The Word I'm Trying to Live By In 2024
One small step, one giant leap.
Ever since 2021, I’ve followed a theme for each year of my life.
2021 — 3 years ago now — was about hustle.
I was fresh out of college, so “hustle” was a pretty good word to choose.
Back then, I was teaching more Jiu-Jitsu than I had at any other point in my life. I drove all over the Chicagoland area teaching private lessons and eventually classes. I sacrificed sleep, efficiency, and even my health to build the early stages of my career.
That work allowed for 2022’s theme, which was experience.
That was my first year competing in the highest levels of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I relished every single experience. I traveled to Europe to compete for the first time on money I made teaching Jiu-Jitsu. I competed in some huge Jiu-Jitsu events, started traveling and doing seminars, and did my first instructional. I also became a ghostwriter and experienced entrepreneurship for the first time.
In 2023, the theme was tests.
I competed 14 times — most of which was in the back 6 months of the year. In the first 6 months, I traveled a lot to train, testing out new environments and possible places for myself to live.
I tested myself financially, personally, physically, and spiritually. The entire year, there was this constant sense of pressure. Constant testing. Constant anxiety, if I’m being honest.
That leads me to this year's theme, which is a bit different than the last few years.
This year’s theme is building.
What are we building?
I’m rebuilding everything this year because last year I moved my entire life to a new state and didn’t really build anything.
I moved to Texas, and the excitement kind of got to me a bit.
I’d never trained every day with such high-level grapplers, so I just started competing and training all the time. I’d also just quit my teaching job and was essentially relying entirely on seminars and my online writing to get by, so I started testing new ideas for making income.
I started focusing heavily on my paid Substack
I started writing The Grappler’s Diary on Instagram
I wrote a book (it’s coming soon!)
I filmed another instructional
I tested out having a Patreon
I also tested myself a lot on the mat competitively, having some big matches and dealing with a lot of injuries.
I traveled a lot (27 trips in total!), had a lot of new experiences, learned a lot about myself, and completely restructured my life.
I also started a new relationship, which taught me new things about myself, my long-term plan, and the person that I truly want to be. It made me realize that parts of the life that I’d been living weren’t always following my values. More on that maybe some other day.
All of this testing taught me a lot, but the biggest lesson that I learned was that while testing is good, it’s better to test yourself after preparing yourself for a test than it is to just “jump in” to something challenging.
That’s why, after some thought, what I’m really building is foundations.
The different types of foundations to build.
At the beginning of last year, I went through a period of about 4 months where I was living out of a suitcase non-stop.
At the time, this sense of adventure was what I craved. I loved the open road, going to new places, and doing my best to manage all my workouts and writing while also spending time in a new and foreign place.
Life was sexy. It was exciting. Everything was novel.
But after a while, I started to miss the comfort of routine. I started to miss the comfort of the boring grind of working on the same boring goals every single day. I started to miss the comfort of a normal week that for me involves lifting, training, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and writing.
I started to miss the kind of routine that even made it possible for me to get to live the life I live now.
I started to miss the “hustle” that I had a few years ago — even though I don’t ever really want to go back to that period. I missed what the hustle stood for — structure.
Stability. Routine. Discipline.
This year is about rebuilding that in my new city, with my new life, and doing the new projects that I’ve been working on for the last few months. It’s about building better lifestyle habits, better health, better sleep habits, and more discipline so that I can have the life that I truly want in the 2, 3, or 5 years.
I don’t want to be a traveling competitive grappler forever. It’s not as fun as you think it is.
It hurts your wallet and your body. It’s stressful. Jet lag is a motherfucker. The lifestyle that I lived most of last year is not even the best way to get good at Jiu-Jitsu.
It’s definitely not the best way to write or live well either — even if all that living did give me a lot to write about.
Closing Thoughts
One of my biggest fears last year was getting stuck into a routine that I hated.
Getting stuck into a life I hated. A life of obligation to people and a place that I didn’t belong. A life doing something that I was only doing because I had to — because I’d done it for a long time.
And so, I spent the entire year testing myself and testing out new ways of living. I learned a lot about myself, about freedom, and about what it truly means to be happy.
But again, that’s probably a post for a different day.
For now, I’m focused on building.
Building my new writing business. Building new and better training and lifestyle habits. Building my body to be stronger, faster, and fitter. Building my mind to be smarter, calmer, and more daring. Building my relationship to be stronger and deeper. Building the individual skills I need to build to create the things I need.
I’m building something that I know (thanks to all the testing, I don’t doubt what I want anymore) will make me happy in the next few years.
Building something worthwhile.
With where I’m at right now, I can’t think of a better way to live.
Can you?
Also published this week:
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