Episode 805 - The Unintended Consequences of Guilt
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about the Unintended Consequences of Guilt in Martial Arts.
The Unintended Consequences of Guilt - Episode 805
As martial arts teachers, we can say things or let our students feel to make them guilty for not coming to train. Guilt is sometimes used as a motivator but there are consequences to be faced if done. In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about the Unintended Consequences of Guilt in Martial Arts.
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Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio and today, Andrew and I are gonna talk about the unintended consequences of guilt. The fact that sometimes within the context of martial arts, we try to use guilt as a motivator, but it doesn't always go the way we want it to. It has unintended consequences. What do we mean? We'll stick around and you will find out soon enough. If you're new, make sure you hit whistlekick.com. If you've been around a while, make sure you hit whistlekick.com because we are constantly adding, improving, changing new products. Tons of cool stuff going on there all the time, including our store. Use the code podcast15 to save 15% on a training program, or a shirt, or a mug, or a hoodie, or a hat, or some sparring gear, or any of the many, many things we've got going on over there. You can also check out whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, the world's number one traditional martial arts podcast according to people that are not us, which is fun to say, and all of the 800 and something episodes that we've released since we started this show. If there's a topic that we haven't covered that you want us to cover, you should let us know and then we will potentially cover it. Is there a guest that we have not had on the show that you think we should, reach out. Let's see...
Andrew Adams:
Tell us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If we can make it happen. If you say, Chuck Norris, I will write you back and say, if you can make the introduction, we will try because we've been trying.
Andrew Adams:
If you can connect me to Chuck Norris directly, I'll make it happen. I just haven't been successful in connecting to him.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. So there you are. If you wanna support us, if our mission to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artist of the world means something to you, if you like us believe that even six months of martial arts training has lifelong impact and that the world would be a better place if everyone trained for at least that long, please consider supporting us. You could make a purchase, you could tell people about the things that we do. You could join our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. But if you want the entire list, all of the things, if you are part of our martial arts family, you can go to the family page, whistlekick.com/family. You gotta type it in. There's no link. All the things you can do to help us direct links to the places to leave ratings and reviews, as well as your own exclusive stuff, stuff we do not post elsewhere. Some of my thoughts, photos, discount codes, stuff like that and I update it once a week. This was your topic. You brought this, well, a friend brought this to you.
Andrew Adams:
A friend.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I think it's absolutely worth discussing because we live in this time where stress and anxiety and guilt are rampant.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And maybe those three don't all fit on the same plate for everyone, but for me they do.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And they could be different levels.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For sure. You know, one of the things that personally, I've gotten a lot better at but I struggle with, when I deal with some anxiety. But when I feel like I've done something wrong because of the stress, because of the anxiety, that guilt has a much stronger impact and hangs around much, much longer. I mean, there are still things that I did 10, 20, 30 years ago that I feel guilty about. And I, you know, I've done what I can to remedy them but it doesn't even have to be anything big. It can be, you know, I shouldn't have said that.
Andrew Adams:
Sure. Yep. And I think most of us listening have something like that. At least a thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, for sure.
Andrew Adams:
So this topic was brought to me by my good friend, Angela.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Angie.
Andrew Adams:
Her comment was we have been at a school in the past where the instructor at testing would say, or maybe not even testing but just would say at some point, you know, look to your left and right, statistically, the person next to you is not gonna be here at the next test.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And that's a common thing to say in some form.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, sometimes it's at a beginner's class or at a testing...
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or just when the instructor's feeling frustrated.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. You know, or to the person testing for brown belt in the room who was here to this brown belt, when who was here in the room that was here when you started? And it's usually the instructor, maybe the people in front, but statistically, he'll say hardly anybody's gonna raise their hand.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's a lot of turnover in martial arts.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. And there is and I recognize that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it's by nature and we've talked a lot about our beliefs on why and things that we can change, but that's not the purpose of today's discussion.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Today's discussion is about that statement or other versions of that statement or other actions that come from the same place and how they make people feel. And how do you... Go ahead.
Andrew Adams:
So, I mean the statement comes from a place of you stuck it out, good job, right? That's the intended outcome. That's what they expect.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
But unfortunately, for a lot of people, they hear that as, oh, I'm not gonna be here because statistically I'm below that person and I'm not gonna be here during the next test. Like there's some guilt about I guess I better stick it out cuz I don't wanna be that person that's not here, you know?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Or what happens if you get injured and you have to take a leave of absence? Or something comes up with work? Or you have a baby and now suddenly your priorities are a little bit different and you're not going to class as often?
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I gave you the example and you've heard this and I suspect many of you have heard of this if it hasn't been said directly to you, the martial arts instructor out in the world, you know, at the grocery store for example, and a past student comes up, seeks them out, sees them, comes up to them, and is apologetic for not having come back to class. Oh, Sensei, Mister, Master, Missus, Miss, whatever, I'm so sorry I haven't been back to class. I really miss it. Is it still in this place at this time? Now why are they doing that? Because they feel guilty. They feel guilty that there is an expectation of them...
Andrew Adams:
That they should still be there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That they should still be there, and they have not met that expectation. Now, is that sometimes the case? Yeah, maybe mostly is that the case? I don't know. Perhaps. Most of the instructors I know want people to train, but they want them to want to train. They don't want them to be there if they don't want to be there. And I think that that is an important distinction when we start talking about guilt.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And I think sometimes it's not intended to be that way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think it's usually not intended that way.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. I mean, I have been victim of this myself. My good friend Angie that brought this to me, she and I both tested for our Shodan together in October of 2019. And then we all know what happened in March 2020, and she stopped training because of things that happened.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Andrew Adams:
And then her work picked up and she became more busy. There were more things that held more of a priority for her which is fine. I missed her in the school. I missed training with her when we were able to go back and do trainings and I probably more often, well, I know more often than I should have would say things like that to her. Like, I really missed her...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You told her you missed her. You...
Andrew Adams:
Yeah and like, hey, you know, when are you gonna come back? Like, you know, it's okay to comeback...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You were being encouraging.
Andrew Adams:
In my brain, I was being encouraging, and it came across as making her feel guiltier than she should. Cause she has nothing to feel guilty about. Like she's allowed to make the decision to not be there. And so I don't think we intend for that to be the case, but I think sometimes it's important to step back and see how what we are doing is being received by others.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Now you could say, let's pretend that, you know, it's a slightly different situation where Angie is not your friend, you're the instructor and she's a student and you know she comes up to you at the grocery store.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right? Or you go up to her, whatever, right? You see her in a social situation. You could make the argument. Well, so what? So what that she feels guilty? You're trying to do what's best for her.
Andrew Adams:
And I hate that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But is her guilt making her more or less likely to come back?
Andrew Adams:
Oh, for sure less.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Who steps into a situation that they feel is gonna make them experience guilt? Very few people choose to do that.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
In fact, a lot of people will wait until the guilt fades. But if you continue to poke at it, it never fades and they'll never come back. Now, given that this is your friend and I believe we talked about it one point a while ago that you know this because she told you. How would you approach that situation? How would you offer encouragement, if at all, without it being received in a way that makes her feel guilty?
Andrew Adams:
I think in this particular case, it would've been not so frequent. It wouldn't have been something that I would've brought up as much. And I think it would've been just a little more open-ended like, hey, you know, it'd be great to have you back like whenever you're ready, like we'll be here for you type of thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
As opposed to being, I was more direct about when are you coming back.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
Those types of things. Open-ended is way more, is received a lot better...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure.
Andrew Adams:
Than those direct confrontations.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I think that that's kind of the heart of it. And you know, I've always told people martial arts is there for you when you're ready to come back.
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you know, granted my time as a school owner was very limited, but I had plenty of people leave and my response to them every single time was the same assuming that they told me that they were leaving, come back whenever you're ready.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm not gonna bug them. Now in the modern era with email and things like that, might there be a way to communicate with past students that reminds them they're welcome to come back? Yeah, absolutely. But the guilt comes in from disappointment, from an expectation that you have disappointed someone that you value.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And generally people value their instructors. There's a difference between an email that we know comes from a system and you having a personal conversation with someone. And I know that you and Angie are close friends, so this probably happened when you were in a social situation.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Well, we see each other a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. You are peers in that way and she wants to spend time with you as her peer, as her friend, not be reminded that this thing that is important to her, but just happens to be far enough down the list that she's run out of time in the day.
Andrew Adams:
Sure. Yep. Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We all have more things that we want to do than we have time for. If I didn't have to sleep, they're plenty of other things I would do. Probably the same for you, probably the same for all of you out there in the audience. So if we take this to heart, there are very few things that we stop doing. We just change the way we do them.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We don't highlight the negative side of people leaving. Instead of saying think of all the people who aren't here, you can say think about how many times you chose to be here when you didn't have to or when it was difficult.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yep. It makes it way more positive. It frames the same sort of sentiment in a different way. In a more positive way as opposed to a negative way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You've probably heard me say, I say it all the time, I say it to the clients that I work with, I say it to the team, there's power in choice. And the words that we use have a dramatic impact on how we look at that choice. So in that example, you chose to be here. You've chosen to be here when it wasn't easy. You've chosen to take this test, you've chose and you've taken that power and that choice as opposed to highlighting that the majority of people have chosen not to be here. Well, let's also keep in mind that when you do that, you are suggesting that the social proof is to not train.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's also not a good thing. That's a whole other set of conversations.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Guilt is rarely a positive motivator. Where does guilt take most of us back to? Our childhood.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I felt a lot of guilt as a kid. There are a lot of things I did that disappointed my mother. I don't like that feeling. I don't wanna feel it anymore.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Someone makes me feel guilty as an adult, probably not gonna spend time with that person whether it's a professional or a personal context.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, absolutely. And the same can be true with students in your dojo. If you make them feel guilty, they are less likely to want to be around you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Maintain a positive culture, celebrate people's attendance, celebrate people's achievements, and maybe put a little bit less energy into the non-accomplishments, the non-attendance. I don't like this word, but plenty of people do use it, the failures or the inadequacies, that's a better word of people. The more we focus on something, the more we see of it. The more it shows up, the more it happens.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thus, the more you focus on the non-attendees, the inadequacies, et cetera, the more you're going to have because if nothing else, the people who are there are gonna think they don't matter and that their achievements don't matter.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Celebrate the good, celebrate the people who show up, celebrate the wins, make them feel positive, make them feel like they have made a good choice, and you'll have the opposite effect. You'll have plenty of people showing up. In fact, I would argue if there was some way we could clone martial arts schools and do a study of this. One school had guilt, the other school framed it more positively. The positive school would have better retention of the students that didn't show up in the guilt school.
Andrew Adams:
I think you're absolutely right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So don't do it. It's dumb and it doesn't serve your purposes, it doesn't make anybody's life better...
Andrew Adams:
Doesn't help.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And if the way you feel the need to react or interact with the people around you is by making them feel guilty, I'm going to suggest that you consider therapy. And I don't mean that in like a belittling way, but it's not a healthy way to relate to people whether you're an instructor or not.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. So, two last things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Andrew Adams:
I actually wanna check my phone because I actually sent a message to Angie just before we recorded and I want to see if she had any comments, but she didn't. That's fine.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If she writes in comments, we can post them when we have this live.
Andrew Adams:
And two, if she ever listens to this, she knows she's always welcome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I hope you take this to heart, martial arts should be a place that celebrates the growth that remains positive, that creates a culture where even on our worst days we want to be. If it is, then everything else falls into place. So just keep that in mind. Thank you for being here. Thank you for bringing this topic up. This is a great one. Appreciate it.
Andrew Adams:
Thanks, Angie.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, thank you, Angie. Did we have anything else to add?
Andrew Adams:
Nope. I think that's good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right. If you have a topic like this that you wanna suggest, you can reach out to either of us, andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Remember, our social media everywhere you can think of is @whistlekick. If you listen to these episodes, guess what? Almost everyone has a video version now. We have officially crossed over into that territory.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's almost everyone and you can find them at YouTube. You can also usually find them embedded. We still do that, right? We embed them in the pages at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com?
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So you can find 'em there if you don't wanna hunt around for them on YouTube, or maybe you're searching around, you wanna find an old episode. We also do transcripts if you prefer to read, or the main reason we do the transcripts, it makes it easy to search if you're looking for past episode. We don't remember who it was or what number it was. If you wanna support us, if the work that we're doing here means something to you, please tell your friends about whistlekick. Tell them about what we're doing. Come to one of our events, experience the things that we are doing. Check out our books on Amazon. If you want the whole shebang, the entirety of the list, direct links to Patreon and all that, whistlekick.com/family. Thank you, thank you for your time. Thank you to those of you who support and contribute to Patreon and all the other things that we do. We appreciate you. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day.