Butterflies in Formation

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.