Empty Your Cup

Steve

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Well, I wouldn't say it was about intelligence itself, I am talking about intelligent listening habits, which would naturally boost your intelligence.
Emotional intelligence... Good listening is part of that. You can have an average IQ but do quite well if you are emotionally intelligent.
 

JowGaWolf

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You don't just randomly empty you cup without good reason. Context is everything.

If you are learning something new, best to learn it for its own merits and not try to force it to be like something you already know. That is appropriate emptying of the cup.

And that does not automatically mean you have to throw away what you have already done before. You might decide to do that, but it's not a given.
That's how I viewed the saying. If I were to take karate then I would "empty my cup" by not trying to relate karate to Jow Ga. Instead I should try to learn karate with an empty mind set similar to someone who doesn't know anything about fighting. Sometimes it's the things that we know that get in the way of us learning, so when we learn something new, we should learn the subject based on its own merits.
 

Touch Of Death

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It is also important to consider that a lot of people will tell you to, "empty your cup", but do they have the authority, or are they just in the habit of saying that?
 
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PhotonGuy

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While I don't know of any styles that require high emotional intelligence and strong active listening skills for black belts, it's not a bad idea. I think you'd see far fewer black belts that way. :)

You have to be good at listening in order to learn and without listening and learning you won't advance in rank so such stuff is required.
 
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PhotonGuy

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And being a good listener and good emotional intelligence are related.
 
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PhotonGuy

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Well speaking of emptying your cup, there's the Dunning Kruger effect where people with a little bit of knowledge think they know it all. Its people like that who really need to empty their cup. On the other hand people who've reached great levels of expertise in given fields often underestimate their abilities because they realize there is so much more to learn. Here is a video that talks about the Dunning Kruger effect. The entire video is interesting but it doesn't start talking about the Dunning Kruger effect until 9:29

 

wingchun100

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Its sometimes said in the martial arts that you should empty your cup of knowledge. Another words, stop thinking you know so much and start learning from the beginning. By emptying your cup you have room to learn more stuff. If you ask me, its a good thing to do.

I wouldn't say it necessarily means "from the beginning." To me, it means you need to leave yourself room to learn new things. Don't throw out everything you already know to learn something new though.
 
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PhotonGuy

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I wouldn't say it necessarily means "from the beginning." To me, it means you need to leave yourself room to learn new things. Don't throw out everything you already know to learn something new though.
Well I think basically what its saying is don't be a know it all. Don't be somebody who thinks they know more than they do. Its the people who think they know it all who don't learn anything more since they already "know it all" as far as they're concerned and so its those such people who don't really know all that much.
 

Gerry Seymour

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I wouldn't say it necessarily means "from the beginning." To me, it means you need to leave yourself room to learn new things. Don't throw out everything you already know to learn something new though.
The concept doesn't refer to "throwing away" what you know, but setting it aside. If I go to a BJJ school, and when they start to show me a sweet BJJ takedown I start comparing it to what I already know and looking for the "aiki" gaps to work with and applying the principles I know to make it easier, I'm probably going to miss the principles they were trying to teach me. I won't be doing the technique, at all, probably - just something that looks like that technique. I already know my way. I should empty my cup while I'm there and learn theirs. Later, I can mix them in whatever way I want.
 

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