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The Lessons Of Dragonball Z (Titus Hauer)

This is a guest post from Titus Hauer who runs a blog over at Breaking Your Illusions where he writes about neuroscience, self-development, and culture (and of course Dragonball Z). He is also the author of Shattered a book of maxims about the way the world really is (highly suggest you check it out). In this article he writes about the life lessons that he learned from watching Dragonball Z and how we can apply them to our own lives. I never knew about the show until reading an article of Titus’s and am a fan of the mentality especially Vegeta’s. Enjoy.

I think most of us watched at least one anime/cartoon series on TV when we were little, and lots of those series grew to be part of us and our childhood. Dragon Ball Z in that regard is without a doubt one of the most popular and influential anime shows of all time.

It has tons of lessons to teach and as a kid it’s not something that you really pay attention to nor understand, that’s what I find so beautiful about this show. You can watch it as an adult and still learn something and I dont know if you can say that about many other “kids shows”

There is even a book called “The Tao Of Dragonball Z” which I havent read myself yet, but this goes to show that DBZ is more than just a show for children, it’s a lifestyle, a philosophy and it teaches you a way of life that is worthy striving for.

Below are few of the life lessons I’ve taken from the show.

Mentorship

Dragonball and Dragonball Z have always emphasized the importance of a teacher/mentor.

Goku and Krillin training under Master Roshi when they were little.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BifjQhpUYtk

Piccolo acting as a father figure for Gohan and training him while Goku was gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_JQ8NSomg

Goku asking King Kai to train him, which he then did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae-JOSm2RrQ

Goku and Gohan training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39UGhWMl8yQ

and to some degree I’d even say Vegeta and Trunks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG8l-vOVzmo

There is always this sort of mentorship and guidance going on helping the character’s to reach a new level.

How does this apply to the real world? Well, there are several kinds of mentors in the real world. Some teach you practical skills that would’ve taken you years to learn on your own (martial arts, archery, boxing for example), while others may teach you intellectual skills and methods that unlock the potential that you already have inside yourself. I personally wouldn’t be where I am right now mentally and physically if it hadn’t been for some people guiding me.

The Nature Of Saiyans

The Saiyan race has a special kind of ability called “Zenkai Boost” this allows them to grow stronger each time they face a challenge which damages them or brings them close to death. They get an immense boost in power from those things (they obviously have to recover from it though to get the benefits of it)

The good thing for them (and sometimes bad) is that something inside of them craves it, and they’re constantly running towards these challenges.

Goku for example loves to fight, he even lets his opponents recover, shows mercy to them just to fight them again on another day… which obviously gets him into trouble every now and then.

I think the message we can take home from that is that growth doesn’t happen by accident. You grow and adapt because of the challenges you endure and overcome and facing those challenges is rarely comfortable. It sucks, it hurts, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s absolutely necessary if you want to accomplish anything worthwhile. By pushing through your comfort zones you condition yourself to like the challenge, you become addicted to it, to the thrill of new challenges, it takes time but it’s worth it.

Instead of viewing challenges as something to run from, embrace them.

Competition pushes you to grow and is healthy

Most view competition as a bad thing.

But what they don’t seem to understand is that there’s one thing that competition produces, and that is quality.

Competition improves the desire to win, and in turn this improves the overall quality of what you have to offer. This applies to  almost everything in life.

In DBZ this competition starts when Vegeta went to Earth. At first he thought that destroying the planet would be easy, but the fight he had with Goku proved him wrong. From that moment on, the Prince of all Saiyans devoted the rest of his life to one goal: Becoming stronger than Son Goku no matter what it takes.

He got close to being the best fighter several times but never reached it. However, Vegeta would have never been as strong as he is right now if he didn’t have someone whose mere existence pushed him to become the best.

Goku on the other hand uses himself as the benchmark, which means that he is only competing with himself. Fighting others to see how strong he is, and becoming better and better because of that.

Both of these forms of motivation have their pluses and minuses. Some are motivated by seeing excellence around them and aiming to surpass it while others only want to become better than they were yesterday. Figure out what works best for you and then go for it.

Pride is great, or is it?

When it comes to Vegeta it’s his pride that drives him amongst his motivation to surpass Goku, but it’s also his downfall more often than not.

Pride in and of iself is a healthy trait to possess. Knowing your own worth and being proud of what you can do is great, but too much of it makes you stubborn, and you may end up refusing help when you really need it because you believe you can manage every challenge on your own.

We can see that clearly in Vegeta when he was on Namek and tried to avenge his race against Freezer, his pride made him overestimate his abilities and he got crushed to put it mildly. His arrogance and pride also got in his way when they were fighting the Androids for the first time.

The lesson to take away from this is that even the best need help sometimes, stay humble and don’t overestimate yourself and neither should you underestimate your opponents.

Learn From Others

As I said sometimes your pride might get in the way of you learning from other people. We often believe that we know all we need to know and have nothing to learn from somebody else, especially if they appear to be “below” us.

In Dragon Ball Z Goku trains under King Kai.

At first King Kai appears to be a fat blue alien but under that surface this man had some strong and important techniques to teach Goku.

If you watched the video and saw Master Roshi then you might wonder what this old perverted man could teach Goku and his friend Krillin. Well, turns out that he taught Goku his signature move, the Kamehameha.

The lesson here is that you can learn from anyone. Old, fat, skinny, rich, poor, it doesn’t matter as long as they have something valuable to teach you.

Closing Thoughts

I bet there are plenty more lessons that would come to mind the more I think about this series but those are some that I remember.

Again, no matter how old you are I think the show is a must watch for every man in an era where masculinity is lacking and even beaten down. Watching DBZ is refreshing and I am sure a lot of you would like it.

So, no matter how old you are I highly recommend the show and pay attention to the dialogue and the context. I find myself discovering new lessons everytime I watch it.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Charles for giving me to opportunity to share more about the passion of mine which is Dragonball Z. Hope you enjoyed it!

-Titus Hauer

Enjoyed the post? Wish to write one of your own? Check out the form here and let me know. I’m always looking to promote good sites to my readers.

Charles Sledge

2 Comments

  1. ya i would say Vegeta has to be the most manly and masculine out of all the characters in the Dragon Ball franchise, what are some other fictional masculine warrior characters you like? i know you mentioned Robert E. Howard characters, you a fan of Wolverine and The Punisher?

    • Don’t really know that much about comic books or their characters. So I can’t really say. I have a post coming up sometime (schedule so many forget when certain are coming out) about good fiction for men. But Tarzan and many of the adventure stories of written during the early 1900’s are pretty good, as well as starship troopers and gates of fire. Some good stuff in there as well.

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