Later this month, short of a cataclysmic disaster, my current gym will be holding another round of promotions. For some, this will likely be a humdrum affair, like that one drunk uncle who has been to too many weddings and could care less about who is having the happiest day of their life. For others, this would be mostly a moment of curiosity, because they have not yet been indoctrinated in the WaYs of ThE jiU JitSu.
When I think about promotions, I feel weak in the knees and I get a rising sense of anxiety in my throat. Ceremonies recognizing any sort of achievement don’t have a good place in my personal history. I didn’t win any award until 7th grade, and when I did, let’s just say that more than one person in my family was surprised. And after a few years’ drought, I got another award for most improved in chemistry, which is easy to do if you had a 30+ point differential between your first and last exam score. In a world where standing out and being the best was mostly a survival strategy to get noticed by teachers and to alleviate parental anxiety, you can see why any sort of leveling up ceremony would give me fits.
Most of you reading this essay know the standard practice for jiu jitsu promotions. If you don’t, the quirkiest part about them is that there is no standard way of promoting someone. Most schools still do it the old-fashioned way, which is by surprise and without any prior announcement. A promotion could come at the end of a random Thursday class, at a camp by the black belt hosts in some far off winter oasis in Europe, on the podium after a major tournament win, or, as one of my mentors experienced, during a beginners’ class with about 5 people in attendance for her brown belt level up. Some people get promoted after they pass a test, which is more controversial than you’d think in jiu jitsu.
At any rate, the common thread behind all of these promotions is that someone inevitably experiences a bout of jealousy because they weren’t promoted. Actually, it’s not only jealousy — but also depression, anger, sadness, annoyance, disappointment.
Talking about these feelings are difficult to begin with, but talking about them to a jiu jitsu crowd is even more taboo. People in jiu jitsu simply don’t like to admit that they feel bad about feeling bad. I get it — no one wants to be labeled as that person who can’t only feel happy for the person who leveled up.
Over the years I’ve learned a few things about myself by delving into my psychology whenever I get that “funny feeling” about someone getting promoted, but I do not. I know this because as a blue belt, I’m in that general population that’s the most likely to become discouraged, get squeezed by white belts, and feel like I’ve regressed in my technique, not grown in it.
Whenever I feel funny about someone else’s achievement, I have learned to instantly recognize one crucial fact: that I am making it about myself. It’s important to admit that whatever emotion you’re feeling is a result of how your brain is processing the external stimuli, and that the person in the front of the room is not actually physically causing you any pain in the moment that they are being recognized. Why? Because if you’re to figure out that emotion, it’s important to be brave enough to confront the source of it: yourself.
There are a myriad of causes about why I might feel not-so-good if I get passed up for a promotion, but I find that it usually boils down to unrealistic expectations — about myself, the person getting promoted, or the school itself.
I don’t know if this is a part of getting older, but lately I’ve realized that expectations aren’t really useful in terms of increasing the quality of life. Expectations generally lead to let-downs, while aspirations, on the other hand, lead to inspiration. I’ve come to understand that if I go into a situation expecting to receive something good, then I’m inherently putting judgment on the situation, and that judgment is likely not going to feel satisfied.
This isn’t about swapping positive expectations for a negative one, or erasing expectations altogether — but simply recognizing their limited value whenever they do arise. To me, whenever I find myself expecting something, I see it as assuming that the way things are going to turn out are already pre-ordained. It’s like my brain is trying to create certainty in an attempt to protect myself from the unknown. However, if I accept that there are things unknown, and instead focus on what I want to aspire to, then what’s certain for myself is what I want, and how I want to get it.
The second biggest source of jealousy for me actually has a foundation of shame to it. Shame is a loaded term, but for the context here, you can consider it to be a feeling associated with blaming yourself for something that you haven’t done. Now some toxic coaches might have unrealistic requirements before someone is promoted or may be holding you back due to spite, but I think that overall for a scrupulous coach with good standards, it really comes down to the fact that the student has not yet reached a certain standard appropriate for them.
My epiphany came when I started asking myself not only what that person had done to deserve the new rank, but also, what I could do differently myself to improve and get better. I had to turn the spotlight on myself and be brutally honest about things that I didn’t want to be honest about.
Was I consistent in classes? Was I consistent, but still doing the same things over and over again?
Did I challenge myself in the right ways to develop skill, or was I challenging myself to look good on social media and in front of my instructors?
It may still be true that the promotion wouldn’t come even if I had done all of the right things. Toxic schools are out there that do that. But, I think, these days, when someone gets to the next rank and I see shiny pictures, I’m less afraid to use that as an opportunity to audit myself. Not to be hard on myself or to beat myself up over my supposed bad or wrong choices — but, a chance to say, okay, should I be doing something differently, and if so, how do I make it happen?
I remember when I managed to place on the podium for a somewhat major tournament. I’m not embarassed to mention that I expected that I would get a stripe for my efforts. That did not happen. Back then, instead of going back to the drawing board and focusing on what more I needed to develop, I just told myself that it was because the tournament win wasn’t good or prestigious enough. I kept on entering into more tournaments in an effort to get noticed by my instructor, but I never did.
Most importantly, I don’t think I got any better during that time, because I was chasing the wrong thing.
If I had thought about things differently then, I would have noticed sooner that my guard was garbage; that I didn’t know any off-balancing principles; that I didn’t do a shred of studying outside of class; and that I wanted to brute-force my way through learning through mat-time alone, instead of a systematic approach of experimentation and reflection. I would have not given up on ranking up as a goal, but I would have definitely added the more productive, lower level goals of improving retention, getting sweeps, learning to organize my jiu jitsu thoughts on paper. In fact, every time I start to feel crappy about someone getting promoted, I focus on what I still need to work on to get better. I take care of myself and really dig deep into transforming myself, instead of lamenting at the transformation of others.
That funny feeling in you might never go away, but you shouldn’t be afraid to admit it (at least to yourself) that you feel this way. It’s a normal part of maturing as a martial artist, to recognize both your own strengths and weaknesses and to make a realistic assessment of the situation at hand.
Talking about these feelings helps reveal the psychology of how we operate and our underlying habits and patterns of our thinking and doing. If jiu jitsu is to really make you a better person, then it is especially the case that difficult emotions can serve as a jumping off point for a deep dive into what we are doing that is holding us back, both on and off the mats.