Hasn't that been true since the dawn of time? I argue that this is how we grow. I often tell friends that I believe that the growth of people and societies is proportional to the number of difficult conversations they've had, either with themselves, others, or as a society.

Educators and societies that shield ego too much produce entitled dipshits in my opinion. Those who try to protect themselves from being hurt are holding onto one end of a rubber band whose other end is stretched further by Certainty, and Certainty will certainly let it go at some point. The longer you hold on to that end of the rubber, the more painful it will be when Certainty releases its end.

>In martial arts, we always fight against a belt above as one cannot better one self being challenged by stagnant skill level.

My Judo instructor did it differently. We'd all be jogging in different directions. He'd pick one randomly. We'd form a random queue from the configuration at the moment we stopped jogging. Champion/Challenger:

0: The person who was picked is (Champion)

1: (Champion) pops someone from the queue (Challenger).

2: (Champion) fights (Challenger)

3: If (Champion) wins then (Challenger) is eliminated

4: Go to 1

5: If (Challenger) wins then (Champion) is eliminated

6: (Challenger) becomes the new (Champion)

7: Go to 1

You end up matching with people of different belts, different compositions, weights, speeds, execution, order. You're exposed to all kinds of strange and at different energy levels.