“Don’t mind anyone else, you don’t make mistakes.”

It was during an unexpected water break in the middle of my four hour plus grading for my brown belt six years ago that my first Sensei leaned in and whispered to me. He was one of a half dozen black belts assisting in the grading that day, and while the comment may seem odd, I knew to what he was referring.

About twenty minutes earlier, the grading panel had been yelling out the names of different chokes, and not entirely certain I had heard correctly, I began applying a choke. From the corner of my eye, I noticed everyone one else was doing a different choke. Assuming I must have simply heard wrong, I adjusted to perform the same choke as everyone else. Turns out everyone else was wrong.

This story came to mind the other night after I had begun a warm-up during class. I started off with the warning, “Listen carefully to the instructions,” and I proceeded to rattle off a set of exercises.

I watched as everyone ran to a corner of the dojo and performed the lengthy set of exercises. Once finished, they all proceeded to run to the next corner, and duly perform the set again. This continued until everyone had hit all four corners of the dojo and ended in the centre of the mats in seiza (kneeling). While everyone regained their breath and wiped the sweat off their faces, I asked the now mostly exhausted class, “What did I say first?”

Someone began by listing the exercises, and I shook my head. Someone else piped up with run to the corner, but he was interrupted by a senior student, “Listen carefully.”

“Listen carefully,” I repeatedly loudly. “I started with listen carefully, then I said, run and touch each corner of the dojo, THEN do the following exercises,” and I trailed off as I saw understanding cross each of their faces, with shoulders slumping, heads shaking, and a number of sheepish grins.

“Now normally I would ask you to do it again properly, but in this case, you’ve learned your lesson, correct?” Satisfied with the numerous nods and yes and thank-you Sensei’s I received from the exhausted students, I gave them leave to get water. As the students walked away, I heard someone offer the group an apology, saying he was the first to act, and he led them astray. Others pleaded innocence by claiming they just followed the lead of others, but I heard one mutter, “I thought that’s what he wanted, but everyone else was doing it different, so I figured….”

Sometimes, when you’re doing it differently, it’s because you’re wrong. Sometimes you’re doing it differently because you’re the only one who’s right. As a society, we tend to fear being singled out for making mistakes. The dojo is a relatively safe place for making mistakes. It’s important to gain the confidence to be willing to stand against the group and be different and risk being singled out both in training and everyday life. Sometimes it means you’ll be corrected and learn something, and other times it means you’ll be held up as an example. But if you always blindly follow the herd the only thing you risk is being lead over a cliff.

Tags: dojo psychology