We advertise that martial arts give you ‘confidence’ and that intimates a form of self belief. I aways see confidence as being false, like a mask, something that can be taken away. There’s very little power to it. In a confrontation confidence can easily crumble, and I’ve seen that mask slip many a time.

I know it’s probably semantics but I prefer ‘authentic’ as that’s developing your good qualities and being who you really are. No one can take that away. Authentic people can smell BS a mile away and so trying to put up a false mask of confidence doesn’t wash.

As a teacher, confidence will only work on those that can be tricked whereas authenticity means that you keep other authentic people for life and those seeking a teacher with those qualities. Most of us are fed up with the BS imagery constantly fed to us on social media.

It’s disappointing when you meet up with people in real life and they don’t meet the image that’s been presented, but you feel immediately comfortable with an authentic person who is the same in or out of the dojo.