5 Ways Martial Arts Can Make You A CEO

Martial arts has proven time and time again to be a powerful influence in people’s lives. After all, there are many all-round benefits that martial arts can provide. It brings out the absolute best in someone, allows them to discover their abilities, and unlock their true inner greatness.

One of the ways martial arts impacts your life is by enhancing your talents, both in your personal and work spaces. It can turn you from being an ordinary achiever into a guru capable of running a global organization. Just look at ONE Championship CEO Chatri Sityodtong, who credits martial arts with his life’s many successes after hitting rock bottom.

Through Muay Thai, he was empowered with the strength and warrior spirit to overcome any obstacle, and was instilled with integrity, humility, honor, respect, courage, and discipline – invaluable traits that still serve him well each and every day.

Let’s take a look at five different ways martial arts unlocks your potential to become a future business leader. 

#1 It Cultivates Leadership Skills

Leadership is the ability to guide your peers, colleagues, fellow citizens, and most importantly, yourself to the path of success. It is a skill that is latent in every individual, living deep inside of every one of us. But to truly harness its power, leadership is an essential skill that must be developed.

Through martial arts, you gain the experience and selflessness needed to become a leader. It is commonplace for martial arts practitioners to share knowledge and experience with each other. As you work with peers along your martial arts journey, training provides opportunities to demonstrate your skills, showcase techniques, and guide others to achieve the same results. 

Furthermore, as you advance in training, martial arts puts you in a position of authority to guide those traversing the same path, thus providing a natural environment to hone those leadership skills.

#2 It Helps You Become A Team Player

Martial arts accustoms you to working and functioning in a group. Contrary to popular belief, martial arts is not some solo undertaking that you go through alone. Yes, there are instances in training when you are placed in situations of self-discovery in order to complete a certain task, but what you must not forget is that no one is expected to do it alone.

This is one of the most important lessons martial arts teaches – that being part of a team means working together to achieve common goals. After all, you will always need to work with different partners in training, and communicate to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to best realize your mutual goals. In this way, martial arts helps you to become a better team player.

It is especially crucial in a business to know how to function within a team. Sound teamwork in the business world is the key to an organization’s success. Bringing the right combination of people together, and allowing them to function as a unit, is one of the fundamental requirements to growth and success as a company.

#3 It Trains You To Solve Problems

Regardless of your profession, whether you sit at a desk for nine hours a day in a typical office setting, or are out in the field getting your hands dirty, critical thinking and problem-solving are an essential part of how to overcome the obstacles faced in daily life.

Martial arts trains you to become a critical thinker by allowing you to discover solutions to various physical and mental situations. In disciplines such as judo or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, practitioners encounter many instances where the solutions to certain problems are not immediately evident. But by making use of every skill and technique learned, they are able to mentally form equations and physically execute.

As martial arts improves your critical thinking, you gain an improved ability to handle pressure and face the most difficult situations, all while having the confidence to rely on your skills to get the job done.

#4 It Builds Mental Toughness And Discipline

While a great deal of martial arts deals with physical and athletic development as human beings, it is also an exercise for the most important muscle – the mind.

As you will learn early on in your martial arts journey, the majority of the obstacles you face in training are mental. Physically, it is easy to enhance your capacity through constant conditioning, but solving problems requires mental toughness, as is the discipline needed to attend training and push your limits every single day.

One of the many benefits of training in martial arts is enhanced mental clarity, because not only does martial arts develop your physical well-being, but it also sharpens your focus and improves your concentration. As a result, you will be more inclined to push through obstacles, and less likely to fold under pressure or panic in the face of adversity.

Enhancing your mental strength is important, whether you are a CEO of a business or just a regular person trying to make ends meet. Martial arts makes your mind stronger by providing you with a steady escalation of challenges and problems that you can only overcome with a clear mind.

#5 It Makes You A More Positive Person

Through training in martial arts, your entire well-being is affected, which makes you a more positive person. 

Martial arts has a multitude of effects on personal development, ranging from health and wellness to mental and spiritual enhancement. Thus, constant training leads to a more positive outlook on life, as you get used to winning personal victories, and realize that only positive thinking will get you through a rough path. Nobody ever succeeded by telling themselves they couldn’t.

Positivity is infectious, and it can influence anything and everything around you, including your career. The result is an improved lifestyle. Also, martial arts provides a sense of supreme confidence. Through martial arts training, you can discover a great deal about yourself and what you are capable of achieving. You are introduced to your limits, and then taught how to shatter them.

If you are ever to lead a group of people and become a CEO, you will need this positivity, both to achieve results, and inspire your colleagues to do the same.