The Frog syndrome

The Frog:

If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will instinctively jump out. But if you place a frog in a pot of cool water and gradually increase the temperature, the frog won’t notice that the water’s getting hotter. It will sit there until the water boils – and will boil with it.

The fate of the poached frog isn’t so unlike that of some instructors who settle into routine or let small conveniences solidify into large habits – and allow inertia to set in. How does such a thing happen to reasonably intelligent people? How does one lose a sense of the instructor he/she has become? It is the boiling frog syndrome - the slow, invisible creep of compromise and complacency – poses perhaps the greatest challenge to an accurate self-image.

Many things conspire to keep people from seeing their real selves. The human psyche itself shields us from information that might undermine our self-perception. These ego- defense mechanisms protect us emotionally so that we can cope more easily with life. This happens with more frequency if you work or train for a corrosive environment like close quarter combatives.  However, in the process of self-protection, these ego-defense mechanisms hide or discard essential information, such as how others are responding to our behaviors and instruction. 

Over time these self-delusions that the unconscious creates become self-perpetuating myths, persisting despite the difficulties they cause.  To be effective as an instructor and to potently transfer knowledge to the student, we must continually educate, train and refine ourselves as instructors. This means training ourselves, researching and being a true life-long learner in the particular skill-area we chose to train.