The Black Belt Success Cycle

1. Know what you want! Decide what it is that you want and set your goal. 

2. Have a plan...and a success coach. Decide what you are going to do in order to reach your goal and find someone who has already been where you want to be to help you. Write it down in detail and be specific. Your coach can help guide the formation of your plan and keep you focused.

3. Take consistent action! Nothing will happen unless you act on your plan everyday. Be consistent in your actions and keep track of your progress. Practice, practice, practice!

4. Review and Renew your goals. Testing is your opportunity to check the progress you are making towards your goal. It is not a "pass" or "fail" situation but an opportunity to re-evaluate your plan and make changes to it if necessary. If you do not succeed the first time, try to figure out why and adjust your plan if necessary.

The journey to Black Belt is full of victories and disappointments. It is how we handle the "bumps in the road" that determines the quality of the destination. 

Your Black Belt Test

"A black belt test should be your Olympics. It ought to make you reach, grow, stretch, and change. It should be something you work for, in advance, 1, 2, 3, 4, and even 10 years; and I mean “work for” as in “in-training” –where every meal, every workout, every day is lived with an awareness that the test is coming.

Why? Because life just doesn’t give you many of those kinds of opportunities (any more).

Testing should make you eat differently (and with great awareness). It should be a reason to get in the absolute best shape of your life. It should cause you to look deeply at how you deal with stress, conflict, and anger.

A black belt test is one of those rare opportunities where you can change just about anything about yourself that you want to –and that you should, and nobody would think less of you. In fact, people would say something (in each other’s ear after you walk out of the room) like,“He’s getting ready to test for his black belt.”

If everyone treated their black belt test as if it were THE MOST important and empowering day of their lives, well…shoot, people would change (and for the better), the martial arts would get more recognition and respect for some of the things that are, really, most valuable about studying, and if we were really lucky, the world might be a wee bit better for it –as it would be filled with more people who hold themselves to higher standards."

-Tom Callos