YinvsYang

In the life teaching art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), there is another valuable lesson I have learned through many years, and numerous battles.  I am now applying this lesson to not only my life, but my businesses as well.  It is a lesson that could help us all in life and is not something you can learn in school, or from reading a book.  It is a wisdom only gained through experience.

The lesson is how to deal with the walls you will encounter throughout your journey toward any goal.  What am I talking about?  Well, in every journey there is progression.    A wall is a stage that you hit in your progression where there is seemingly no progress.

Sometimes it can even seem as if you are actually going backwards.

A wall is imaginary and exists only in our minds.  They are the points we come to in any journey where it seems as if we have peaked and can go no further.  Do not be confused though.  The walls I am talking about are not the ones where you live, so please don’t smash through them and blame the blog :).

When I started Jiu Jitsu, I was given a clean white belt at the beginning of my journey.  As I came to class, I began to progress through the sport.  Most people, in any career, for some reason, always picture progression as a steady line up.  Start somewhere, and everyday you will get better.  Jiu Jitsu taught me that is not the case.  In fact, progression is nothing like a straight line on a graph.  It is a squiggly line all over the graph with seemingly no direction at all sometimes.  Such is life.

About a year into BJJ, I got my blue belt (the 2nd belt), and I hit a wall immediately.  As a matter of fact, it is known in Jiu Jitsu as ‘the blue belt blues’.  This is because when you first get your blue belt, every white belt is out to get you.  They want to prove they can hang with this blue belt level person who was one of them.  Before, as a white belt, it was okay to lose.  But now with the blue belt, it was not.  It can be overwhelming to have that pressure thrust on you one day, just by changing the color of your belt.  It’s not like anything else has really changed.

When I hit this wall, I was not progressing.  I was getting frustrated, and knew I could do better.  However, it did not happen.  I went through a funk for about 2-3 weeks where I just kept on rolling (sparring in bjj) like crap.  Plus, I was not having any fun.  I was pouring a whole bunch of added pressure on myself.  Consequently, I was in a poor mental state before I would roll.  Every moment of every battle seemed do or die for me.

Then it hit me.

If the pressure that I was putting on myself was contributing to my circumstances, maybe I should try another route.  I was putting pressure on myself because I wanted to be on the level I was given.  However, what I had to realize was that I was already there.  It was not the belt.  It was me.  I didn’t have to make some miraculous improvement all at once.  I just had to be me.

Besides, it was not all about winning and losing.  My real goal was to better.  All I had to do to get better was keep rolling.  Soon after I figured this out, I progressed at a rapid rate, flying through the early stages of my blue belt level.

I had hit a wall, kept pushing, and smashed right through it.

How did I do this?  I simply kept on working.  That is it.  I just kept at it.  Win, lose, whatever, as long as I was rolling I was getting better.  This is the lesson I am trying to get across.  Many times along our journeys in life, we hit the same kind of walls.  We get to the point where we almost want to give up, because it seems as if we can not go any further.  We make excuses to ourselves, we lie to others, and we rationalize why we should stop.  After all, it is a wall, right?

BULLSHIT!

Walls are a figment of your imagination.  They don’t really exist, they just feel like they do.  Every time I hit an imaginary wall in BJJ, I am actually relieved.  It means I am almost at the next level.  I just have to find a way to push through.  I also have noticed a pattern.  I go through stages where I excel, then I will hit a spot where it seems everyone else is excelling and not me.  However, if I continue to push, eventually I will break through the wall.

The good thing about a wall is there is usually something good on the other side.

Walls are a great thing.  They measure progress.  They allow us to understand where others may have failed, or quit.  The other thing I have learned  is the way to get around these walls is simple.  Just keep at it.  There is no secret tricky solution, no hidden shortcut.  There is no medicine you can take.  It strictly takes patience & persistence.

The great thing about my BJJ career is that now I can look back on my journey and see all of the walls I have smashed through.  Plus I can see when others hit similar walls to the one’s I have.  When I hit a similar wall in business or life, I understand that through hard work and patience, I will eventually come out on top.  Nothing special is going to get me there except consistent, hard work.  Only then will I be able to smash through the wall and continue on my journey.

Do not give up at the first sign of adversity.  Instead, look forward to it.

It is a measurement of progress.  It means you have made it this far along the path.  Now life is testing you to see if you deserve to go any further.

Do you deserve it?

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