Bad at Competing
There has been a tiny voice in my head that has been living rent free lately. It is an ornery tenant, one that barged its way in and rooted itself in the corners of every room in my mind. A tiny voice whispering to me, “Maybe…you’re just bad at competing.”
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