“Gee, a lot of the people at the dojo are getting so COCKY!” the intermediate student exclaimed, one evening, after class.

“Yes, personalities change, don’t they?” I replied with my best, Kung Fu wise man impersonation.

“Really,” she continued. “They’re way different people than they were when we started!”

I just grinned.

Unquestionably, the martial arts change people, or people change themselves when they commit to practicing them, and these alterations become quite evident at the intermediate stages of development.

While, of course, you’ve heard about of the outcomes of training: fitness, toughness, concentration, improved self-confidence, and the ability to walk down dark alleys all by yourself, late at night; these are just some of the pluses that are touted by dojos.

But there is a DARK SIDE, as well, and you begin to see it about two years into one’s development.

Heavy pressures are placed on people’s families and friends and even work mates and employers by the suddenly bold, and perhaps brash, students. Instead of meekly fulfilling their predetermined roles, they become, like clothes they’ve outgrown, misfits.

Like adolescents who surprisingly question authority everywhere but in their peer groups, students’ contacts outside of the training hall don’t know what to make of them, now that they are as difficult to “herd” as cats.

Training consumes more time as it becomes advanced and refined, straining the ecology of relationships where people may not have had that much “face time” to begin with.

Suddenly, unions that held together with only the adhesion of habit, start to fray, and martial artists see they are on a path that is solitary, but more fulfilling.

The dojo becomes home, and its inhabitants, their families. And frankly, they’re happier there than they were where they used to spend their discretionary time.

Fractured families and broken homes, at a certain level, seem to become as commonplace as bruised hands and feet. Yet, practitioners are smiling, as they morph from one state of being to the next.

Dojos are a canvas on which their hidden feelings, hopes and fears are painted. By seeing themselves in a new light, possibly a more objective one, aspiring martial artists are treated to a rare insight: seeing exactly how unhappy they’ve been.

How they deal with that information is perhaps even more character building than anything else they will learn, on or off the mat.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of http://www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations from Santa Monica to South Africa. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

For information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to http://www.customersatisfaction.com

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