How Taekwondo Teaches Us Patience

November 18, 2021

Patience, persistence and perspiration make

an unbeatable combination for success.

Napoleon Hill

Do you find yourself or your kids giving up too quickly on things that take time to achieve?

Most of us have ideas of things we want to do or be some time in our life, the only thing holding us back is the time it takes to achieve them.

Successful people set themselves apart from others by patiently focusing on their goal and overcoming any obstacle in their way until they reach it. They accept that they’ve chosen a long-term goal and know they will continue to the end, even if it’s a difficult journey.

That kind of patience isn’t something we can buy and it’s a tough thing to learn. Parents may make their kids wait for things sometimes, but generally we aren’t shown or taught how to be patient. It’s more like something we experience – a self-taught discipline.

Taekwondo is a fun way to experience being patient as you strive towards a long-term goal. The short-term rewards (belt gradings) keep us on track and motivated, a little like a regular pat on the back for trying hard.

When we take it seriously, accepting that it will have challenges, martial art training can open new doors for us, physically and mentally.

Techniques that look out of our league can be mastered with patience and practise. That sounds simple, but when you’re feeling frustrated and despondent it’s hard to control your emotions to try again and again. It’s much easier to quit so you don’t have to face the challenge.

Taekwondo is designed to deliberately give you those testing times. Pushing through them is how you gain resilience and become a strong Black Belt. If it was an easy journey without the challenges, we wouldn’t become Black Belts, we’d just be naturally gifted athletes.

So, while Taekwondo is all about technical expertise, in the end it’s not the actual techniques that matter, it’s the experience of patiently learning, persisting to overcome the challenges and finally achieving success that delivers the real reward.

“Our patience will achieve more than our force.” Edmund Burke

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