Tip to get better at martial arts -- stop thinking you're good and train

I had a bit of an epiphany while I was driving today, hopefully to further my career (rather to start one?) -- the key to getting good at the martial arts is leaving room to get better, and that starts with realizing that you're not good yet, no matter how good you are.

I'm not sure where the idea came from, but I think I got it by thinking about all of the times that I've gone to trainings, seminars, or workshops in Yin Style Bagua and had the ego-crushing realization that I'm pretty much a hee-haw still. Here's essentially how my thought process went:

• "Going to a serious YSB workshop always seemed to make me feel bad about myself back in the day. We used to jokingly call it 'post-seminar depression' because it really reminds you of how far you've got to go.
• "It doesn't actually remind you of how far you've got to go because that should be encouraging because bottoming out sucks. It reminds you of how far you are from where you think you are in your ego-filled head, and that makes your little ego-filled head feel shitty about itself.
• "Maybe that's why the last couple of seminars I've attended didn't induce 'post-seminar depression.' I thought it was just because I was getting better, though.
• "No. Getting better has nothing to do with it. Jinbao is just about infinity times better than I am, and so that can't be it. It's got to be a change in attitude.
• "I know what it is! I'm having an epiphany!
• "It is simply this: I don't go into them thinking I'm good now. I go into them thinking I'm not as good as I could be yet and that I'm going to get better for this, regardless of how hard I suck it up when I'm trying to get better!
• "The key to seminar or workshop success is going into it with an attitude of not being (maximally) good and being there to learn. That is an epiphany!
• "The key to getting better even in home-grown training is the same. Do the best you can, refine, train hard again, refine more, mull it over, train hard again, etc.... Nowhere in that algorithm for success is thinking 'now I've got it.'
• "That reminds me of a story...."

The story was told by Jinbao and was apparently handed down from Dr. Xie, and although it seems kind of hyperbolic, it certainly seems believable and carries a good moral. Evidently, the doctor had a fellow that wanted to learn Yin Style, but I guess the guy was Grade-A hee-haw or something like that. For whatever reasons, the doctor just made him stand strengthening a lot, all in Lion posture if I'm not mistaken in the story -- didn't let him learn anything else. I guess that went on every time the guy showed up for something like two years, and finally the guy got the nerve to complain and did so in a very safe, proper way. He said something like, "I've been practicing standing in this posture an awful lot for the last couple of years; don't I have it right yet?" The doctor apparently laughed at the guy and said, "I still don't have it right. Don't kid yourself."

The moral of the story is obvious, particularly since the story about my epiphany tells it clearly:

If you think you're good already, then you're standing in your own way of getting better. Yeah, you might be good, but getting better lies in what you're not already good at.

Thus, while assuming that you're doing things incorrectly probably isn't the best way to proceed, and not training because you're following that assumption is as ass-backwards as you can get, assuming that you can refine and improve every aspect of your training is critical to achieving high skill, every bit as critical as backing it up with seriously searching for and working on ways to make what you're doing better and better.