I remember feeling hopeful that I had found a new place to stay. This was jiu jitsu school #4, and as far as I was concerned, my last chance to find a place that I could train. I had to make this work, and I’m glad that I stuck around.

Since then, I’ve met a lot of friends and had a lot of experiences that I never thought I would have in training jiu jitsu. I picked up some responsibilities as well, one of which is helping teach the kid’s class on Wednesdays. If you haven’t taught kids, well, then you don’t know the feeling of going rapidly from thoughts like “oh my god you are gonna end up in the hospital” to “did they just figure out the overhead balloon sweep by themselves?”

As much as the kids class is stressful, I like it because it presents me with a challenge: how to get kids engaged, enjoying, and educated in jiu jitsu. It’s like a puzzle I get to solve, even if the pieces like to make farting sounds into their hands, complain about headaches, and flop around dangerously close to the end of the mat space. The same way goes for when I’m training in jiu jitsu too—I like the problem solving aspect of working through a complex set of issues. No matter how messy the problem, there is a certain type of elegant beauty that comes with being brave (and patient) enough to dig into the chaos.

Some of you didn’t get promoted this weekend, and I think you might have hoped to. I know that feeling because I’ve been there before. The disappointment is real. It hurts. And it’s okay to let it hurt.

But whenever I get that sick feeling and feel the unbearably hot emotions rising to the surface, I always try to ask myself one question:

Will there be jiu jitsu soon?

If the answer is yes, then despite everything going on, then despite the pain of disappointment, I feel a little better because I get to train, to be with my friends, to be a martial artist.

Will there be jiu jitsu soon?

If the answer is yes, then even when you’re sitting in the dark, you know you’ll be back on the mats before long—sweating, learning, laughing about the latest technique or meme you saw.

Will there be jiu jitsu soon?

If the answer is yes, then no amount of disappointment, setback, or uncertainty can stop you from walking through the door, getting on the mat, and doing the thing that you love.

Let me tell you about the kids class the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

We had one kid show up with his dad, and it was clear that when the class time rolled around, no other kids were going to be there. He had been playing video games, and when he came downstairs, it was apparent that there were some big feelings being felt.

He didn’t even want to get on the mat, not even after his dad bribed him with a movie night.

And it was in that moment that I remembered my first time training at this school and how it could have easily been me who walked away from trying jiu jitsu again, if not for the person who had stayed to train with me. So I picked up some dodgeballs and invited him on the mats to at least toss them around the padded walls. I hoped that if he just got on the mat, he would be willing to train.

And then something beautiful happened…he changed his mind and decided that he would consider taking a private lesson for 15 minutes, and then he could leave And wouldn’t you know it, in the next 5 minutes, three other kids showed up to train. The first kid, who didn’t want to stay, ended up training the whole time.

I thought about that kid this weekend. About how showing up is sometimes the only thing we can do, and somehow it’s always enough. Because there was jiu jitsu yesterday. There is jiu jitsu today.

And there will always be jiu jitsu tomorrow—if we show up.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Peace in jiu jitsu, I’ve discovered, lives not in control but in acceptance. For years, I fought against this truth. I trained for every scenario I could imagine, only to be undone by the smallest shift in timing. Each session opened up a kaleidoscope of possibility, but I couldn’t see it—I was too busy trying to force the pieces back into their original configuration, too desperate to cling to the familiar.

The day after I finished competing at Grappling Industries, I found myself on the IBJJF website and wondering if I needed to compete more before Euros in January. Sure, the competition went well, but could I repeat that intensity again? Where to go? New York, South Carolina, maybe even—so help me—Florida? Would I fly in the day of or spend huge amounts of money on a hotel? The thought of even registering was enough to make me want to lay down and take a nap. After about an hour, I closed my laptop, dazed and exhausted, like I had just spent three minutes fighting for my life out of a brown belt’s fully locked triangle.

I’ve spent years trying to engineer a version of competing that doesn’t feel so heavy. Better training plans. Different self-talk. Adjusted expectations. None of it changes the fundamental truth: some parts of this will always be difficult.

This brings me to the question I can’t stop asking: If I can’t control certain aspects of competing anyway, what’s actually stopping me from doing more of it?

The answer, I suspect, is simpler than I want to admit. Part of me still resists the idea that outcomes are beyond my control. I still want to feel fully prepared before I step on the mat—to Advance to Go, to Collect the $2.00 Gold medal, and to avoid getting stuck in North South Jail.

These thoughts feed one fantasy: that if I train enough, with the right people, execute perfectly, I’ll not only win—I’ll skip the part where I’m texting my friends “shaking and crying rn 💩” from the bathroom before my first match.

Acceptance is far more than passive surrender—it’s empowerment. When I accept things as they are in the present moment, all those variables I thought I needed to control simply fall away. Not because they’ve disappeared, but because I’ve stopped giving them power. My questions are no longer about whether the bathroom is going to run out of toilet paper, whether I’m going to end up on someone’s Instagram highlight reel, or whether my referee will make me wear the ugly green-yellow competitor belt because he feels like it. Instead, my focus shifts to playing my game, becoming hyper-aware of my opponent’s movements, and finding the grips that I have trained for.

I’m no longer trying to glue down every tumbling piece in the kaleidoscope. Instead, I marvel at how the image changes as it turns. I direct my energy inward—toward the martial artist in me, the accumulated wisdom unique to my body and mind.

Acceptance isn’t confidence. Confidence is too flighty, too dependent on the pieces falling just so. Acceptance runs deeper. It’s trusting that even as the kaleidoscope shifts with each new disturbance, the pieces themselves—the ones that make me who I am—remain mine.

This shift, though, didn’t happen overnight. When I start to bemoan how hard things feel, my sports psychologist always comes back to a familiar refrain: “even though.” Even though I am scared, I still compete. Even though I am tired, I still commit. Even though I am discouraged, I still keep going. I used to mistake my anxiety for evidence of inadequacy—proof that I couldn’t handle what lay ahead.

But the fear was never the problem. The problem was believing that having these emotions meant something was wrong with me. That I was broken for feeling it. That better athletes, braver people, didn’t feel this way.

Now I see it differently. My fear doesn’t need solving. It needs accepting. Feeling afraid and doing it anyway isn’t a contradiction. It’s the whole point.

Last Saturday, I taught class while exhausted and running on empty. In the past, I would have spent the entire hour fighting that fatigue, resenting it, trying to think my way into feeling more awake. Why am I so tired? How do I fix this? What if I’m not good enough like this?

Instead, I accepted it. I’m tired. Okay. What do my students need from me right now?

It ended up being one of the best classes I’ve taught. Not despite the fatigue, but perhaps because of it. Because I wasn’t wasting energy fighting reality, I had bandwidth to notice everything else—the subtle shifts in body language, the moment someone almost understood but needed one more cue, the question forming in their eyes before they asked it.

The problem that cries the loudest is not always the one that we need to listen to. Rather, it’s my quiet inner voice and the silent pauses between my thoughts that I’m learning to honor the most. When I come back to acceptance as my north star— when I ask “What do I need right now?” instead of “Why do I feel this way?” I let the colorful pieces fall where they’re meant to be.

Take that question about competing more before Euros. The question matters less than it used to. The outcome is not what I need to control. I heard a saying once: “let your butterflies fly in formation”—a way of transforming nervous energy into flight.

As it happens, a group of butterflies is known as a kaleidoscope. This discovery is so perfect that I couldn’t have planned it better myself. So even as the world keeps spinning, I’m learning to float like a butterfly in my own kaleidoscope—accepting the shift, trusting the flight.

It is said the Buddha once asked a student, 

“If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? 
If the person is struck by a second arrow, is it even more painful?”

He then went on to explain, “In life, we can’t always control the first arrow.

However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. 

This second arrow is optional.”

Story phrasing by Anja Tanhane

I have been working on healing my thumb lately. Two years ago, when we were in the middle of house hunting, I had started to pick at my finger whenever I felt stress coming. Without getting too graphic, the damage I did to my nail matrix meant that the new nail growing out would be disturbingly marred by jagged ridges. Even though I had periods of relative calm after we fully settled in, I could never really get to a point where I let my thumb heal completely.

Even though in the past few months there have been more stressful days than not, I’m proud to say that I’m only a few millimeters away from seeing a smooth nail. It is a point of pride for me to look at my thumb and not have it resemble a canyon of despair carved by months of relentless emotional damage.

I cannot say fully what has changed recently, only that this is a problem that I have been dealing with as long as I can remember. This is the first time that I was truly able to find a different way to manage the uncomfortable feelings without resorting to physical pain to distract me from the mental ones. And this is the mindset that I want to share with you today.

The same impulses that drove me to damage my thumb—that urge to do something, anything, when faced with discomfort—show up everywhere in my life, especially in jiu jitsu.

I’m someone who is inherently uncomfortable with conflict. One might think it’s a bit unusual for someone like me to do martial arts, but actually, it’s the reason why I stay. Conflict in a combat situation, even in something as artificial as the sports context, is something that brings out the best and worst in me. I’m fortunate to be able to use conflict as a way of looking at myself honestly and seeing both the delightful positive and the brutally negative sides of me, and everything that is in between.

What I’m learning now is how to deal with conflict in a way that best serves me. When I sense that conflict or even mere dissonance is occurring, my default reaction is to freeze (do nothing) or fawn (stuff down my feelings/try to create outer peace). To make a long story short: the freeze response has not served me in the long run because it results in deep-seated trauma that eventually destroys me from the inside, and the fawn response generates resentment in me that eventually geysers into a rage that is not unlike the fury of an un-burped kombucha bottle.

Which leads me to the third response from conventional psychology: fight. In some situations, fighting is the right response for me. Pushing back against bullying is important. Standing up against micro-aggressions, even unintentional ones, is important. However, when it comes to my emotional state, shaking up a kombucha bottle that is already overpressured has often simply made things worse.

Most people would feel that it is obvious not to shake a pressurized container before opening it. Yet, when it comes to facing one’s emotions, it is a much more difficult—and subtle—task to consider that what is needed is not necessarily more but less.

A few months ago, before the Virginia IBJJF, I told my sports psychologist that I didn't want to spend the moments before competing shaking up my can of nerves so they could explode in my face, which I had done at Pans. After patiently listening to me recount the tumultuous 72 hours before my match, she made a shockingly simple, but profound, observation.

“You're already doing a hard thing,” she said. “Going to a different environment, putting yourself out there publicly, knowing that you might fail—those are already hard things. So maybe…you don't need to make it even harder.”

When I feel stress from the pressure of competing (the first arrow), I feel the need to pile on additional thoughts, judgment, and meaning to the situation (the second arrow). I pile on because the chaos I create in my own mind feels more manageable than the chaos around me.

My sports psychologist helped me see that the piling on wasn’t inevitable—it was a choice. Years of conditioning had taught my brain to default to this response whenever uncertainty arose. But the longer I had relied on this pattern, the scarier it became to try something different. She challenged me to consider what would happen if I simply acknowledged the stressful situation for what it was, rather than trying to control it through mental gymnastics. This shift from managing to accepting, she suggested, would leave me feeling far less exhausted.

In other words, I could make the second arrow optional.

But understanding this concept and applying it on the mats are two different things. In training, I always work with a partner or opponent, depending on the setting. They may fire a first arrow, and it hits, in the form of a guard pass, serious submission attempt, or an imminent face plant moment. Their arrow is sharp and it exposes me. It hurts. I bleed.

The second arrow, though, is more deadly. It is crafted to fly accurately into the darkest parts of myself. Anxiety forms the nock, holding the arrow in place. Shame creates the fletching that effortlessly helps it fly. Fear of failure makes up the heavy shaft, and at the point—my fear of being worthless. This is what turns a simple guard pass into an entire testimony of my skill. This is what turns an off-balance into something that could send me to the shadow realm.

But more and more often, I try to remind myself that the second arrow is optional.

I remind myself that feeling unpleasant sensations from the first arrow does not mean I am weak, stupid, or lazy.

The first arrow hurts because I am human.

The journey of identifying these second arrows will likely always be a work in progress, though with time and practice, I'm confident it will become easier. I'm confident too that if you've made it this far, you are also inspired to identify how your second arrows are landing.

And maybe, just maybe, you might see me in the distance, with two (fully intact) thumbs up, cheering your progress on.

We move above the moving tree...
But reconciled among the stars.
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

A few weeks ago, I hurt my back during a wrestling drill. I stayed home from work for two days and carefully biked into the office on the third. That same day, I decided to return to training. My coach wasn’t thrilled to see me — and understandably so. He felt I should have taken more time to recover before stepping back onto the mats. But after a massage session that felt more like a spiritual cleansing than physical bodywork, I felt grounded enough to return, though I approached takedowns with extra caution.

I was able to bounce back quickly thanks to my mobility and lifting routine, which had given my body a strong foundation for recovery. Although the injury initially felt severe, my willingness to take immediate action — combined with that physical foundation — made a big difference. The injury itself may have been outside my control, but how I handled the aftermath was entirely within my power.

And as I healed from yet another jiu jitsu injury, I couldn’t help but notice that one thing remained constant: that for the mind and heart, the path towards true healing and growth is a far more complex journey.

In general, I think I’ve developed effective coping mechanisms for dealing with adversity. But I’ve come to realize that healing from mental and emotional stressors can be far harder than recovering from physical ones. When the stressor lives inside your mind, solving it through mental gymnastics becomes its own paradox. It’s a bit like trying to dry yourself off while still standing in the rain.

Lately, the biggest challenge I’ve been reflecting on is how to truly listen to, observe, and nourish my Inner Nature. You might call it “soul-searching,” though it feels less like searching and more like feeling what has always been the Truth all along. Through my work with a sports psychologist, I’ve come to recognize that some of my ambitions, values, and preferences don’t always align with the environment or culture around me. I’ve slowly accepted that I can’t truly know what’s going on in someone else’s head — and they can’t fully understand what’s in mine. Trying to force that kind of understanding often leads to disappointment.

While that realization could feel bleak, it’s actually helped me focus more on the people in my life — including myself — who have the emotional capacity to listen, hold space, and care. As a result, I feel less drained by the constant need to explain and justify other people’s behavior, their responses to mine, and my reactions to theirs. That exhausting carousel of emotional interpretation has mostly quieted into a manageable hum. It used to feel like my thoughts were strapped to the Lead Horse of the Emotional Apocalypse, galloping to the tune of a nauseatingly repetitive organ.

I’ve also recognized that in my craving for connection, I often use vulnerability and honesty in an attempt to invite others to meet me in kind. If I can signal that I’m comfortable sharing something intimate, I hope they’ll feel safe doing the same. But the truth is, not everyone will — or even wants to. As painful as that can be, setting clearer boundaries often leads to better relationships — ones that aren’t built on forcing something that isn’t naturally there.

Ironically, with the increased focus on “listening” to myself, I’ve found that my Inner Nature is usually quiet — not absent, just content, like a cat purring quietly to itself in a sunlit room. When I’m being authentic — not performing or preemptively managing others’ reactions — everyone, including my Inner Nature, seems to breathe easier. My Inner Nature: happy to sit in stillness, happy to enjoy the immaculate vibes.

I am happy (and relieved) to see from my friends how they accept my authentic self. Between the words of our conversations is a deeper, silent exchange — that of one Inner Nature seeing another. It might not seem like I’m opening up more — reminder again that it’s impossible to see what is going on in someone’s head — but I am. My connection to them more than outweighs the handful of negative responses that I’ve received from being more courageous in taking up space and not being “small.” I’ve come to realize that no matter the environment, my authentic self will shine through. It’s better to grow the positivity it brings than to keep trying to shrink the negativity. Great power comes from such integrity.

But alongside what I’ve gained, I grieve what I’ve lost — especially the relationships that have changed, or inevitably will.

Grief is a feeling that isn’t only about physical death. Grief, too, is about the dying of expectations in slow and subtle ways, invisible to ourselves until the tragic ending can no longer be denied. Grief is about when we cannot reach back into the past to bring something into our present or future, no matter how much we try.

I’m reminded of a passage from John Green’s book Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, in which he reframes physical death:

And so, I’ve come to see that the end of what we know is natural. We all carry with us unresolved endings — hopes that a role model will become a guide, a decision will transform us, or an achievement will make us whole. What’s unnatural is the struggle to make things mean what they don’t — to force a mentor to be more than they are, or a gold medal to fill a void it never could.

Sometimes we try to make everything succeed, but eventually, we must set down the watering can and accept that the seedling will never grow.

What is natural is death. What is natural is acceptance.

And even while the dust still moves, there rises a hidden laughter.

The voice is not malicious, nor do I greet it with sorrow. I have long since accepted that competing is a skill, and like all skills, it takes practice for me to get good at it. Some people compete and start winning right away. For others, even elite black belts, it takes time. Being “bad at competing” is not a problem, nor is it a personal failing, as long as you see the overall experience as the prize, instead of only the outcome.

When I played piano in my early years, I had moderate success in judged recitals. I still remember going to a recital wondering if I had properly memorized the piece and then being pleasantly surprised that I did. I guess I had blanked out all the preparation that it took to get to that point, either from just being too overloaded with adrenaline or simply not understanding why I was going to a recital. For me, I would sometimes get the best rating, but more often than not, I would get an “okay” rating.

The ratings never bothered me, and if it bothered my piano instructors, I couldn’t tell or didn’t care. I didn’t put any of my self-worth on piano, because I wasn’t passionate about it. I could handle and did discover what life was without the piano, after I quit around 6th or 7th grade. That time was replaced by other outcome-oriented events, too — track & field and violin. Mostly my feeling towards both was wholly neutral during meets, tryouts, and auditions. It was nice to do “okay” in track (our middle school didn’t even have its own track to practice on; we used the defunct high school track) and to do “okay” in orchestra. I didn’t particularly work hard at both, unless I was threatened with getting a bad grade first.

In present day, I feel as if I’m digging deeper these days as to what it means to do jiu jitsu, how it relates to the other parts of my life, and how competition defines or doesn’t define me. I’m processing how this third Pans competition went for me, not in terms of outcomes, but whether it has set me on a path of changing and growing, which is ultimately what I aspire for anyways.

The narrative or belief that I’m “bad at competing” has a lot of friends. Performance anxiety is definitely one. It’s funny because I don’t have performance anxiety in other places, like public speaking. In fact, when I’m asked to give presentations, even on topics to the bigwigs at my job, I’m not fazed. I feel the same rush of energy similar to a competition, with the major difference that I can somehow channel and settle that energy into something productive, like preparing my notes or hashing out last minute details.

But when it comes to jiu jitsu competition, the struggle still is real. One, I have to face another human being who presumably knows just as much jiu jitsu, if not more, than I do. Two, competitions always take place in an unfamiliar venue and time/place from my regular training, which is a far cry from strolling into a conference room on a floor where you know if you have enough time to make an iced latte before the meeting begins. It would be funny if we had a match in any of the conference rooms, though. Third, I seem to have an interesting habit of crying a ton before any competition.

Yet most of all what I would like to reflect back on the Pans experience is that I could have done a better job of managing my emotions. Sure, there was to be a level of anxiety involved, but I found myself almost manufacturing a level of hysteria that I felt like was necessary for Pans (one of the so-called Grand Slam tournaments). It was as if I was almost afraid of being too calm, too zen, to do well because I didn’t have the magic nerves to put me in the right place. Looking back, I could have done more to relax sooner at my hotel — like taking my first shower in a timely way upon arrival, instead of collapsing on the bed and staring at my phone. I had proven strategies and ways of knowing exactly how I wanted to relax, but I just didn’t put them into practice.

My sports psychologist and I are going to meet about this, so we can work out a better way for me to on-ramp myself into a competition. I already have a pretty good pre-performance routine for the 30 minutes before my first match, but from this competition, I realized that no routine is going to be able to dig myself out of a mental downward spiral lasting the 72 to 48 prior. In truth, I am not proud of my Pans performance because I recognized and saw a better path for myself that involved much less emotional drama. I also felt, deep down, that if I wasn’t so convinced that I needed a specific type and level of anxiety in order to win, I could have walked into my first match with a lot more powerful energy.

This is what I mean when I say that I’m “bad at competing,” though the characterization does seem a little unfair and one-sided even as I write. I suppose if I were to be a little bit more compassionate, it would be what I concluded about my jiu jitsu in all of the competitions I’ve done so far — that I just simply have “a lot of things to work on growing and deepening my understanding of” when it comes to competition.

Nor should I feel sad about the fact that progress is not to be won, but to be earned, because I know that when I work to better myself in jiu jitsu—if done right—it can enrich all parts of my living experience.

Postscript

Oh, I couldn't stop it
Tried to figure it out
But everything kept moving
And the noise got too loud
With everyone around me saying
"You should be so happy now"

Oh, if you keep reachin' out
Then I'll keep comin' back
And if you're gone for good
Then I'm okay with that
And if you leave the light on
Then I'll leave the light on
(Light on, light on, light on)
And I am findin' out
There's just no other way
That I'm still dancin'
At the end of the day

Maggie Rogers, Light On

What I didn’t understand about competitions, that I’m trying to do now, is to set clear goals and intentions for what I want to get out of the entire experience. Competing is obviously a deviation from my normal schedule. I have friends who are traveling to different cities, celebrating birthdays, going to brunch, or just plain old sleeping in this weekend. I used to get to my hotel room and wish that I was anywhere but waiting for a competition to start. Now I understand that the experience has already begun.

I also used to fight against the notion that I had a “competition mode.” In some ways, I still resist it because I’m not really sure I’ve experienced my competition mode enough to enjoy it. Though perhaps the point isn’t to really enjoy it, but to allow the moments to unfold and to not judge them as good or bad either way. Call it “locked in” or “in the zone” — I have come to understand that when it comes to dealing with another physical opponent, you have to get physical. All the meditating, journaling, mobility, visualizing — all this stuff in the mind eventually condenses into one moment of just you and your opponent.

I have been crying a lot after practice. Well, at least definitely above average for me.

My coach tells me that it is okay to cry. He has told me this on a Sunday, a Tuesday, and Thursday. I fill in the gaps myself on some Saturdays just for good measure. He tells me this because I talk about crying like it is a bad thing, because my brain can’t logically wrap around the idea that sometimes my body needs to have that physical release of emotion.

Crying is not a weakness. It is, however, for me, a sign that sometimes I’ve been putting myself through too much a lot. Jiu jitsu is weird in that way because it can be an incredibly stressful experience, if you choose to go down paths that are more stress-inducing than not.

The first few weeks after signing up for a competition aren’t really that different from normal training. For me, I think it’s a combination of denial that I will need to put in the extra work and the desire to ride the temporary win of having done a “hard thing,” which is to go through the financially painful step of dropping $100+ on a single elimination event. I daydream a little about winning, or maybe dropping in at a new school, or what luxurious food I’ll get to eat as a reward for competing. It’s not a bad time.

But inevitably, the doubts and thoughts start to creep in. I start to worry about mundane things like if my competition belt has shrunk too much (even though I air dry it and wear it only once a month) or how I’m going to avoid the temptation of the 3pm daily snack hour at work (even though I usually forget about it by the time it rolls around because I’m writing yet another polite Slack message “just following up / do you mind giving me the status of”). Those tiny little anxieties, the brief moments of heart palpatitations — they snowball into major worries, like fears of being submitted in less than a minute, the fears of performing poorly in public, and the fears of disappointing my coach and my teammates.

It’s at this point where I start to spiral into an existential cycle of despair, of which crying after practice is the tip of the iceberg rapidly approaching the edge of a supposedly unsinkable ship. It’s at this point where I really start to wrestle with the mental and physical challenges of preparation. Where I am, on some days, physical and mentally ravenous because I don’t have enough: not enough cardio, skill, mat time, will to win, motivation, speed, timing, urgency, fight — whatever it is, I don’t have enough.

I don’t always like writing about these unpleasant emotions, but sometimes, writing about them is the release that I need. In a way, writing about the challenges that I deal with is a way that I hope to emotionally connect to people — to know that I’m not alone in the struggles that I deal with. To reassure myself that I don’t have to be alone in fighting those struggles too. We may not have the solutions, but at least we both have the same understanding of the problems.

There is a small part of competition that is stressful because of the competing itself. I do think that going into one-to-one physical challenge with a stranger is tough, but it is incomparable to the challenge that my mind can bring. If those feelings were already there — but just dormant — then they sure as hell bubble to the surface when a competition is there to shake the can.

I think that is what engages me to do jiu jitsu, not because I’m good at it, but because some days, it makes me feel any emotion that’s the opposite of being comfortable. Competitions are there to improve my skill, but it’s also in those moments in preparing that I am forced to take a good, hard, and honest look at myself. To admit to myself what is true, even if it hurts, because it will be the first step to growth.

I am not a lazy person. Years of therapy has gotten me to that point where I can believe it almost 99.9% of the time, except when emotionally and physically overwrought to the point that the harsh thoughts take over (*ahem* looking at you, Tuesday comp class). I am not lazy, but I am a huge creature of comfort. I like my habits and my routines. I like sitting underneath a fluffy blanket as I sip black tea with lactose-free milk and turbinado sugar while my cats purr in my lap. I enjoy immersing myself in a good Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode, and then another one, and then another one.

If the famous song from Rent measures a year “in daylights, in sunsets/ in midnights, in cups of coffee” I would measure my year in naptimes, in blankets/ in takeout, in cups of bubble tea.

For people who say that they don’t even remember life before the pandemic, for me 2020 would have been a different year anyways. It was the start of the beginning of a new chapter in my career away from being an associate with biglaw billable hours. The pandemic in many ways magnified parts of myself that I had neglected — basic ingredients for sanity like ability to take more than 0.1 hour breaks from work and finding a community centered around martial arts. I spent the greater part of the past five years trying to heal while at the same time trying to fight off my mind’s desire to cling to the familiar, no matter how harmful it was to my long-term wellbeing.

This is why I can write so easily about creature comforts. I have spent a long time cultivating them, but perhaps now, to the detriment of other contexts that require a more austere approach. That is not to say that suffering is necessary or good for everyone, but for me, I recognize that some discomfort is important for my growth. In fact, discomfort has been only constant source of my growth as I look back on my successes, both objective and subjective in nature.

Those failures and successes and the neutral bits in between, like it or not they inform the person I am right now, right here. When I won this past weekend my coach told me that it was only because of those losses that I had endured that allowed me to arrive at this point. It resonated with something my sports psychologist told me as well, which is that the conversations we are having now were only possible because of the months of discussions we had put in during the past year.

However, you can’t spell experience without “price.” For the first time in a long time, I really understood the cost of what it meant to work hard at something.

I paid the price not because I was being forced to. Not because it was vital to my sense of self-worth or image in front of my peers. But because I wanted to. The emotional and intellectual labor made me feel as if I was truly an artist, no matter how tortured at times.

Postscript

Standing in darkness with empty hands
I still know how to use 'em, but the miles made other plans
Running out of highway, shorter on time
Feel the dead weight deepen and the devil coming down the line
The dashboard shaking, I steady the wheel
And I make every turn by memory, by feel
Towards a black horizon, an unbroken dawn
Will this endless stretch of desert road get me back where I belong?

Will you turn the bright lights on?
Baby, turn the bright lights on
'Cause I haven't forgotten where it is I'm from
Look out your window for me, here I come
Will you turn the bright lights on?
Baby, turn the bright lights on
Put me back on the corner to sing my song
I'm a shoo-in tonight, turn the bright lights on

PS If you’ve read my past work, you know that there is always a song that describes my major emotional developments in jiu jitsu. We have got show tunes, vocal and actual fireworks, and a sure-fire karoake pick.

I think that there is a time and place for writing these advice pieces, but lately, I haven’t had much advice to give. I more feel like I have been living life, instead of commentating on it — and maybe that’s okay. Most people who start out writing for the wider audience have at some point felt the pressure to live up to the expectation that there must be some sort of “value add” in what they put out in the world, instead of simply releasing their thoughts into the world and seeing what would happen.

I had an incredibly busy month in December, since I decided to compete in New Jersey pretty much at the 11th hour. I wasn’t supposed to be competing according to my plans that I had written out the month before — I was supposed to be focusing on mentally preparing for the holidays and travel home. But, I think that my track record of sticking to what I’m “supposed” to do has never been that great.

That is how I found myself yet again on a grungy train to New Jersey. How I found myself stepping over a homeless person who was not quite conscious, but not quite unconscious, on the steps leading down to the station exit. How I somehow inexplicably gave the wrong directions to the Uber driver for the second time in New Jersey for my hotel.

I went to bed at 2AM, woke up at 11AM, packed up my things and went to the competition venue. I watched one of my teammates skulk around the bullpen as his opponent failed to show for the scheduled match. I watched two of the brown belts that had come to coach us eat two enormous prosciutto sandwiches. Then it was go-time for me. I went 1-1 that day, enough to take a silver.

On the train ride home I mostly found myself alternating between staring off into space, napping poorly, and updating my teammates on my comings and goings of the tournament. I was happy and relieved not to have messed up the same ways as I did in the last New Jersey run, but also sad that I couldn’t manage to have a performance good enough for gold.

December would prove itself to be emotional through and through. Our school had a promotion and even though I had confided in two teammates that I wanted to be promoted to brown belt, I wasn’t. It was a long 30 minutes in the shower when I went home. My imposter syndrome had reached an all-time high; I knew that I had improved but in that moment. after all the competing, the drills, the sparring, the studying and the note-taking I had desperately wanted to be rewarded with external validation.

I cried in practice the next week.

I knew that December would be hard, but I didn’t expect it to be this hard. It was one of those months where you really have to dig deep and think to yourself what the heck you have to do to change the way things are happening and the way you feel about situations outside of your complete control. I knew that if I didn’t take any lessons away from these experiences I would find January to be the continuation of a downward existential spiral.

When life is just one thing after another, it can be hard to catch your breath. On one hand, I knew that I had made certain choices to compete, to get my hopes up on promotions, to travel back home during the holidays. On the other hand, I felt like I wasn’t expected to be so beaten down with the emotions associated with the challenges. But I do think enduring this emotional hardship made me recognize the areas of myself that I needed to really work on. Sometimes, you don’t really get a say in the moments of your life that force you to reflect on who you want to be and what stands in your way of that. Sometimes, you just have to recognize the moment as it comes.

I watched a video the other day about the crafting of Japanese swords. In the clip, the artist explained how they could identify the era the sword was made in through the sword’s appearance — and if the pattern was distinct enough — the sword’s creator.

It is always fascinating to watch these types of videos. It’s one thing to see the end result — the blade laying neatly next to its kin as if they are remains of ancient history preserved in amber — and quite another to see the moments in which a sword begins to emerge from the molten, fierce mess of a more-butter-than-metal piece of iron. To think that this incomprehensible, shapeless form could take on so much personality that we could identify its maker is something that I am confident would take me many decades to understand.

The closest I can come to time spent in a craft itself would be perhaps a somewhat circular conclusion: my life. I think of the years I have spent living as whatever I saw fit to be some version of “me.” But I think after all these years I am still somewhat of an apprentice at living life — only a beginner at even striking the iron while it is hot, let alone imbuing a blade with so much life that samurai used it to take away that of others. I have spent many years trying to awkwardly handle hot butter-metal and to emulate the forms of people who were seen as exemplars of their time.

In jiu jitsu, I have strived as well. This past year has been filled with many competitions (more than I intended) and many heartbreaks (more than I wanted). As I tried harder to be better I found myself struggling more against the reality that I was not fully in control of how things turned out, but only what I would make of them. I took aim at success with what I believed to be my own powerfully created weapon at the time, and I missed.

Recently I’ve explored the idea of how I would feel if I let go of wanting certain achievements to come my way. I’ve been playing with the idea that “less is more” — not that I would care any less or try less — but that I would approach each moment with intentionality instead of looking to rack up pure mat time. I have journal prompts at the ready for checking in on my relationship with imposter syndrome. I try to open up Headspace in moments where I find I have 5-10 minutes of time to spare.

It’s still hard when I see other people getting promoted in jiu jitsu. I think that there will always be a part of me that compares myself unfairly to other people. But I live with the hope that as long as I keep working on it, with time, that part of me will be overshadowed by the better parts of myself. The parts that embody the willingness to explore one’s potential, look forward to the unknown, and create beautiful things.

Maples are some of the most glorious ones — their fiery hues reminding me of the pumpkin that we set out in the sea of crunchy brown for the squirrels to munch on; their yellow turning from a vibrant bike vest yellow to a sad overripened banana in need of a smoothie fix.

Then, there are the elegant gingko trees, which I’ve learned shed all of their leaves at once. On some unspoken day, if you happen to look left or right depending on your direction of travel, you see that the historic townhouses in DC take on a dazzling veil of yellow.

Then there is the tree in my front yard, which prefers a more simple approach. The leaves that change yellow fall. The ones that are still green, do not.

Each time that winter approaches, I become increasingly aware of the fact that the seasons do change. As much as I look for stability, routine, and sameness in my daily routine, I’m also reminded of how much things do change on a regular basis. How one day, you wake up, and suddenly, you have to put on a thicker coat.

This journey into improving my half guard was filled with many surprises along the way. I feel like what was the most unexpected was the enormous change in attitude that I had towards learning.

Specifically, I started to accept failure as more of a reason to continue, not to stop. The drills that I were doing had me starting in a disadvantageous position where the chance of failure was high. For half guard, it was working to stay on my side when I wasn’t allowed to use the knee shield at all — while my opponent was trying to flatten me with a crossface and an underhook.

I got flattened every 5-10 seconds on average on those first few days of floundering around.

After a week, I was discouraged, not because I felt like that I couldn’t get to a better level of skill, but because it was taking so (painfully) long to get there. I was tired of experiencing failure at a much higher volume than if I had trained without these constraints. The disappointment that came with such failure wasn’t fun to deal with at all.

Yet as I persisted, I started to see why such failure was necessary, and why it was so important to happen to me over a prolonged period of trying. Each time I failed, I was able to flex another important skill — reflection — to come up with possible theories of what to do differently the next time. When something went wrong or was simply unplanned, I started to see how repeatedly asking myself “why” was sharpening my analytical skills in jiu jitsu.

I also eventually developed a little bit of an emotional immunity to failure — at least when it came to causing negative emotions. Failure didn’t seem so scary or painful the 50th or 500th try around. Sure, the first few times might be awful, but somehow, I got more used to it. Failure became nothing special.

When you fail a lot, you tend to look for resources to rescue you. In my case, I wanted the instructionals to give me the answers because I didn’t want to find them for myself. In the beginning, I didn’t believe that I possessed the ability to find those answers. I felt as if my experiences of getting squashed was teaching me nothing except how much I hated the half guard exercise.

Yet half guard — especially without the knee shield — is a hellishly tricky position to play well. Imagine if you were to be in a really tight space and if you make the wrong move spikes come out and poke you. That’s what it is like being in half guard and trying to get the underhook or to stay on your side.

Eventually though, what I realized is that it was necessary for me to be in that uncomfortable space, again and again, to learn all of the traps that were before me. I could not explore the position as an abstract concept, or as a theory. I had to literally get into this hot, claustrophobic space of my own volition, survive long enough, and then somehow claw my way back onto the surface.

Instructionals were helpful to a certain degree to guide me in my options, but the execution in the moment was entirely up to me. I had to find the angles in which I could off balance my opponent, discover which places were dire straits versus a mere inconvenience, and deal with making decisions in an ever-shifting maelstrom of attacks. Those were not things that I could learn from listening to someone else talk about it. I had to experience them to understand.

I feel that the greatest transformation is in my confidence that I can eventually improve on any technique or position that I set my mind to. I now have a reasonable expectation that improvements will take time and often not at the pace that I want them to happen. It somehow makes me feel even prouder of these changes because I had to persist through challenges, instead of having the problem solved in a day or two. For the first time, I feel like I’ve earned the fruits of my labor.

Going into this process, I knew that I didn’t want a repeat of the past. Specifically, I didn’t want to berate myself or attribute my lack of progress to laziness or lack of talent. After many days of asking myself what I really wanted out of this process, I came to the conclusion that no matter where I landed, I would be able to sincerely state that I did it my way — that I allowed myself to use all of my strengths in creative thinking, critical inquiry, and fierce tenacity (without the meatheadness) to come up with the best way for me to learn. I’m so happy that what started out as a “sentence” to a hard position has now become a period of time that I can look back on and say these words:

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

Some people might think that these words are harsh. Isn’t showing up to practice good enough?

I have been accused of being hard on myself. I think I’m still guilty of that. But as I work on myself more, there’s an unexpected thing that has happened to me: instead of thinking that I can settle, instead I’m believing that I’m capable of continually raising my standards, seeking new challenges for growth, and seeing just how far I can go if I let go of the historical limitations that I’ve placed on myself.

The end of last year and the start of this one was rough. I have an draft essay that describes — in an alarming number of paragraphs — all the ways I was depressed in January. I was dealing with a personal reckoning of sorts, then. On the outside, I was doing everything right, but on the instead, I felt as if everything was wrong. I had to confront the harsh reality that even though I did have moments of tranquility and happiness in my training, there was still an underlying unease about whether what I was doing was sustainable and authentic to myself.

I was, and still am, coming to terms with the traumatic experiences of my last school. It’s a lot better now (three cheers for therapy), but I had spent a lot of last year just hating on a certain individual and their school, to an inordinate degree. All that negative energy caught up to me at the start of the new year. I tried to take the easy path out by asking for reconciliation (a pitiful attempt on my part), only to have the effort thrown back in my face.

Change is scary and uncomfortable, but I’d argue that desiring change, while knowing it can’t happen overnight, is an even worse feeling. It’s a little bit like when you realize that your dream is actually a nightmare, but you still can’t quite shake yourself awake to get out of it. Or perhaps less dramatically, for us who are fortunate to have food on demand — when you realize that you are starving but can’t quite get the chance to eat right away.

In the past, when I realized that I wanted to change, I would make dramatic gestures, as if I was hoping to cram all of the work that needed to be done into an impossible window of time. Doing so only left me burned out and lost at the end of only a week or two of the supposed new way. I’ve only recently discovered that it is OK to slow down, take my time, and go step by step in the direction that I want to go.

I’m also learning to celebrate my progress, while maintaining a healthy desire to do more. When I celebrate my own progress, I learn to internalize and credit myself for the actions that I’ve taken to bring about change. It’s not just a self-congratulatory “look at me” act, but more of a private affair in which I allow myself to acknowledge my own agency and effort. With this attitude, the words “I can do better” is less of a directive, or a negative judgment, but more of a way to encapsculate the part of me that has done a lot, and the part of me that will be able to do more.

To me, progress feels authentic and sustainable when I don’t lose myself in the pursuit of my goals. I don’t contort myself in hurtful ways to achieve my goals, instead, I keep making adjustments until the goal and the self come together. It seems strange, but goals can change as you change too, and it’s in the maturity to allow some give and take that I think really solidifies meaningful change. The process is overall less rigid and frankly less painful because you’re letting in what you are ready to let in, and you keep out what may be less useful.

There are always going to be things that I want to get better at that I can’t focus on because I’m pursuing other things. These goals remind me of books that I’ve started but haven’t finished. Perhaps they have sat on the shelf and gathered dust, or perhaps they’re only there for a fortnight while I take care of something else. Yet every goal that I put down and pick up again has a bookmark, a place where I’ve paused with intention because marked my progress away for safekeeping. Wherever my attention needs to be next, I can feel confident that it’s okay to set something down for a little while, even if it feels I don’t want to let go.

Our life is full of emotional experiences but I do think that understanding the significance of those experiences has helped me immensely. Instead of rushing from goal to goal, I take a more deliberate approach where I move with resolve, not gut-wrenching anxiety. Taking the time to understand how experiences affect me, how I process the change, and what I see is the path ahead is something that I’ve ignored for a long time. But, I can do better. As I always have done.

I’m not good with emotions. I’m one of those people that you might meet and then suggest after a while, “Have you tried meditating before?” because I’m full of anxiety and anxiety from anxiety.

My time with my newest therapist has helped me so much with the skill of emotional regulation. To start, she was the one who got me to buy into the idea that emotional regulation was not only a skill but also a skill that I could get good at — in competition, training, and other parts of life. She also opened my mind to the idea that emotional regulation — not overwhelming, unbreakable confidence — was the key to tapping into the more authentic version of myself to handle pressure, instead of caving or avoiding stressful situations entirely.

I’m not a mental health professional, but I’m learning to be somewhat of an expert on myself, in particular my relationship to emotions and their effect on me. I don’t know where I read it, but I stumbled across someone discussing how difficult it was to describe emotions in words. The idea resonated with me immediately. It’s hard to “put into words” an emotional experience because it is so personal that we can twist ourselves in knots trying to get an outsider to understand.

Until you’ve felt the feeling, it’s hard to know. And when you’ve felt the feeling, it’s hard to explain to someone else. (I’d like to think this is why my essays are so long, because I’m trying to get people to understand…)

This is why the question of “how I’m feeling” — when it comes to the moments of competition — are both vividly felt and vaguely phrased. It’s a task so daunting that when I ask myself, I almost don’t know the answer (and that’s okay).

But, it’s important to try. This is the impulse that has pushed me to write more personal stories. To be vulnerable. Because in trying to express emotion, it lends itself to a wonderful opportunity for meaningful connection (this doesn’t apply to sus people and jerks, though). Connection is the antidote to a lingering loneliness that has plagued me in almost every social activity I’ve done, and now, I’m learning how to keep that gnawing sense of alienation from eating into my happiness.

So…

Are you feeling me on this?

Meditation: I finally started meditating somewhat consistently again, missing only 2-3 days at most this past month, instead of the usual 7-10 days. It’s been nice to see the cumulative, positive effect that it has in lessening my anxiety. In the past, whenever I’ve started feeling good enough, I would stop meditating. Things would then go south and then I would find myself ironically too frazzled to feel like meditation would do anything good for me. So, I’m proud of myself for sticking to it and happy that I’m feeling the benefits of it.

Sports Psychology Sessions: I am currently seeing a sports psychologist, and we have had around 6 sessions so far. The first few sessions were really about my letting out angst regarding jiu jitsu and mostly focused on my past issues. I wouldn’t say that the past is totally out of the way, but now we are finally moving onto more proactive topics, like developing confidence and working on a pre-performance routine.

I personally have found therapy to be very helpful, and so my sports psychologist is also a licensed therapist. I have also personally found the advice given to me by supposed other mental coaches in jiu jitsu to be too generalized and unhelpful. Because jiu jitsu is so important to me, the sport does bring out some deep-seated issues that perhaps have been addressed in different contexts, but are harder for me to deal with in jiu jitsu. That’s primarily the reason why having a sport psychologist has been so beneficial because it is very specific to the situations that I encounter during training and competition.

Attitude Adjustments/Awareness: I have been trying hard to have a better attitude whenever I’m met with adversity in training. During training, I often find myself getting frustrated at not being able to know how to do a specific move or not knowing the correct answer to something right away. Or I am overly concerned with what people are thinking of me when we are in the middle of drilling or sparring.

Right now, I’ve been working on letting go of these attachments and also finding something more desirable to become aware of: my own feelings and thoughts as they cross my mind while I’m on the mat. I realized that using my phone right up until the start of class was causing me to become unfocused, so I’ve taken to putting my phone in the cubbies. I also found that it helped to keep certain mantras in mind if I was intimidated by a certain sparring partner or technique. These small things helped me get back on track whenever I started to feel frustrated with myself. The more I practice it, the faster that I feel I can bring myself back to a good place.

Having Realistic Expectations: I used to think that I could watch an instructional, take detailed notes about it, and make it work almost immediately with little to no difficulty. Unfortunately, that was never the case, because as one of the black belts told me, “It’s hard to solve a problem that you’ve never encountered before.” Or, in this case, it’s hard to solve a problem that I’ve never felt before.

I got discouraged from studying as a result, because they make things seem so clear in an instructional at first, but then actual practice because one of those “expectations versus reality” meme moments that leave me questioning my ability to learn any jiu jitsu at all. Now, I have a much better approach, which is to watch the video about 1-2 max, and then have the specific intention of working on it to see where my understanding is lacking. This process of data collection is so much less nerve-wracking than the ridiculous expectation I used to have that if I was truly good for jiu jitsu, that I could download anything into my head if I just paid enough attention.

Understanding When to Train for Performance vs Understanding: Earlier on after Pans, I identified that one of my gaps was that I simply did not do enough free sparring rounds. Sometimes after a long day at work, the thought of having to focus for five straight minutes, much less get a “winning” outcome in a sparring round felt insurmountable. It was also getting in the way of growth as well, because I would think to myself, “Well I don’t want to get my guard passed today, so I guess I won’t go with X person today.”

A lot of this still goes through my head, but it’s getting better. On the days that I train for understanding, the process is much more cerebral and collaborative. I’m able to ask my partners questions and we take time to reflect on the positions and scenarios before trying again. It’s a much more nebulous process than straight repetitions, but generally, I come out of the session with at least a renewed sense of interest and knowledge about the position, or at the very least, an understanding of what I still find confusing or mysterious.

On the days that I train for performance, I make it as part of an intentional effort that folds into competition preparation. Part of competition success for me revolves around actually cuing my brain in the right way to know that RIGHT NOW is TIME FOR PERFORMANCE and NOT FOR CURIOSITY. I’ve been playing with different ways to get into that flow state, but the first step is to set aside days in which I want to make this happen. Setting aside days in advance is a little like preparing for a competition, too, since you don’t get to choose the days in which you compete depending on your mood.

Personal Affirmations: I used to think that affirmations didn’t work for me, but since talking to the sports psychologist, I’ve realized their value. Specifically, affirmations are an efficient way to summarize what helpful lessons I’ve learned on the way and to focus my mind in a way that’s efficient for executing sound technique. Affirmations take me out of that frenzied, dissociative anxious state and grounds me in a mental place that’s both calm and reassuring.

Affirmations are also very, very personal, as I’ve started to discover. I may write a post later that describes my personal affirmations, but after reading dozens of sports books, I’ve come to realize the best affirmations are the ones that are specific and unique to you. When you use someone else’s affirmations, it bypasses the process of actually reflecting on your emotions and desires and clarifying your sense of self. When I’m more clear on what I want, the affirmations resonant with me every time, effortlessly.

Whether or not you’re religious, you can recognize the value of parables and the lessons contained within them. They are tidy distillations of key life moments that give one some guidance as to how to navigate a much messier reality.

A few weeks ago, I tried to extend an olive branch to someone that I was estranged from in jiu jitsu. It did not go well. I felt horrible and sad and…indignant. The phrase “how dare they” pushed its way into my psyche more than once in that first week, as I tried to process and make sense of how the heck I even got to this point. I called friends and got some closure; I had a few weird nightmares about the person in question. It was a rough week.

Over the years, I’ve vacillated between two extreme thoughts: a) that I deserve good things and b) that I don’t deserve good things/if I do deserve them I need to earn them. After all the back and forth I think what comes down to it is less about where I am on this spectrum and more about getting clear on what “good” means to me.

When I really look back on my life experiences (even the fuzzy ones), I realize that the definition of “good” has always been shifting and taking on hundreds of hues like a day octopus. Speaking of which, the day octopus has the ability to change colors not just against the environment they are in but in contrast to it as well. Each chromatophores is directly connected to the neural networks in the octopus brain, making them the ultimate specimen of mind-body connection.

I do not think I’m as competent as a day octopus when it comes to the connection between my mind and my body. Nowhere is that painfully apparent than in what I’ve attempted to nail down as “good” over the years.

Without going into extreme details, I would say that the times in which I’ve felt the most agitated, lost, or depressed was when my external definition of “good” clashed against what felt “good” on the inside. Instead of having neural networks tapped into my body, I got really good at dismantling those connections.

But I’m thankful, that every time, when my attempts to cut off that connection get too extreme, I learn a lesson about the futility of my efforts when certain symptoms start to emerge. The first thing to go is my skin (which I suppose makes me more octo-like?), which makes sense because skin is an organ for humans, too. (I also like to think it is a form of poetic justice because burying things under the surface can only sustain you for so long before it all comes out.)

In contrast, when I have alignment between what I believe to be good on the inside and what actions I take on the outside, transformations are as effortless as the octopus changing colors, even while sleeping. My skin is healthier and there’s positively a glow around me. I feel like I’m oozing with contentment. These moments are precious to me because they haven’t been in the majority. I’m hopeful, though, that this too will change.

With the estranged relationship, I thought I had a clear idea of what was good when I took the first step to try to repair it. I would be able to train with this person again and even enjoy their jiujitsu merch. I would be able to convince them that I was right all along, and that they were wrong. Unfortunately, it did not go that way, but I see now the way things did turn out is actually a gift.

What I was looking for that day was less about trying to salvage a lost friendship. I had thought this was what I wanted — what I thought was “good.” In reality, the rejection, as much as it hurt, showed me that what I really wanted was inner peace. On and off for the past 3 years I’ve thought about this relationship, what I could have done differently, what they should have done differently, and whether things could go differently in the future. That inner turmoil affected not only my jiu jitsu but also how I operated at work and in my personal time, too.

And so, I’ve settled on this for myself, for now: that what is “good” is not about the inside or the outside but about the state of harmony that exists between the two.

Persisting when we are in turmoil is what we call resilience; understanding that others feel the same is what we call empathy. Recognizing when we feel misaligned is what we call mindfulness; knowing how to bridge that gap is what we call wisdom.

Postscript

As Night turns to Dawn, perhaps it is not the weary traveler knocking at the door. Perhaps it is the friend inside the house that rises, opens the door, and wakes the weary traveler with a smile and three loaves of bread. Perhaps, in that moment, we see that the darkness and the light are not so different after all.

For me, I’ve lost more often than not at the purple belt level. I hope that with serious work with a sports psychologist, I’ll be able to have performance that more accurately represents my skill level as opposed to my anxiety levels. Until then, walking into the mats the first day post-comp is always going to be something that gives me nervous butterflies.

They say that no one really cares about how you do in competition, but when you’re at a small gym and one of a handful (but hopefully soon-to-grow!) of competitors, people are actually somewhat interested in what you have to reflect on your experience. And even if that wasn’t the case, I always feel a sense of awkwardness and shyness for the first few practices. Maybe it’s because I’m acutely aware of where my gaps were from competition, and the thought of being confronted with them again feels incredibly vulnerable. Or, perhaps it’s this partially imagined, partially real perception that people may train with me differently based on my performance. Not that this has happened yet, but I imagine my feelings towards someone would be different if they came back a Pans champion versus not.

But most of all, the feeling that I dread the most (but am trying to embrace) is the feeling of being unmoored. To me, when I have a plan and a goal to go towards, I feel generally good, even if the plan is messy and the goal seems daunting. When I come back from a competition, there’s a sense of freedom but also a sense of loss, a question of “what now?” that plagues me until I find my next goal. Yes, an obvious avenue would be to fix my mistakes from the competition. However, this path can’t be the only goal for me, or I would get depressed because I’m learning that jiu jitsu isn’t just about fixing your mistakes. Instead, jiu jitsu is much more fun and sustainable when I make it about experimentation and tinkering on topics that I find interesting.

I have a hard time feeling confident in what I want to work on in my jiu jitsu journey. The lack of confidence comes from my habit of focusing on what I “need” or “should” work on, even if it’s miles away from what I “want” to do. Throughout my life, in school and work, doing what “needs” or “should” be done has given me reward or praise. It feels good to do what others expect of you and to get validation that way.

My problem is that at times, I have de-valued my own desires or preferences to the point that I become unhappy at best and resentful at worst. Unhappy because I lose the sense of who I am and what makes me want to come to jiu jitsu. Resentful because I tell myself (unhelpfully) that I’m never going to have the chance to work on fun things because I don’t deserve to. This isn’t just limited to jiu jitsu, either — I’ve certainly fallen into troubled waters in my career choices and relationships, where I force myself to tread water at the expense of my well-being, instead of finding dry land to gain my footing.

I would say that the next key part of my development in jiu jitsu is to use training time to work on myself, instead of what I think others say I should work on. Of course, within reason, it’s still important to take into account the advice of my coach and other experts. But even from a technical perspective, I’m slowly coming around to the idea that I am the one executing technique during a fight, and — as terrifying as it sounds — am the most well-positioned to respond to the situation at hand. In working to accept this idea, I must also accept that this road will come with hilarious, and sometimes painful, mistakes. I often have a default reaction, at the first sign of messing up or effort, to return to old habitual ways. That’s natural, but not necessarily productive for long-term progress.

I once heard that the takeoff and landing are the most dangerous phases of air travel, with takeoffs accounting for the majority of fatal accidences. This article does a good job of explaining it to the average layperson, but the tl;dr of it is that when you’re trying to yeet off the ground and fighting against gravity, you just don’t have that much time or room for error:

When they're cruising at 36,000 feet, a pilot has the luxury of time and space to course correct. Even if both engines go out, the plane won't just fall out of the sky. It becomes a glider. In this state, a typical airliner loses about a mile in altitude for every 10 it moves forward, giving the pilot a little over eight minutes to find a place to land. But if something goes wrong on the ground, that window shrinks considerably. For a typical commercial jet, takeoff lasts only 30 to 35 seconds. If an engine fails or the landing gear jams, the pilot has almost no time at all to decide whether to take off anyway or to try and wrestle a 175,000-pound metal beast to the ground. Rejected takeoffs are rare.

This is what I’ve experienced too, in a somewhat less dramatic way, in jiu jitsu. Deciding to start or do something is incredibly hard. I always feel the most energized at the start of a new routine or plan, but as soon as I’m 20 minutes into it, I start to feel the first signs of fatigue or fear. Cruising in jiu jitsu would be nice, but we aren’t often there until we put a huge amount of energy into actually getting to that place. I feel that if I focus less on trying to cruise, and more on encouraging myself to get off the ground, then I may eventually find myself among the beautiful clouds.

We’d have to begin by deeply acknowledging the fact that we do not know. (This is actually the beginning and the end.) Knowing nothing, having no set conclusions, making no assumptions, we would have to give our full attention to reality as it is at this moment. We would need to enter into the undiscovered. That which is known and discovered is of the past by definition. We’re interested in a direct, undiluted experience of the now.
- Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

Dying is a paradox. It is something that happens to all humans and yet all of us have or will experience it differently. Sometimes, dying is a process. Other times, dying is sudden. About a year ago, when watching a show called Limitless starring Chris Hemsworth, I witnessed Alua Arthur, a death doula, guide Chris through a meditation that she might do for someone who is dying.

I don’t talk about dying and death in a light way. I am fortunate enough to be living in a life where I can choose to think about a million other things besides my own mortality. I have access to healthcare and live in a relatively safe neighboorhood. More broadly, I don’t live in a place affected by violent geo-political or local strife, or by natural forces that can wreck havoc across humanity.

Yet, in the past two weeks, I’ve chosen to think deeply about my own experiences with death and dying, and in the process, I’ve pondered my views on what it means to live a more full and purposeful life. I’ve been challenged to ask myself why it’s so hard for me to stay in the present moment, to want to withdraw to what I think is comfortable, instead of embracing the unknown. I’ve tried to confront and clumsily answer questions about why acceptance is so elusive to me and why letting go is so hard.

When it comes to competitions, I wouldn’t say that I’m a “seasoned” competitor, but more of a “lightly salted (slightly salty?)” hobbyist. I started competing pretty early on in jiu jitsu and didn’t experience any success until several attempts later.

I guess you can say that when it comes to competing, my past record would say that I’m average at competing. I’ve come to learn that it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m “average” in jiu jitsu—there are so many more definitions that one can use to define progress. I’ve also come to learn that trying to measure progress in jiu jitsu is sometimes not the point of practicing martial arts.

Tomorrow, I will be competing in Pans, a major tournament for people who do this sport. For the first time in my life, I have earnestly prepared for a competition, not because I wanted to win but because I wanted to see if I could put in the disciplined work. When I started this process, I had hoped that my physical preparation would help compensate for any mental shortcomings I had in terms of confidence and self-belief. I had heard about people in hard training camps and saying that they knew they would be fine because nothing could be as bad as what they faced in the camp. But this option was not something that had worked for me in the past—specifically, the act of grinding myself down into mat only made me injured and miserable.

What I’ve come to learn (yes, there’s that phrase again) is that the process of preparation is much more subtle and nuanced than I had been led to believe. Specifically, in training for a competition—indeed, just training generally—the purpose is to integrate the body and the mind so that they work harmoniously for you as life unfolds. The purpose of training is not to break yourself apart, but to make yourself whole—to find all the parts of yourself that are already present and to fully acknowledge them, to fully honor them, so that you can be the most complete fighter possible.

This competition feels different. I think it is because I’m a different person. Or maybe I am the same person that I’ve always been, only that I’ve discovered more of myself and have started to mend that rift between the mind and body that I’ve lived with for so long. For this competition, I’ve been increasingly aware of the need to break down the barriers that I’ve built around myself. I’ve felt the discomfort of opening up, both to myself and to jiu jitsu and non-jiu jitsu friends, mentors, and partners alike.

The only thing left now is to let life unfold and for me to step into it, fully and without hesitation. Let’s roll.

“Well, then you lose in the first round.”

I have been spending a lot of time at jiu jitsu lately, and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m a lot tired and a little beat up too. I’ve been training for Pans and while I do enjoy the progress that I’ve made so far, in the last three weeks when things are supposed to be ramping up, all I feel at times is a deep seated exhaustion, mixed with a flickering flame of motivation to keep going.

Most of all, I don’t feel ready. I have accepted that I won’t ever feel 100% ready. Even though training has been going well, in all of the past trials that I’ve had, I could reasonably believe that I was prepared because I had taken enough practice exams and tests. Even for the bar exam, I felt reasonably ready, even though it was going to be a difficult exam for the general population to pass.

I have done some things right. I have been watching my diet and my weight carefully. I try to do situationals, and when I don’t feel like going competition speed, I use that time to review my techniques by drilling with other people and sharing with them what I know. I have been lifting and doing cardio. By all measures, I know that I am more ready than if I haven’t been doing any of these things, but deep down, I wonder if I’m ready enough.

The worst part about preparing for competition, for me, is the anticipation. I don’t think I’ve had a good track record of setting adequate expectations of how a competition experience will go. I say experience because the whole process — on and off the mats — is not a guaranteed predictor of success. And because there are no guarantees, my mind inevitably drifts to the thousand and one scenarios where things go horribly wrong for me. That my opponent might be thinking the same thing, or not thinking the same thing, doesn’t bring me solace any way.

Somehow in my mind, the current narrative is that if I do well at this competition, it will prove to me somehow that my jiu jitsu is good enough. And if I do badly, then well… I guess it’s the status quo. I understand abstractly that looking to external sources for validation hardly ever helps with internal confidence. Practicing that mindset though, is harder than the actual training itself.

What terrifies me is that I don’t know how I will feel on competition day. What terrifies me the most is that I don’t know how I will feel, ever, in the future. The uncertainty is not absolute — likely one good day will lead to other good ones — yet since my grandfather’s passing, I’ve been acutely aware of how events can quickly come down and shatter your whole worldview.

The last time I competed in Philly, I had 6 or 7 matches, and I ended up losing every single time except for one. My grandfather had just passed away that week, and I wasn’t really my normal self. I had debated not to compete, but after reading stories of athletes that played through adversity, I decided that I wouldn’t know unless I tried. While I had an incredibly emotional experience, my Philly trip brought to the forefront the importance of mental state and how it affects every aspect of your performance, from reaction time to movement to concentration.

What terrifies me is that I will find out that I’m still the same person with the same demons that plagued me over two years ago when I competed at Pans. A video from a successful competitor said that you should look at your film objectively, and to try to take the emotion out of it, but I still can’t shake the image of myself being stuck in my opponent’s closed guard, not just physically, but mentally as well. What I’m most terrified of is giving up, not only on the match, but on myself.

I don’t think everyone needs to compete to face their demons. But man, does it work with me. That cliche saying is true — I am really my worst enemy. Every time I compete, I learn more about myself than I do about the competition. Some people study their opponents, but I study myself.

The secrets that I have could make a thousand empires fall.

Mindset Shift

Previous attempts at preparing for competitions involved crying in the mornings, going to way too many classes, wavering about what weight class to enter, and being horrendously anxious for no reason when sitting at my desk doing work.

I decided that for this time around I actually wanted to prepare in the best way that I knew how, which was to set milestones and take smaller steps to reach those milestones. I wanted it to be more logical and mapped out — to essentially project manage my way into the competition date.

The first thing that I did was to tell myself to get my priorities straight on three essential areas that, if I didn’t decide right now, would seriously distract from competing:

1. Whether I was going to do the Adult Division or the Masters Division (30+ year old)

2. What weight class I wanted to compete at

3. What skills I wanted to work on prior to the competition

Adult v. Masters Division

The Adult division is commonly seen as the more competitive division, even more so now due to the plethora of teens who now have the equivalent of full time athletes to work on their jiu jitsu. The Masters division is still competitive, but it’s more seen as the people who do jiu jitsu in addition to holding down a job (or, as I like to say, “people with mortgages/rent/student debt”).

I wavered on entering into the Masters division because I didn’t want to admit that the competitive jiu jitsu scene was skewing more young, particularly at the lower levels. I felt like going into Masters would be seen as taking a step down from the level that I thought I would be capable of competing in.

But when my coach asked me point blank why I had entered the Adult division, I found myself feeling rather embarassed by this point of view. I recognized how my decision was driven by ego and a desire to look good in front of others.

Upon further reflection, I also realized that I was trying to use the “harder” division as an excuse to absolve myself of any accountability. If I got creamed in the first round by an eventual champion, I would have something to fall back on to explain for my performance — that she had more time to train, that she had been training longer, and I was coming in as the underdog without all of these advantages.

I’m now much more excited to compete in the Masters division, particularly because I’m looking forward to being with people who are more relatable. Age doesn’t define anything and it certainly should not be a limitation for what a person decides to pursue, but for me, switching to the Masters division felt like the right choice.

Weight Class

Weight classes are a sensitive issue with me, particularly because I observe that unfortunately still, weight still has some gender-related implications. More than a few women in the past, including me, have wanted to drop down to a different weight class. It’s something that some women are proud to talk about, even if behind the scenes things are unhealthy.

But I only know about my own experience and my own body—and for me, the idea of fighting around my walking weight somehow made me feel guilty. I had some weird thoughts that I was not trying hard enough to fit into these other more dedicated athletes who could be more disciplined and drop upwards of 10 lbs to make it into a lighter division. Even though my bloodwork was sound and all signs pointed towards “keep the course” — I felt this immense pressure to at least consider dropping weight to compete at a lighter division, especially because some of these women I had trained with before were dropping down too.

There were a few things that helped me find confidence in choosing my current weight class. First, I performed a body composition scan at my work gym and consulted the sports nutritionist there about my weight. He explained to me that the scan basically said that I didn’t need to change anything, but if I wanted to shift my body fat percentage while keeping muscle mass, it would be an option to see downward numbers — within reason. Second, I started to track my food intake very casually for a month, just to increase my awareness of what I was putting in my body. Third, I found a fitness podcast where the hosts felt grounded and non-influencer-y to listen to in order to increase my knowledge around fitness generally. (The podcast: Fitness and Sushi).

From these three experiences, I saw that the issue I was having was not about the weight class itself, but about the eating habits that I thought that I needed to go lower, stay, or go higher. I had previously taken an all-or-nothing approach by deciding to go up a weight class and then completely destroying my stomach with processed foods. Or, in the short-lived periods that I wanted to drop a weight class, just ended up getting injured and starving all the time.

When I took a step back, I realized that it was not about moving weight classes, or gaming the system, but about being the best and healthiest version of me, and then selecting whatever weight class that happened to be. For context, depending on how I ate in the weeks leading up to competitions, I would basically eat and snack like a five year old until the deadline to change weight classes had passed. Only then would I start to panic about being close on the scale, and then cut out almost everything while also resorting to being dehydrated so I would not cut it close. It was a very reactive and stressful mindset, one that was too sudden and extreme.

Slowly, I’ve been trying to focus on a more proactive mindset, even though it hasn’t always been easy as I try to break some unhealthy habits. When I want to revert back to my older habits, I try to think about the benefits I’ve experienced so far:

• less digestive disasters

• peace of mind that I’m comfortably in the range of what it will take to make weight many weeks ahead of the tournament and to know that I can keep on with the habits without destroying myself in the long run

• less sugar crashes and burns

What Skills I Wanted to Work On

I once heard someone say that there is an entirely different skill set to competing. When I was getting ready for competitions in the past, I thought that the skill set to competing meant to be as tough as possible in the gym which would translate to mental fortitude at the competition. As it turns out, if you have crappy jiu jitsu, no amount of mental fortitude alone can get you out of a bad position.

I’m now more undecided on whether there is a specific competition skill set that is separate from doing good jiu jitsu. Obviously, one needs to know the rules in order to make certain strategic decisions. Yet knowing what these strategic decisions are (and the optimal response) is not really a skill per se — rather, it is more akin to memorizing the alphabet. For instance, if I am down by 2 points in a match, I would need to get a submission to win, or to sweep/takedown the person and then pass their guard. (I think the closest thing that might come to a competition “skill” is remembering to count your points, but that is also largely obliviated by having a coach around.)

However, knowing how to execute on this strategy is a skill set. And here’s the kicker: I realized that in order to do this, one must simply do the following: good jiu jitsu.

Still, good jiu jitsu wasn’t too much help for me. I spent a lot of time agonizing over the order to learn new skills and to work on my weak points, but ultimately I settled on a these guiding principles:

1. Pick the broad area first and then cast a wide net in terms of being exposed to those techniques. Pick 2-3 from this large set of options and work on those during drilling/specific sparring. If useful, make a note. If not useful, make a note to check to see if you are missing something. Try again, or move on.

2. Work on systems, not single moves. Single moves can disappoint. Systems are way more forgiving. Work on techniques that will make your jiu jitsu learning experience what you want it to be. (Right now, I want my jiu jitsu to have tons of variety and focus on transitions, as well as to take on a poetic quality.)

3. Seek unfamiliar territory. This approach may give you a new perspective on jiu jitsu and why other people are attracted to certain games/approaches.

4. Listen to my coaches on what they suggest is good for me at this time: guard retention, ankle lock, turtle, half guard, double sleeve, collar sleeve, triangles/omoplatas, closed guard. (Past suggestions have included top hits like “don’t be flat in side control” and “keep framing”)

My mentor told me at the beginning of all of this prep was that my first task was in trusting myself to make the best decision in that moment for myself… that the foundation of my learning rested upon the mindset that I have the final say in what I feel like is the right thing to do.

This suggestion caught me off guard (heh, pun intended). I thought that only after I had worked on my checklist of techniques would I have the confidence to be in the competition. But as it (kinda) annoyingly turns out, having a good mindset can set you up for success, not the other way around.

Sometimes, when you are stuck in a certain operating pattern, it can be hard to break out of it. My ingrained pattern was to always “do the move exactly even if you will fall into a dark pit filled with spiders.” After a lot of soul searching, I decided I didn’t want to deal with spiders, or an over-attachment to rigidity, any more.

For the first time in decades, my brain said “you know what? let’s stop falling into the spider pit.”

It sounds a bit silly, but as a kid, I didn’t understand what motivated teachers to teach. My life centered around school, so I felt like teachers were people that simply existed from the ether.

As a grew older, I realized that not all teachers wanted to stay teachers and those who did sometimes encountered maddening obstacles that made them want to quit. Yet at the same time there are teachers that teach despite little to no money/appreciation, dangerous political climates, or a treacherous trek to even reach the school (thanks, Most Dangerous Ways to School!)

In my preparation so far for Pans, I’ve realized that the best way to become a teacher — to both myself and to others — is to be a student first. It sounds so cliche when I write it down, but I’ve come to realize that it’s so, so true. Great teachers, in my opinion, are great students first. By “great,” we mean those who love learning — who are masochistic in the lows and gluttonous in the highs.

I have felt small, insignificant and lonely these past few weeks in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time. It seemed as if a perfect storm of dreary weather, sleep deprivation, anxiety and changes in routine had descended in my otherwise happy little world. Only a few months ago I was talking about how I felt so awesome with my jiu jitsu. About how comfortable I felt in training. In the worst moments of my emotional turmoil, those moments faded away fast, and I wondered if they had been real at all.

Has life been all bad? No, not at all. In fact, as I’m so lucky to find out, I do have a ton of people who care about me and are quick to rush to my rescue when I’m feeling down. I got a lot of messages last night telling me exactly the opposite of what I had been saying to myself all weekend — I had convinced myself that I felt unloved, unnoticed, and unappreciated. In fact that has not been the case at all, and once again I have learned a valuable lesson in how much people do care about me, even if they don’t always show it.

The biggest difference in my life today versus in the past has to be in the fact that I’m learning to be a better advocate for myself, to set better boundaries, and to communicate more with people. I have always found it difficult to establish relationships, let alone genuine connection, with people. It isn’t obvious to others who see me from the outside, because if you didn’t know any better, you would assume that those connections are effortless.

No, they are actually really hard. Friendships don’t come easily to me not because I don’t want them but because I have to do a lot of extra work to click with someone. I do a good job because I try to tune into what the other person likes, what they’re interested in, and what they are feeling in the moment.

I have spent most of my life believing that if I could only give someone this or that, or have them think this or that — then it meant we had a connection of some sort.

The hard work has been realizing that perhaps someone is interested in me as a person, in my emotions and feelings and experiences — in just me — instead of my achievements, talent, skill, title, or rank.

The harder work has been to confront the dissonance between my self-loathing and the love that people gave me.

The hardest work has been allowing myself to feel that way towards me.

Even though I’ve only been to two karoake parties, I’m starting to develop a strong sense of nostalgia for this gym tradition. It’s likely because each party has followed a major event at the gym — last year, it was promotions; this year, it was our biggest in-house tournament yet. As someone who always has craved belonging and acceptance, partaking in these traditions has been immensely important to fulfilling that desire. (Sidenote: I can’t believe I nearly missed out on the festivities this year because I didn’t want to deal with the colder weather.)

As the weather is getting colder, things are naturally starting to slow down for me. It causes anxiety in me especially because I’ve been trying so hard to push in the last months of summer to make strides in my jiu jitsu, and the idea of slowing down is scary in some way. Especially now, with the in-house tournament over, what I considered my last big test of the year has finally passed. Over the years, I’ve become keenly aware of how the changing of the seasons inevitable changes my mood and energy. No matter how many Vitamin D pills I take or sunlight I get, the endless rain of falling leaves and the “winter is coming” breeze puts a hard stop to my turbo efforts, perhaps overnight.

Part of me wants to force things to happen otherwise, to keep at the frenetic pace of learning and improving that I’ve done in the past few months, but I’m starting to understand that everything has its cycles. And as much as I would like to speed things along during the times when I feel “slow,” more and more life has shown me that accepting change is the way to go.

So, for instance, I only come to class with 2-3 techniques to work on, even though during the summer months I had the motivation to do 5x more (query if that helped or hurt my learning though). I had created an 18 point list of things that I needed to feel somewhat comfortable with before I did a competition. Now I know the most important thing in competition that makes or breaks my victories lies in guard retention.

I think that Past Self may have called this behavior “lazy”, but Present Self calls this “reasonable.” Or perhaps, Future Self may accept this as “realistic.” Whatever the word I use, I try to be aware of whether or not it serves me RIGHT NOW as opposed to what has “worked” in the past. Just like there are outfits for winter and summer, there are ways of looking at the world for trauma-response Past Me and transformed Present Me. Whatever it is, though, can change when I need it.

I think often a lot about jiu jitsu on my bike rides home. Now with the weather getting dark, it’s no longer safe (or fun) to listen to pop music on the ride home from practice. So I spend a lot of time mulling over what I want to get out of jiu jitsu, instead of screaming CALIFORNIA GURLS WE’RE UNFORGETTABLE under my breath at traffic lights.

What I want from jiu jitsu are memories that shape my future experiences for the better. So much of my past has been painful, and so much of my recent past has been avoiding that pain. Yet the most healing parts of jiu jitsu have come from forming memories that serve as a foundation towards a better (and less anxious) me. I can create a set list of bangers to sing to, even if it’s a little off key. California girls optional.

It’s taken a lot of work, but I finally feel like I can turn “on” my aggression and fighting spirit, instead of giving up because I’m too tired or scared or whatever reason I come up to justify anything less than my full effort. One unexpected benefit of this change is that I felt considerably less anxious and more prepared for my school’s recent in-house tournament. I didn’t have a question of whether or not I could “go hard” and fight out of bad positions because I had specifically trained for those scenarios.

I want to emphasize that I’ve tried many times to find this turbo-charged version of myself during sparring, to varying degrees of success. I think the approach cannot be a one-size-fits-all method, though I feel like I did do some things differently which helped me get further this time around. So, I’m sharing these options (and mistakes) here in the hopes that people can use them as a starting point in their own journey.

Option #1: Choose the moments in which you decide to go “all out”

When I first started thinking about “becoming more aggressive,” I started to feel a lot of anxiety before and during classes. In my mind, if I had to focus on “going 100%” then it meant that I had to look, feel, and be hardcore for all rounds in every single class. I felt like if I had to flip a switch, it had to stay on for any meaningful change to happen.

Meaningful change did happen, but it wasn’t necessarily positive. The unnecessary pressure I put on myself to “do my best” all the time was draining, not only physically, but mentally as well. When I confided to a mentor about feeling burned out, they suggested that I only work on going “all out” in smaller moments — 1 or 3 minute rounds, only a handful of times a week. Or, if that was too much for me to handle, then to go “all out” on ONE sweep or submission attempt.

As it turned out, my brain is really good at making sure that I always preserve a little bit of myself for survival reasons. This meant that if I told myself that I would try to fight to the death for 6 rounds, my brain wouldn’t let me or it would make damn well sure that I didn’t feel good for trying (eg pumping out anxious thoughts).

But, I could override that survival impulse if I knew it was only for an absurdly short period of time. Like most of my skill acquisition has shown me so far, the results were bound to be better and longer lasting if I narrowed the scope of changes and built from the ground up.

Option #2: Set yourself up for success with micro-adjustments before training

One thing that I’ve learned from my meditation practice is that meditation is no different than how one may behave outside of the formal practice. For instance, the attitude of present awareness can apply whether someone is sitting at their work desk or meditation spot. There is no artificial separation because you are still living with the same mind.

It seems obvious, but when I come to jiu jitsu feeling stressed out, hungry, tired, or a combination thereof, it’s a lot harder for me to perform better and to push myself. Conversely, I also know how much harder it is to try to do all of the self-care activities day in and day out. Some of us don’t have jobs or lifestyles that allow us to always get optimal sleep and nutrition.

That’s why, over the course of tweaking my own habits and routines, I’ve started to focus more on micro-moments of preparation that give me the best benefits. Micro-prep means taking one thing and trying to do that a little better than the baseline. It takes some experimentation to know what works for you, but generally the list of options goes like this for me:

1. Keep a bottle of water at my desk at all time and be vigilant about taking a sip every time I think about using my phone or want to get distracted.

2. Spend 10 minutes in the evenings to pack my gear ahead of time.

3. Once a day, try to take 5 deep breaths to decompress.

4. Budgeting time to work on my jiu jitsu journal, or my personal feelings journal.

5. Putting my phone away and out of reach when I come back from jiu jitsu, so I’m less tempted to try to use my phone to decompress.

None of these things are particularly hard for me to do and they are all within my control. The cool thing is that when I focus on just one of them, I can have confidence that I am walking into the gym in just a little bit better shape than I would be otherwise.

Of course, if you would like to go all out of more ambitious goals, like getting adequate amounts of sleep on Mondays - Fridays, or hitting a daily protein goal, that’s totally awesome, too.

Option #3: Work with trusted partners who understand your intentions

When I first “decided” that I was going to go all out, I found a few people that I could try out my new version of sparring pace and intensity. The partner you find doesn’t necessarily need to be your size, but they must absolutely have the emotional maturity to stay in control of themselves. A good way to find these partners are usually those who are the best at flow rolling, because they have a good sense of how to move through as many positions as possible.

When you work with these partners, consider letting them know that you are trying to work on increasing your speed and intensity. Then — and this is a crucial step — tell them how they should react and what specific positions they should start in. This will allow you to get a chance to experience different types of resistance and gather data on what you respond well to or not.

For instance, when I was working on pin escapes, I felt very timid at first to use all of the tools available to me in order to recover my guard. Sometimes it was because I felt tired. Othertimes it was because I felt “mean” for putting my forearm in someone’s throat, even if it was to prevent them from putting their cross-face against my throat. Still other times, I felt awkward spazzing out without any real effect.

So I would find partners to help address each of these issues, with explicit instructions to let me work without fearing that they would spaz out or hurt me in the process. This might seem like overkill, but I consider it communication instead. Of course, in a real match, you don’t need permission to do the moves you need to do. You don’t need to concede positions. However, I do think working yourself up to that mindset of “I don’t need permission” does take some effort if you’re starting from a place of lower intensity. And also, it’s just common courtesy for your training partners to know what’s coming, even if it’s just a round where they’re being asked to lay there and prevent you from getting out of a pin.

Option #4: Increase your jiu jitsu knowledge on the “when” and “where” of a technique

I played piano and violin for many years in my youth, and part of playing music is in understanding the concept of rhythm and tempo for a piece.

• Rhythm is how the notes in a piece relate to each other — are they far apart, close together, or a little bit of both?

• Tempo is the underlying beat of a piece that is measured by beats per minute. When you turn on a metronome, you are tracking your tempo.

Something can have a consistent rhythm but no discernible tempo. For instance, a birdsong may follow a rhythm of sounds when the bird starts to chirp, but you may not know when the next series of sounds will begin.

Tempo is actually something that is up for interpretation, since tempo markings sometimes have different qualitative descriptions:

Largo – broadly (40–60 bpm)
Larghetto – rather broadly (60–66 bpm)
Adagio – slow and stately (literally, "at ease") (66–76 bpm)

And, where tempo is like a speed limit on a highway, there are often signs along the road that ask you to brake or speed up accordingly:

Rallentando – gradually slowing down
Ritardando – gradually slowing down (but not as much as rallentando)
Ritenuto – immediately slowing down

As a musician, you’re not just mechanically “hitting” notes, like a robot. You have to understand the nuances of the technique in order to interpret it and to make it your own.

Jiu jitsu is no different. Moves that have been done for years may possess a variety of rhythms. A single technique, when put in the context of other techniques, may also require a different rhythm to maximize the chances for success.

Part of the jiu jitsu practitioner’s task is to learn/figure out the tempo and rhythms that are appropriate for the situation at hand. I’m talking about knowing not just knowing that a “pressure” pass is slower than a “speed” pass, but finer points regarding tempo, like:

• How long you can hold your initial grips before the opponent can counter effectively

• How quickly you need to transition and advance to the next milestone in the pass (and what milestones are even there)

• Moments in which you are vulnerable to counters/scrambles and the appropriate response (is it to shut them down, slow them down, or to speed yourself up?)

• How the pass fits into your larger pace of offense (e.g., pass and immediately go to a submission, or pass and cook them under pressure)

Tip #5: Watch competition footage (especially no gi)

Your brain has a hard time distinguishing from reality and imagination. You can use this to your advantage by watching competition footage. I like to watch my favorite athletes compete because I can also learn from them at the same time. However, you don’t need to watch only for technique. You can watch to see how their intensity changes based on the situation, like whether they are losing/winning, whether they are in a bad/dominant positon, whether they have time to score or in overtime defense.

Also, take time to watch non-pros, or pros who compete at non-black belt levels. This is because these fights are more likely to be explosive since black belts are good at cancelling things out, so the pace of action might be slow. I’ve found the matches that are most helpful to getting my brain in that “kill” mode are matches between two roughly evenly matched purple/brown belts in submission-only overtime. When you watch the ferocity in which people try to attack or defend from a fully locked armbar or choke, you can start to pick up on the intensity subconsciously, too.

Finally, if you can, go to a tournament and simply spectate on the action. When you’re in a crowded space with people screaming at other people going hard after another, try to bottle up that feeling and convert it into your own energy. Sometimes, experiencing the overall look and feel of competition can help you start to transform your own mode of operation.

Option #6: Read and listen to sports psychology content (or any performance-related realm, like the music/dance/gaming)

There is a ton of literature and audio content out there regarding competition, intensity and focus. If you haven’t done so, cast a wide net and start to listen to everything that’s out there. I give this advice mainly because I’m the kind of person who likes to take in a ton of information and then whittle it down to the passages that resonate with me the most. And, reading about other stuff helps you get a different perspective than the likely repetitive dialogue going on inside your brain.

One adjustment that I made early on was to consume sports psychology content for people in sports other than jiu jitsu. It helps to have a bit of distance and to draw your own conclusions from an adjacent realm. Focusing on different sports reduces the temptation to take everything as an instant blueprint for jiu jitsu.

Option #7: Do serious soul-searching

Often — though not always — there is some sort of mental barrier that is preventing you from reaching your desired state of intensity. For instance, due to my past experiences and the beliefs I formed around them, my natural reaction when confronted with aggression was to withdraw. I became used to using avoidant strategies when it came to uncomfortable situations. I felt like I needed to people-please and to make assumptions about what people expected of me.

All of these mental barriers contributed some way to my ability to bring a certain level of intensity to my jiu jitsu. I don’t think I did this soul-searching necessarily just to make my jiu jitsu better, but rather, I used my training to reveal to me what I was struggling with as a holistic evaluation of myself:

• What did my sometimesly absurdly irrational fear about offending someone say about my desire to stand my ground when I receive pushback?

• Is there a reason why I’m afraid to make mistakes?

• What is the driver behind my deferential attitude when rolling with people that I perceive have an advantage over me?

• Why do I feel shy when confronted with aggression?

• Am I afraid of finding out what my limits are?

It’s important to not rush through this process. I think when I began to think about the more difficult parts of myself, it quickly became overwhelming. Even though I love to write, writing about these emotions (even in private!) was difficult for me, so I could only manage small moments at a time.

And look here: I don’t want people to think that this introspection is being pushed on them. We don’t need to go to therapy for jiu jitsu (though we may benefit). But I think that a clear and honest reflection of what’s going on internally may be the best lever you can pull to change your external reality.

There has been no clear, linear, or simple path towards learning how to access my aggression in jiu jitsu. It has been a journey that I realize now will take me to unfamiliar places — being positive, authentic, and aware — not to impress others, but to show myself that I’m capable of that raw power that I have always suspected was in me.