goes through the training will be transformed in one way or another.
On another level, the UBBT is about coming together as a team, as a group, a community.
The team, collectively, has the potential to do what no single person could do alone. By being on this team, a member reaches beyond his or her school, style, association, town, state, and/or nation –to find like-minded people who become friends, colleagues, classmates, and sometimes, family.
On yet another level, the UBBT is an entity that is influencing the international martial arts community. Thousands of school owners, teachers, and martial artists have visited the UBBT’s website, read articles about the program, and/or seen film and interviews with team members.
The UBBT is influencing instructors and students around the globe. The program offers dozens of previously unexplored ways to make one’s martial arts and life “journey” more fulfilling, exciting, and fruitful.
Teachers going through the UBBT Project come out of it with an experiential lesson in innovative black belt testing procedures. Every graduate knows, first hand, what the process feels like –and what it does for the candidate.
Perhaps you don’t need reminding, but I do –so hang in here with me for a moment while I remind myself of the following.
Today is a BRAND NEW DAY!
A new beginning, a new start, and NOTHING is as important to the present and the future as how I apply myself from this moment on. The past is the past –the present and future, my happiness and progress, is not contingent on what has transpired, but on how I think and act from this moment on.
I am a martial artist, a life-long career martial arts teacher. I’m pursuing my DREAM not because it makes great economic sense, but because THIS is what hooked me. In the face of everything I might have done, I was drawn to the mat and the practice and the delight of being physical, of learning and teaching and practicing.
While other people practice the martial arts, but feel no pull or obligation to bring change to the martial arts world, I am a different animal. I feel a call from the handful of martial artists who have made a global impact on the martial arts –and sometimes the world, because of their ideas and actions.
Today, I begin (again) my “test” to be a 7th degree black belt in a way that sets the pace for every 7th degree black belt in the world –and of the future. I’m going to set the best example I can –so that any one of my brothers or sisters in the martial arts that follow me, in whatever part of the world they reside, might look to how I applied myself and find some sort of guidepost, inspiration, and/or ideas.
I want to be a 7th degree to the best of my ability. I want to be a 7th degree who has looked deeply at his flaws –at his strengths. I want to be a 7th degree that is, in accomplishment and contribution, equal to those people who I most admire in history. I believe that this kind of expectation is the right one to have for someone of my experience, rank, and position.
Today, I begin my “black belt test” again. My life is my test.
Getting a Grasp on How to Practice Mastery is One of the Best Things you Can Do for Your Martial Arts School
Call me old fashioned, but I still believe the best thing a martial arts teacher can do for his or her business is to BE the best darned martial artist he or she can be.
And note: I'm not talking about "best in your school or town good," "tournament champion good," "ring good," or get nominated to the "Universal Black Belt Grand Canyon Hall of Fame good." I'm talking about "transcend the martial arts good." I'm talking about the kind of martial artist that Rosa Parks would give up her bus seat for; the kind of martial artist that garners grants from groups that give money to people doing amazing work in the world.
I'm talking about the kind of martial artist that doesn't let anger and hatred or other destructive kinds of thinking invade and/or infect his or her life; the kind of black belt who truly understands the -real -enemy.
Call me unrealistic, but I think all of this damned torturous training is supposed to be for something that's more important than getting fit, earning belts, and winning medals. Oh, and it's not to learn how to upgrade my students to the Grand Vital World-Famous Master's Leadrship Club, either. I haven't studied this long and hard to see it boiled down to some sales pitch for a long term course, franchise, new Corvette payment, or Rolex. Please!
I think that, if properly taught and/or directed, the serious practitioner of the martial arts ought to start making a connection between state of mind and outcome, between fear and action, between clarity and confusion, and between compassion and happiness.
It's like the Ring, Only BIGGER.
For those of you who were competitors, do you remember the clarity that a 3-minute performance provided you with?
Whether it was a fight or a form, you trained HARD for that 3 minutes (and maybe a few others). You focused on that little bit of time and space and you fired it up!
Man, if life were only that small, only that simple, only that easy.
The ring gives you this small place to focus on; the rules provide you with clear boundaries and objectives. But the POINT of the game was not just to win -it was to show you, in a very practical way, how focus, concentration, goal-setting, effort, and clarity could give you power and purpose. You were supposed to learn how to plan, engage, and execute.
TheBIG LESSON should have been about taking that learning experience and making the "ring" bigger -like as big as your family, as big as your career, as big as your circle of influence, as big as your community, as big as the world, as big as your ability to make a difference.
In the ring you focus on the task at hand. The audience doesn't distract you. The advertisements hanging on the bleacher's railings don't call to you; the negative energy from your opponent and his or her helpers don't detour you.
So what's the connection between the ring and mastery?
It's in defining what you want. What do you want to accomplish? What is your personal definition of mastery? How does it translate to your "daily training?" And are you smart enough, resourceful enough, creative enough, focused enough, compassionate enough, and disciplined enough to expand the ring to represent the remainder of your finite period of time left here on the planet?
The pursuit of mastery, relevant to your potential, is -I believe -the root system of the tree that bears the fruit that sustains your school and -very likely --your life.
If you don't focus on mastery -then you ignore the roots and spend an inordinate about of time on that which is visible, yes? If a tree doesn't have deep roots, what happens to it in the first big storm?
Mastery is about controlling anger, practicing detachment from illusion, expanding one's empathy and compassion for others. It's about making contribution (adding to, not taking away from); it's about awareness; it's about self-control and respect and courage to be different when you must -and the same when it's time to be the same. I also believe mastery is connected to simplicity.
I really don't know everything -if much - about mastery -but I recognize the power that the study and practice of things that bring about clarity and awareness and global consciousness brings to me. I can HEAR the words of masters -and I believe they are talking about a kind of thinking and clarity that I have, on more than one occasion, experienced as a practitioner of the martial arts. And everything in my life keeps pointing to the idea of mastery -the way everything used to, when I was younger, point to the mat and the competitive arena.
Getting a grasp on what mastery is, to you -and to masters -and the idea of beginning to PRACTICE mastery, on a day-to-day basis, is I believe, one of the best things you can do for your school, for your students, and for yourself.
My work with The Ultimate Black Belt Test -and the association, The New Way Network-is dedicated to exploring the idea of mastery for the individual and as a collective force for good, for clarity, and more contribution and meaning.
A sense of mission, beyond profit, beyond image, beyond “agenda,” and beyond anything but a call to duty is, I believe, THE factor to search for if you want to work in a martial arts school and feel like you’re doing something important –and for the world.
A child is not raised by occasional coaching or instruction; a child is not raised by the occasional direction and attention. A child is raised and educated daily, hourly, and by the minute. A wise parent won’t wait to give life-lessons and direction to his or her child once a month, as it’s all too important to wait, it’s too important to put off.
Work for the world, work that connects you to something more than a brand name, a corporation, some elite group of people, or the almighty dollar, shouldn’t be put off either. You don’t wait until you’re wealthy or retired or semi-retired or until the kids leave home or until the truck’s paid off to do the work that feeds your soul and the souls of those around you. It’s something you do in small, incremental, weekly, daily, and hourly pieces.
To be fueled by a purpose beyond profit motive is a kind of freedom everyone should enjoy, but it is sometimes looked down upon by people stuck in the money-mode like an infant stuck in some short, but important stage of brain development. We all know that money doesn’t buy happiness. We all know that we can’t take it with us. We all, in the end, would be better off having lived a life of service to others, a life rich in meaning and contribution, and full of love and compassion and kindness.
I am, in the end, a business consultant and I’m telling you that it’s a sense of mission, deep and meaningful, that is –in my opinion –the very thing that makes you and your business more important and valuable. If you take a partner in marriage because he or she has an inheritance that you would like to get your hands on, well...you’re destined to be in –and cause no small amount of –pain. Likewise, if you’re in your school and your primary focus is on your income and maximizing your profits, you’re headed for an empty kind of accomplishment.
Finances have their role in your life, there’s no avoiding it; but don’t lose sight of the kind of thinking and action that makes life worth living.
Find your mission and you may very well have the best money-making tool you could hope to find.
If you don’t know how to find your mission, don’t despair; a lot of us don’t know how to find our sense of mission because we haven’t been hanging out with people who “live” mission. If you’ve known somebody who has, then you already know what I’m talking about. For those who could use some “mission coaching,” look, for example, to people like the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize or the MacArthur Fellowship (called the “genius grant”).
Here’s a list of the MacArthur Fellowship’s 2007 recipients:
(By the way: Why isn’t there, in the history of the MacArthur Fellowship, a grant that’s gone to a martial arts teacher?)
Go to Borders or any bookstore and you’ll find shelves of books about people who are making positive change in the world.
Be warned and be aware: Just like junk food is readily available at just about every turn, so is “junk influence.” Turn on just about any radio station, any TV channel, and go to any movie –and you might find yourself bombarded by triviality, by shallowness, by “buy this to be happy” messages, and endless discussions about the habits and behaviors of blond actresses and singers or ex-football and soccer players. It’s mind-numbing.
Spend a year of your life immersed in the study of people with a sense of heroic and purposeful mission –and you could very well come out of it transformed and empowered. Being an empowered person with a sense of mission --is, in my opinion, a fine form of “mastery,” and a very real form of “self-defense” for today’s world.
It’s also the right way to “do” our kind of business.
Intelligent Curriculum is the term I use to express a method about how to design one’s martial arts school curriculum in a way that supports the education the teacher is seeking to provide the student.
I see the curriculum in most martial arts schools as more of an outline than a complete work. Most schools have a curriculum that is like a novel yet to be “fleshed out.”
To be intelligent, a school’s curriculum should not be a list of techniques and requirements written in a handbook or on a sheet of paper; with modern technology a school’s curriculum should shine, it should sing out and inform, inspire, and direct.
Why do we do these particular techniques? Where does this come from? Why has this requirement changed? Is there anything I should know that’s not written specifically in the curriculum? Is there room for changes or adjustments in the curriculum if I have some challenge that keeps me from doing a particular technique? What is this supposed to look like?
I’m looking for a few schools who would like to develop an “Intelligent Curriculum” model. I am certain that this idea will revolutionize the entire martial arts world’s approach to testing curriculum and requirements. Contact me at tomcallos at g mail dot com.
A Little More On Curriculum
A martial arts school’s curriculum is meant to bring a student to a certain level of skill and competency. What that level is, in most cases, is entirely up to the Master Teacher of the school.
As the teacher grows, evolves, and ages as a martial artist and a human being, his or her curriculum changes. At some point in almost every teacher’s career, his or her classes are pedal-to-the-metal competitive training sessions where, for the most part, only the strong survive. Somewhere along the line, most teachers wake up to the fact that they are losing some of (or MANY of) the students that probably need martial arts training the most.
The smart teacher adjusts the training to fit the student. Master Teacher and martial arts legend Jhoon Rhee expressed the idea perfectly when he said, “It is better to change your students through a peaceful evolution –than it is to attempt it by violent revolution.”
It’s an intelligent teacher that knows how to teach students in a way that doesn’t chase them off –and instead brings about a peaceful evolution of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transformation.
I’m writing this to talk to you about how to have a healthy, successful, and profitable martial arts school, in today’s world, and in a way that makes a DIFFERENCE in the world. And before I really get started, let me tell you that I’m not talking about the kind of success or profitability you might see in Forbes, Worth, or WSJ Magazines. I’m not talking about something out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
The kind of success I’m suggesting is grounded in global consciousness. It is more spiritual than it is material. The measure of wealth, success, and profitability I’m thinking about won’t fund the endless consumption of disposable things. It won’t have you driving a car that costs as much as a year’s worth of food for an entire village of people in Southeast Asia. It isn’t the kind of success that has every amenity you can dream up and acquire at your fingertips. It won’t fund $100 cigars or $20,000 watches or $1000 purses or $5000 suits or 5-million dollar McMansions.
In my world –and maybe in your world too –these things are an embarrassment. They are personal neon signs of narcissism, selfishness, and ignorance. They are the result of a kind of corporate consumer-brain-washing and snow job that convinces the unaware that the label, insignia, and hood ornament is a personification of success, intelligence, and style.
The kind of success and profitability I’m pointing to is about quality time with people you love. It is about enjoying the sound of the river as you soak your feet in it. It is in the slow preparation of a dinner, the sound of your child reading aloud, and the feeling of knowing you don’t NEED or WANT anything but what you already have.
With all of THAT being said, I’ll now begin:
I would like to suggest that you make your black belt test mean MORE than it means today.
I am not suggesting that you make your test a fierce gauntlet that weeds out the weak or an Ironman-like endurance event that breaks people down; I’m suggesting that the journey one goes on to become a black belt might be interwoven to activities that expand one’s ability to feel empathy and compassion for others, societal awareness and involvement and, perhaps, a more useful inner awareness.
I am suggesting that we (martial arts teachers) take a closer look at the idea of “self-defense” –and that a new definition ought to include more than defense from physical attack. We should train our students to recognize the damage and pain caused by self-centered living. We should link conspicuous consumption to self-defense. We should consider attitude and outlook as important as middle block and palm strike.
The way to make your black belt test (and all your testing) mean more, is to make your own job description mean more. If you could make the decision that BEING a master teacher of the martial arts means FAR MORE than teaching people combat –and if you lived this idea, you would then teach from an entirely new place.
Being a master teacher means LOOKING DEEPLY at conflict; at ego; at wants and needs; at community involvement; and at one’s own beliefs and habits. If you/we made BEING a master teacher mean MORE, we would then teach, BY EXAMPLE, something that is far more important that profit, than punching, than combat, than competition, than style and method and system.
Like a Round Kick to the Head
Getting kicked in the head is, well...a real eye-opening experience. It’s not one you soon forget. It can be, however, an excellent teaching tool. Yes, one solid kick to the head can teach someone exactly how much they don’t want THAT to happen again.
I have, on a number of occasions, used a kick to the head as a teaching tool. It’s not one I use often –and it might not be the “sharpest” tool in my toolbox, but let me tell you, sometimes it’s the magic key for quickly changing one’s behavior.
Changing your own habits, living a simple life, getting your own head together by looking deeply at how you can make a difference for others –and in the world; well, for your students and almost everyone in your sphere of influence, it can affect them like a kick in the head. It’s not in what you say, think, or write –it comes in what you DO.
To run a successful and profitable martial arts school you must look deeply at your own center, at what is driving you, and why. If you could actually BECOME A MASTER, a real, honest-to-goodness MASTER, then all the accoutrements of wealth won’t mean much to you anyway. Making a difference, living with compassion, living simply and giving to others, and enjoying today with whatever it is you have been fortunate enough to be given, I believe those are the concepts embraced in authentic mastery.
Under those guidelines, we should begin to run our schools and classes with a new vigor and energy. I believe that by focusing on these ideas rather than all of the boxed-up marketing junk-mail that some school owners have been convinced is the key to a school’s success, will eventually bring us a kind of success we hadn’t anticipated.
Tom Callos is a writer and consultant to the martial arts industry. He is also the founder of The Ultimate Black Belt Test (www.ubbt.squarespace.com) and the association known as The New Way Network (www.thenewwaynetwork.com). You may see his full bio, portfolio of work, and press on his website: www.ubbt.squarespace.com.
In this ongoing blog, Tom's delivers and stores his messages to the UBBT and The New Way Network.
The UBBT Project asks martial artists from around the world to come together, on-line, and LIVE an amazing black belt test for an entire year +. 
The UBBT Project asks martial artists from around the world to come together, on-line, and LIVE an amazing black belt test for an entire year +. 
The team, collectively, has the potential to do what no single person could do alone. By being on this team, a member reaches beyond his or her school, style, association, town, state, and/or nation –to find like-minded people who become friends, colleagues, classmates, and sometimes, family.
