武の道は礼に始まり礼に終わる

​This means attaining good manners, respect, and courtesy is one of the most important priorities of Martial Arts. 
Every training session, we start and finish with respect and courtesy.
During training, show your respect and courtesy to thank and appreciate your training partners, teacher, and the dojo. If you don’t have your training partners, teacher, and place to train, you can’t even train and improve yourself. 

We practice fighting techniques which could be very dangerous without respecting each other.
When you are doing sparring etc, and your partner gets a strike or a submission on you, you should thank them, because you can realise what to fix.
In the old days, SAMURAI warriors respected each other even when they were killing each other in a battle. 
The good warriors were polite, and got respect and courtesy.
We should respect each other when we compete too. You learn a lot from competitions. Be polite, and show courtesy to your opponent, referee, organiser, etc. Without them, you can’t compete. Consider your opponent as a helper to make you better. So give 100% effort  to make that competition meaningful for you and your opponent.

Don’t forget “ The Way of Martial Arts begins and ends with respect and courtesy "

I hated being defeated in competitions in the early stage of my fighting career when I was teenager, because for my young and silly brain back in that time, I felt like all my technique, hard work, and even my presence itself got denied from being defeated.
I was crying all night, not talking to anyone for a few days every time I got defeated in fights. But as I had more and more experience, I realised I learnt much more when I got defeated than when I won. 
I found and realised a lot about what I had to fix when I got defeated, and easy to find what to focus on in training until next competition.
I would always find some technique and physical part to fix, but the biggest thing I learnt after being defeated was my mind. I felt like every time I got defeated, I was getting mentally tougher, I learnt more mind skills, and got wiser too.

Of course, winning competitions is the best way, and you should always try your hardest at training and your hardest at competition to win. You learn a lot from winning competitions too, also you get confident, but if you don’t be careful, you get an ego very easily from just winning only few fights, then your improvement will stop. That happened to me at one stage.
So, don’t stop learning from either winning or losing. 
Don’t waste those experiences. The most important thing I’ve learnt from being defeated was to stand up and fight again, attaining the never giving up spirit.   
If we keep running away because we are scared of being defeated or worry about failing, we can’t improve and we will achieve nothing. If you want to get better or achieve something great, you have to challenge someone better than you or challenge yourself with something hard. When your challenge is bigger, you will get better and you will have greater achievements.
Learning this kind of mindset from being a fighter is helping for my life a lot now