How to Enjoy the Process
The interplay between success and joy.
Today’s article will be published on Friday.
When it goes live, I’ll be in San Diego, California, getting ready for a weekend of seminars, viewing wedding venues with my fiancée, and hopefully cornering a friend to victory at WNO. Before that, I was home for a month, something that I haven’t had the chance to do since before ADCC 2024.
A month, for me, is a long time to go without a trip.
I love traveling, but travel limits a lot of what I can do at home. This year alone, I’ve already been on 9 trips, and there are 2 more coming this month.
But here’s the dichotomy:
When I’m home and not traveling, life is less stressful, it’s easier to acquire skills, and I get to spend time with my future wife, friends, and dogs.
When I’m on the road, I get to meet new friends, explore, and, full disclosure to you, make money doing what I love.
So, how do you balance peak performance with peak happiness?
That’s what we’re trying to figure out today.
Too much of anything is suboptimal.
Too much travel makes me feel strung out, emotionally exhausted, and I grow to hate the thing I love.
Too much time at home doesn’t produce the same extreme emotions, but it does build up my wanderlust. After a month or 2 without going anywhere, I get excited to go places, learn about things, and just life in general.
It’s a weird thing, but living too much life makes you less excited to live life to the fullest. Is there a way to say that without sounding like an emo kid?
I’m not sure.
When I travel too much, I become a little angsty. When I travel not at all, I become a little angsty. The wholesome middle has both.
The balance between work and play is delicate. Too much of either and you’ll find yourself operating at a fraction of your potential.
I was first exposed to this idea a few years ago when John Danaher was on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He talked a lot about how living somewhere like New York is great for athletes and artists because you can have both the discipline of routine and the chaos of new experiences.
Balance.
This is what I’m really after.
But balance is a concept, not something you can actually achieve.
The idea of balance is nice.
Feeling at ease all the time, no internal chaos, and being able to switch on and off as you so choose.
But in real life, I don’t think it’s that easy.
This week, on Monday, for example, I woke up, had a business meeting, wrote for 2 hours, trained for the next 2 hours, had lunch, did some chores around the house, went to lift, went to the gym and taught a private, taught a class, and then came home, cooked dinner, and watched a movie while helplessly trying to relax. I don’t think I finally calmed down from my 12-hour work day until about 3 am.
This is just how it happens sometimes when you’re pushing yourself.
I’m not a Buddha. I am not that enlightened. I overthink, overwork, and overact. I do too much. I make mistakes. I make calculated, thoughtful decisiosn that turn out to be completely incorrect.
That’s a part of balance.
I love the idea that some day I’ll have the ability to control 100% of my day and be able to sacrifice opportunities for time, but right now, I have really big goals that I am chasing both on and off the mat.
But we chase the goals now so that later on, we can rest and have “the balance”. Right now, I literally can’t afford to sit at home and do nothing or go for walks in the park all day.
But there is time to learn. There is time to change my ways.
The reason to win the game is to be free of it.
How to maintain high performance through chaos.
Sometimes, when things are tough, I wish for an easy life.
It is around this time that I remember a famous quote that is often attributed to Bruce Lee:
"Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one"
When things are hard, don’t wish for the hard things to go away. What’s more likely is that you will get stronger and overcome the hard things. They won’t feel so hard because you are more capable of overcoming them.
That said, I wouldn’t be doing my job as the writer of this article if I didn’t leave you with some effective habits that help me maintain high performance when life is crazy:
Set intentional goals for every day and every work session. It’s not enough to just show up and do the work. Instead, make sure that when you are working, it’s not busy work — it’s work that will get you to your goals in the next few days, weeks, or months.
Optimize your recovery. Sleep is the cornerstone of effective recovery, but sometimes, I can’t sleep because of stress. What do I do then to avoid running on fumes? I eat healthy, get sun exposure, take breaks from work for non-work enjoyable activities (dare I say, hobbies?), and practice my breathing. Recovery is essential for peak performance, especially during stressful times.
Be more stoic. The easy way to let chaos control your life is to be extremely emotional. If you become too high when you succeed or too low when you fail, the odds of you lasting long enough in any difficult endeavor to see meaningful results are pretty low.
Closing Thoughts
Today, we’ve been focusing on the process.
The balance of opposites.
For me, that balance of opposites is found between the polar extremes that make up my daily life. Writing and grappling. Travel and being at home. Pushing myself to the brink and resting.
A full life has both. That’s why it’s full.
Too many of us are focusing on living full lives that are only filled with one aspect of experience. We’re either too lazy or we push too hard. I have found myself in both camps at different points in my life.
But I guess maybe, if you zoom out enough, that itself is balance.
I wouldn’t know for sure, but perhaps one day I will.
The Grappler’s Diary is sponsered by BJJ Mental Models, the world’s #1 Jiu-Jitsu podcast!
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Francesco explores the idea of Jiu-Jitsu as a team sport. He explains how fostering a relaxed, playful training environment not only builds community but also accelerates learning by encouraging experimentation and removing the fear of mistakes.
Drawing on his experiences organizing camps and running a diverse gym, Francesco highlights the value of humor, inside jokes, and a “third place” culture where people feel at home on the mats.
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This might surprise you, but not every moment of my day calls for intense, hard training. For some parts of my day, like teaching classes, writing, or hanging out with friends, I’m more interested in “finding the flow” than squeezing the “most” out of everything.
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Also published this week:
5 Habits That 10x My BJJ Progress
I’ve been enjoying training during the last few weeks a lot more than any other period this year.
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A friend of mine likes to use the word harmony instead of balance. You listen to an orchestra, some instruments aren’t as involved as others at varying levels throughout a performance. Such as life with our priorities, interests, and schedules. Finding that harmony for whatever phase/season of life is never ending but worthwhile to consider in the great way you just wrote about. Have a great trip 👊🏻