This Is Why You Don't Get Better
It has very little to do with how hard you work.
Whether you’re trying to get better at Jiu-Jitsu, playing the flute, or flipping burgers, the biggest obstacle that you have to get past to make progress in different skills is yourself.
Yes — there are other obstacles in the way of your progress, but obstacles aren’t usually as important as the internal ones. They’re not important because you can’t control them.
Sometimes, in Jiu-Jitsu, you have an opponent who’s on steroids. Sometimes the referee is bad. Sometimes you get a bad restart. Sometimes this, sometimes that. There are sometimes variables that you can’t control. This is part of the game.
But are those things really worth stressing out about?
I tend to think it’s better to focus on yourself and your own development.
But still, sometimes people get in their own way.
Here are a few of the main reasons why most people struggle to make progress toward their goals.
You don’t trust anyone.
If your goal is to improve a skill, you probably need a coach.
In my experience, you need to reach an extremely high level to improve without a coach or a guide, and even then you will still look to others for inspiration or advice. You need to buy into someone else’s perception of how things work and apply it to what you already know to be true.
You need to allow someone else to influence you.
Even someone like Gordon Ryan, probably one of the most arrogant athletes in the world today, is influenced by others. In the technical world of Jiu-Jitsu, Gordon is a bit of a trailblazer, but he still studies other grapplers and champions in other grappling arts.
If you want to improve your skills in a given field, you need to allow yourself to be influenced. You need to trust others so that you can learn from them.
You don’t believe in yourself.
I wish I could give the feeling of joy that I’ve had in Jiu-Jitsu training over the last year and give it out to people who doubt themselves and put themselves down over a lack of progress or skill.
In the last year, I’ve been training with a lot of the best grapplers in the world, from all over the world, and my confidence in my Jiu-Jitsu abilities has reached new heights. I don’t think of myself as cocky (but if I am, someone let me know), but I do feel a newfound sense of confidence from working and training with people who are above my level of competence.
If you want to improve your skills at something, confidence is a major key. Confidence can only be built through doing the work and seeing progress.
I’ve found this to be true in all areas of my life.
You’re too self-conscious.
No one thinks about you more than you do, but in a world obsessed with social media and the internet, everyone seems to think they’re the star of their own movie.
I mean, it’s kind of true — minus the audience.
Your life is kind of like your own movie, but no one else is watching it except for you. The problem nowadays is that the internet/social media makes people think that everyone else is watching their movies, all the time.
If you can, embrace anonymity. Be faceless. Don’t do things that blow your sense of self away. Ego death.
10 minute rounds with one the best heavyweights in the world, starting on the back position.
The humility you get from this kind of thing is the key to truly focusing on improvement.
You’re a mess.
All the hard work in the world doesn’t make a difference if you go home and your house is in shambles.
You’re in a bad relationship. You don’t have friends. You’re not close to your family. All this stuff adds up, and it makes you worse at what you and less happy.
I see this a lot in Jiu-Jitsu — guys who are extremely talented, and have all the gifts, but act like complete dumbos in their personal lives. It makes them a fraction of what they could be. It’s sad to watch.
I’m not saying I’m a genius with all his ducks in a row, but I know enough to know that my life is better when I am working my hardest to align the damn ducks.
Get your sh*t together. It’s not just something that “helps”. It’s essential.
Closing Thoughts
Trying to do things well is hard.
It feels like a losing battle because, in some ways, it is. Eventually, death comes for us all — sorry for the nihilism this morning.
All we know is that your time is limited, so you might as well make the most of it. You might as well try to be the best you can. To me, this seems like the only thing that makes sense.
We know that doing stuff is hard. We know that in competitive endeavors, trying to improve and win takes a lot out of you.
You might as well do everything you can to not get in your own way so much.
I think that these points above will help. These are definitely things that I’m working on every single day.
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