I have heard people say that we should have no ego, like a baby, and just be ready to soak up knowledge like a sponge, that we can learn lessons from anybody and anything. This is true to some extent, but it doesn’t take into account how useful those lessons are, for example I could train aikido for ten years and learn some interesting details about wrist locks. However, I could have spent those ten years rolling, submitting people for real in live training, learning how to do many different submissions including wrist locks. Which was ultimately a better use of time? Also what would it look like for a person to train like a baby, with zero ego? Without ego what would motivate a person to train? What would keep them coming back to the grind day after day? What would keep them from quitting and keep them looking forward to new challenges? I don’t think that big egos are that much of a problem in jiu-jitsu. I think a bigger problem is fragile egos.