Lesson From an Eight-Year-Old Sensei

You don’t need to be a black belt to be a sensei. You don’t even need to know karate. The fact is everyone we meet can be a teacher. For more on that, check out, “The World Is Your Dojo.”

To prove my point, let me tell you about a lesson I just learned from an eight-year-old sensei named Jason.

Jason was a happy karate student. He would always smile his way through every warm-up and drill. Even under the pressure of sparring and grappling, Jason never whined or gave up. He just smiled. Which is a lesson all by itself–

To do your best work, approach it with joy.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to tell you about Jason’s first tournament.

Jason signed up to compete at the last minute, not worried about winning or losing. He just thought it would be fun. But the tournament was more intense than he expected. Jason came face-to-face with competitors who did care about winning or losing. They trained. They prepared. And they were fierce.

Jason was overwhelmed. When the punching and kicking were over, he had won nothing. He was crushed.

Licking his wounds, Jason sat with his parents and cried. They offered love and support, but it didn’t matter. His smile was gone.

As a teacher, I don’t like to see students crying, even though I know sometimes tears are the best teachers. That night, I left the tournament feeling his pain and hoping for the best. And that’s exactly what I got.

The very next day, I walked into the dojo and there was Jason. Smiling.

I saw his father sitting in the lobby. He told me that after the tournament, Jason continued to cry on and off for the rest of the day. He and his wife had never seen so many tears from their son. He even cried himself to sleep.

I could fill in the rest–Jason wanted to quit, but mom and dad made him get back on the horse. I congratulated the father for teaching his son such a powerful lesson. But that’s not what happened!

It turned out that Jason asked to return to karate on his own. That’s right. Less than 24 hours from the greatest meltdown of his life, Jason wanted to get back on the mats and try again. If you had bet against this young man overcoming his pain, you would have lost.

After class, I asked Jason about the tournament. He smiled as he spoke about wanting to get better. He realized that even without a trophy, he was still ahead of everyone who didn’t show up. At least he tried. With that, he sipped a cup of water and picked up his bag to go home.

How cool is that? Jason turned defeat into triumph. At the age of eight, he has already learned a lesson that many grown-ups still haven’t learned–

The only way to win is to keep showing up.

So, if you find yourself hurt, defeated, or distraught, please remember Sensei Jason. Go have your cry if you need to, but then get back in the game and start working to make things better.

Show up!