Answers From Someone Else

​Currently I’m reading “The Courage to be Disliked” and one of the lines struck me in regards to what we do. “Answers from someone else are a stopgap and have no value”. I agree, guidance is better than answers if you want to learn anything. I have had many great teachers of many subjects, but unless I came to my own conclusions and internalized their information and guidance for myself I could not use it. That has nothing to do with their ability to teach or my ability to learn, it’s just a patience game to reach the appropriate level of understanding. I often use my scissor sweep as an example of how learning Jiu Jitsu works. I had probably learned a scissor sweep 60 times, drilled a scissor sweep hundreds of times, even taught a scissor sweep a few times, but I didn’t feel like I executed it well until I was a purple belt. That’s at least 5 years, probably more where I wasn’t very good at something basic that is now integral to my game. In fact, I was probably better at x-guard for a time than a simple scissor sweep. The ridiculous thing about that is I taught myself x-guard out of a book. The answers you find for yourself are always better than the answers given to you. It’s counterintuitive to almost everything we understand, and can be incredibly frustrating, but I think if you really analyze things you will find that you are the greatest catalyst of your own learning.