The Debt You Owe Your Karate Teacher. Let’s take a journey down a road to a new way to look at the idea of a debt owed by you to your martial arts instructor.

Let’s Build Some Fences and Ditches

“I don’t know how I could repay my martial arts instructor for what they have given me.” The transition to adult education is not an easy threshold to get over. It takes some effort on your part and you need to meet the teacher in the place they want you to come. The lesson of a Seventh Grade Teacher and how that time was a place I was incurring a debt. Was it her effort, or is it she was paid and was just doing her job? The bottom line is that is a case-by-case call, some teachers are just hammering the check, others are building our future.

Expectations are the most basic of learning. These are all within the fences, and then there are the items located outside of the boundaries.

We should have a clear understanding of these two roles.

The Debt You Owe Your Karate Teacher and a New View

The idea of trading works to the teacher, not for instruction, but to service the debt owed becomes a problem. Bartering is fine. Exploiting the debt owed is a line crossing that should not be occurring. When the instructor is misusing the student’s sense of debt and its owing, that is a line that is, well abused.

The Assumption of Negotiation

The anchoring of a number in the human mind is an anchor in the art of negotiation. You can see this in the television show Pawn Stars at its cleanest example. The client begins negotiating with a number.

That number gets shot down from the other side of the counter. These are the reasons the item is only worth this much, and the list begins, as the pawn store is out to get the best price. The new number often becomes the new value.

The negotiation is fast, clear, and crisp. The item may mean a lot to the client, to the shop it is one of many deals that day, and they all need to make money. Sentimentality has little currency and can be messy.

It is Similar in the Minds of Student and Teachers

The student has a rate and the teacher has a rate. Neither may be anchoring in reality. The anchoring may be taking place in sentiment. The difference is the idea of debt versus a favor. Favors have no debt or expectation attached. Debt has attachments.

We should have a clear understanding of these two roles when we enter into a martial arts school and the relationship attached to the agreement.  A trick of observation and process to avoid unhealthy anchoring is given in the podcast.

Take a listen and see how you can avoid a massive error in negotiation and the expectations. The debt you think you are owing your karate teacher, it must be measured correctly.

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KRIS WILDER

Kris Wilder is a martial artist based in the semi-arid rolling lands of Eastern Washington. He has authored many martial art books, including the classic, The Way of Kata. Making no apologies for his obsession of Football he can be found telling any who wi...