It’s too easy to take on the views of others instead of working things out for yourself. You only have to look at your feed here on social media to see martial artists continually repeating the same old tropes that you know didn’t originate from their own critical thinking. It’s lazy, gutless and weak to only repeat the view of others so you don’t stand out from the crowd and attract criticism.

Ask yourself WHY you train/study in martial arts. Ignore what everyone else has said and go deep inside of yourself to find the true reasons, is it for:

Self defence
Fighting
Competition
Health
Sanity
Skill
Enlightenment
Emotional intelligence
Or something else?

Allocate genuine, personal percentages to the reasons and that will help you to direct your training/study time in a way to suit you rather than the expectations of others.

You can read my analysis in my books that you can get signed copies in the U.K. on the following links:

Soft Front, Strong Back
https://py.pl/1m5JAm

Concepts Of Karate
https://py.pl/1HvFug

Both books (20% off up to Xmas)
https://py.pl/rC777