Here’s a simple question.

Do you want to look good or be good?

Unfortunately, too many people want the former and are not willing to do what it takes to be the latter.

What they fail to consider is that to be good you have to first be willing to be and look bad.

In the classic Japanese film, The Seven Samurai, by renown director Akira Kurosawa, there is a scene which highlights the difference.

The samurai, Kyūzō (久蔵) is a stern-faced skilled bladesman who travels the land testing himself against other warriors. In this scene, he faces a less-skilled but headstrong opponent.

Kyūzō, his name literally means explosion, is not seeking to look good, he is on a path of growth and development as a warrior. But not his opponent, he is full of vanity, ego, and pride, needing to prove how good he is in front of the crowd…

Years ago I witnessed something similar.

When I first began training in Hapkido, under GM Bong Soo Han, there were two senior students whom I really admired. They were great guys often assisting the junior students to learn their techniques, very talented and intelligent, and worked very hard developing their skills.

But there was one subtle difference.

One of them was a huge fan of martial arts movies, he loved the flashy moves and kicks of martial artists like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li . He was very flexible and could do some of the amazing kicks of Van Damme like the above-the-head multiple roundhouse kicks and jumping spinning kicks.

The other guy was in some ways, more of a bull, focusing on what was effective, regardless of how good he looked. When sparring, if a technique didn’t stop him in his tracks, he would keep on charging forward.

I remember the first time I saw these two guys go up against one another on the mat, stylistically they couldn’t be more different, and energetically they were about even.

It was fun to watch, the one guy with the flashy kicks would kick the other guy, but because he had trained so hard to do multiple kicks, to look good, no individual kick was actually done with enough force and follow through to be truly effective.

While the other guy would constantly get kicked, because they didn’t “stop” him, he would charge through and strike his opponent hard enough to send him down to the ground.

It was a great lesson for both of them, if the kicker had focused more on following through on his kicks, his quicker speed and longer reach would have ended the fight more easily.

For the bull, while he was effective at not letting the strikes stop him to then counter and strike back, he was too willing to take hits to get in, with a stronger opponent, that could have been his own downfall. He may have won that day but there were still lessons he needed to learn.

To Be Good, You First Need to Be Bad

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

— Jim Rohn

Too many people don’t want to be embarrassed.

Ego, fear, and doubt kick in and it’s easier to turn away rather than lean into it.

But it’s not your fault…

One reason why we don’t like looking bad is that at some point in our lives, somebody said something negative to us when we were trying something new and we took it on.

Think about it.

Watch a new baby trying to walk for the first time. The baby sees everybody around him walking and he tries to copy what everybody else is doing.

He gets up, falls, and tries to get up again. At some point, after many falls, the baby is standing and tentatively tries to take his first step, which leads to a new set of falling.

Until at some point, he’s walking.

And all during this time, the people around the baby are encouraging him. And when he takes his first step, everybody is smiling, laughing, and clapping; making him want to try to do it more.

Now reverse the scenario, what if this little baby was in a less healthy environment and every time he tried something, he was yelled at, scolded, and made to feel foolish. How much do you think that baby would try to do something challenging?

Not so much.

It’s unfortunate, that for many of us, we have that experience in our lives. Somebody, somewhere, at some time, made some ridiculing remarks when we felt vulnerable and we took it on to ourselves.

That’s one reason why we want to look good, to show them they were wrong.

But to do that, you need to overcome the inner critic, which is nothing more than the repeated words from someone in your past, and be willing to look bad for a little while.

The Secret to Looking Good While Being Bad

Did you know that if you focus on just improving by 1% each and every day, if you do that for a year, you will be 37 times better?

Let me put that into a little context, pull-ups are a hard exercise, most people struggle to do one, let alone a set of 10. But let’s say you can do 1 pull-up, if you focus on improving 1% every day for a year, that means you could do 37 of them!

And the funny thing, focusing on just a 1% improvement means that for the first 41 days, you’re just doing 1 pull-up to build a solid foundation.

The secret to getting better is to make the progress doable.

Back to the two senior belts, I mentioned earlier, when I had to spar with them, there was no way I could compete on their level, they had years of experience over me.

But there were things that I could work on, like getting hit less. I worked on my own just on footwork, practicing day after day of being able to move in the eight directions from either foot. I worked on not being so rooted when I stood there. I used my advantage of being a physically small guy and learned how to be quicker.

All of these little 1% improvements began to grow, to where it became harder and harder for these bigger guys to hit me.

Now granted, at first, I wasn’t able to hit them but, not getting hit as much was a big win for me! It wasn’t that long that the little guy that was afraid to get hit became the little guy that they couldn’t hit.

And eventually, I was able to hit back.

What Is Your 1%?

“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” –Albert Einstein

Granted, you might not be on the mat, getting punched and kicked by other students, but what do you have something that is holding you back?

What would you like to be good at?

It’s said that more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of dying, I guess because in speaking, you’re still around to face the feedback, but in dying…

What 1% effort could you do today to become more comfortable speaking in public? Could you start a conversation with a complete stranger? Maybe something easier, making a positive comment or a friendly greeting?

In every situation, there is a small step you can take and work toward becoming better, all it takes is a little ingenuity, initiative, and independence to take the first step.

Yes, you may look bad but it’ll only be temporary.

While being bad for not trying to be better is permanent.

The choice is up to you, are you willing to suck so that you can be successful?

Oh, and about those two senior students of Hapkido? Over the years, and their continual training and improvement. The flashy kicker started doing my heavy bag work so that his kicks didn’t only look good but also packed some real power behind them.

And the bull, he began to work more on his fluidity and footwork to develop more grace and elegance to his hard-hitting attacks.

They both took their natural strengths and learned how to make them better, it took a bit of being bad for a while as they had to step back and try new things, but ultimately, they were both better off for it.

What about you?