Sometimes I wonder whether too many martial arts teachers suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out).

We are supposed to be strong independent people knowing exactly what we’re doing and where we’re going and not influenced by outside forces.

But the pressure from social media does seem to produce this fear that if we don’t follow certain trends that we’re missing out.

If we don’t cross train in other arts, run seminars with certain instructors, attend events and certified courses, manage our club in a certain way, make fools of ourselves with ‘entertaining’ reels and videos, advertise within the current trends that we’re not a part of our own society.

The result is that everyone looks the same, acts the same, says the same things and are producing an endless stream of uninteresting videos and often AI generated media.

Instead of advertising our uniqueness and individuality we end up looking like clones.

Let’s celebrate our diversity, our unique knowledge and not be afraid of the gobby masses, ‘influencers’ and trolls on social media and stand up for what we know are good martial arts with depth and understanding in the broadest perspective and honour each other’s individuality.

Never be afraid of being different.