Who is coaching your child?

Each of us has a mentor that analyses our performance and constantly gives us feedback on how we are doing, what we have done right, wrong and could improve on, who consoles us in difficult times and who gives us the power to step up and conquer challenges, overcome hardship and have strong self-discipline to persevere through the routine. 

This mentor does not come in the form of a Martial Arts instructor, our parents, or a school teacher. It’s the inner critic, the voice inside our heads, essentially it’s “us”. When no one is around, self-talk exists and is a powerful positive or negative force in our lives to inspire us. 

Without a well trained inner voice or “inner critic” who is training your child when no one else is around? 

For many people, unfortunately, this can be a negative voice that can drown out any positivity, kill inspiration and drive and for most that is the case, it’s only natural to question ourselves. This becomes more evident in years of difficult transition like adolescence. 

I’ve always been fascinated and totally inspired by survival stories from Ernest Shackleton’s Survival abandoned for 105 days in the Antarctic, to the stories of the Chilean Miners trapped after a rock fall 23000 feet underground for 69 days. These stories depict the incredible resilience of individuals in absolutely devastating and hopeless conditions. In almost every case the survival in these amazing stories is due to a powerful inner voice that refused to give up, that constantly pushed forward, true grit and perseverance. 

In our Warrior Method, we place a significant amount of training time to develop a positive, powerful inner critic/inner voice. Whether a student stays with us for 1 month or 10 years our goal is to have a hugely positive impact on their lives and impart some of our teachings to stay with them for life. I believe this to be one of the most important lesson we can deliver in our classes which is why we place such significance on it during class. 

From regular “Matt Chats” where instructors talk with students about spotting their inner voice and correcting its course to teaching students to challenge the “Negative” inner voice, which we find to be filled with unreasonable doubt. A positive inner voice is developed through retraining students to believe the impossible is merely opinion and focusing on their self-esteem and confidence through challenges, through breaking through their comfort zones (More on this in the Challenge Section of the Warrior Method Book). 

Perseverance is highly rewarded in our Warrior Method and not necessarily outcome, to reinforce a positive mindset we must reward perseverance and not purely outcome. This encourages students to push on through difficult times and develop a mindset that provides them with hope and is happy to be pushed. 

We call this “The Black Belt Mindset”.