What it means to be a Whitebelt

In our lives, we will be a Whitebelt many times. From beginning a new sport, to starting a family, and yes, to actually training Jiu Jitsu—we must all face being a beginner. Becoming a Whitebelt symbolizes beginning the journey to mastery. However there are some common threads that we’ll all experience: You’ll get beat—a lot. You’ll suffer from strange pains in areas you never really knew existed. You’ll realize there’s an entire world of balance, emotions, and words that you were wholly unaware of right before diving in. This applies to almost any beginning! The first time you try to ride a bike, you usually get into a fight with gravity—and lose. On your first job, you probably went home with some strange aches or emotions that you didn’t notice before. When you first get married, start a family, or train Jiu Jitsu you may feel this sense of losing balance—sometimes metaphorically, and sometimes literally!

In all these situations, you are a Whitebelt. You’re new. Things are different. The world isn’t as it seemed just moments before entering your new dichotomy. In this novel state of beginner-ness you have some advantages that you should take be aware of.

When beginning your journey, recognize and cultivate an innate curiosity. Rather than simply charging for the finish line as quickly as possible. Start by asking why. A thousand steps in the wrong direction is worse than standing still. This innate curiosity tends to be easier for beginners because they have no context. We Whitebelts simply lack the hours, days, months, and years of training that make such answers obvious to the Master. In the silence of complete ineptitude, there lies a strength: questions. Be sure to question quickly, often, and without fear of judgement. Question with the intent to understand.

A great experience while being a Whitebelt is the learning that comes so easily and so fast. In most endeavors, the learning curve at the beginning is exponential. Every new bit of information can make a difference in how you process and approach a problem. As you get wiser and more experienced, the problems get harder and incidentally the number of people who have seen or solved the problems you’re facing will be much smaller. It’ll be harder to get useful feedback. In this way, enjoy being a Whitebelt; your problems will be easier to solve at first! Conversely, if you start running into problems that take more effort, more reps, or more analysis—congratulations—you’re on the path to mastery! It’s not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever was, right?

Finally, perhaps my favorite part of being a Whitebelt—little to no expectations. When you’re first setting out on your grand adventure to learn chess, play soccer, be a great parent, or learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, no one expects you to come out swinging (and winning). In this position, you have an opportunity to absorb your early failures quickly and easily all while leveraging your mentors to learn from them. This is a great position to be in because you can leave the emotional baggage of performance at the door and simply focus on improving. The simple task of being better becomes much more difficult when your emotions are wrapped around the outcome of your efforts. Divorce the emotions from the results and you can focus purely on improving! As a Whitebelt, this separation should be much easier. Take care that you do not lose this attitude as you progress!

Being a Whitebelt is a beautiful, though sometimes frustrating, part of the journey to mastery. In life, we will be made a Whitebelt through circumstance whether we like it or not. Embracing the “Gift of Beginning” by focusing on the advantages available to us, is much more useful than fighting the fact that we’re beginners. In the end, moving on from Whitebelt is usually a combination of partial mastery and attitude. The attitude is most controllable facet of mastery we possess.

Until next time fellow Whitebelts,

Osss 🤙🏻