Philosophy
For a lifetime of learning.
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I heard an interview recently with Max Holloway, former UFC Featherweight champion, where he talked about having a white belt mentality. The color of belts represents in various martial arts the skill level of a fighter, for example in karate and jiu-jitsu. White belt is the first, beginner belt and the idea is that at this point you’re ready and willing to learn from mistakes and others to obtain new skills and techniques. Having this kind of mentality at later stages is known as the white belt mentality.
It’s easy to see why the white belt mentality could be a huge factor in the improvement and creation of great martial artists because of the sports breadth of different techniques. As opposed to sports like boxing, MMA requires skills when it comes to striking, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and other areas which makes it impossible to perfect everything; there’s always room for improvement. But I think this mentality can easily be transferred to practically anything in life and I’m going to explain why this is so important.
I’ll start at the other end, why is it bad not to have a white belt mentality? It’s because you’re not willing to change. Now if you do something clearly wrong then most people are willing to change but what if what you do works “kind of well”? Some people…