Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 2026.

Today I want to talk about a gentleman name Jigoro Cano or Kano, I believe that's how you pronounce his last name.

He was the founder of the martial art judo. And in Japan, he's known as the father of modern Japanese education now he had all of these

qualities that were respected by many people but perhaps the most important quality that he was

constantly praised for was his extraordinary willingness to learn throughout his life. Just before he died in 1938,

at the age of nearly 80 years old, this world-renowned martial arts expert called his students

together, and he said the following, quote, when you bury me, do not bury me in a black belt.

Be sure to bury me in a white belt, close quote.

Now in martial arts, for those of you who do not know, black belt symbolizes the highest ranking

of a fighter, the most knowledgeable.

And the white belt represents being a beginner, an apprentice who has many things yet to learn.

And here he was, the greatest to ever do it, wanted to be buried in a white belt.

The moral of this story is the more you think you know when you perceive yourself as an expert, as a know-it-all, the less curious you are,

the less you think you have to learn. And that's what gets a lot of people stuck, is that they

think they know it all or they think they know just enough where they don't have to learn

anymore. And so my question to you is, what do you need to be more curious about is there an expertise that

you have that's hindering you from learning more that's diminishing your curiosity your beliefs are

way too strongly held that it's impeding you from growing and getting better and learning more from

an outside source from a different industry. So here's to learning, here's to growing,

and here's to the white belt mentality.