Why You Should Stop Trying to Be Strong
How to get stronger.
When I was younger, I had an idea of what I thought strong men were like.
I thought that they ate red meat, lifted heavy weights, drank equally as heavily (and then showed up to work the next day), didn’t talk about their feelings, and never failed. When they did fail, I thought that they just shut up about it until they turned it around.
I got these ideas from a mix of places, but the source doesn’t really matter. This was my worldview of strength for a while.
My younger personality wreaked of emotional disconnect. I wanted to be strong, so I tried all the things I thought strong men did and I became weaker.
In the end, I just created an illusion of strength. An illusion that I was one way when in reality I was another.
For me, writing has been the catalyst to help me bridge the gap between faux strength and true strength.
This is the difference:
We’ve kind of come full circle…
Now, I’m kind of the opposite of the strong man that I had in my head as a younger man.
I literally write my “feelings” on the internet every week to you all. I don’t really drink (besides a beer or 2 now and then), and I fail all the time.
In that sense, I am not the strong man my younger self was hoping me to be.
I do love lifting weights and steak is one of my favorite foods, but I have come to realize that these things do not impact whether or not you are mentally strong. Physical strength and mental strength are very different.
Oftentimes, people mask their lack of mental strength with physical strength.
We ruin our lives this way. We inflate our egos. We distort our perspectives.
It’s not that I’m perfect now — anything but — but I have learned at least to embrace my lack of perfection and to accept it as not a death sentence but a predicament. I’ve learned to see the pursuit of strength as a neverending process of becoming.
How did I learn this?
I did the extreme.
I made myself miserable for years trying to pursue Jiu-Jitsu at a high level. I alienated people. I berated myself constantly. I became obsessed with not just improving, but with satisfying my own ego.
I used to care about my success (strength) more than I do now, but my life was worse and I was less successful.
That leads me to the lesson that I think can benefit people.
You are not strong until you stop trying to be strong.
I hate “fake tough guys” in Jiu-Jitsu, but I hate them everywhere really.
People put out this illusion of being stoic or tough all the time not because it’s who they are, but because it’s who think they need to be.
Usually, these people live in the past. They don’t have growth mindsets. They are self-centered. They are their own worst enemy and they don’t even realize it.
I know this because when I am at my worst, this is the person that I am.
The reason I have acted this way in the past is because I wanted to be strong. I wanted to have things together. I wanted to be reliable.
I wanted the right things, but I didn’t have them so I just lied by putting up a front. In that lie, no one was deceived as greatly as myself. I was not strong (I was neutral), but I pretended to be something I wasn’t, and this made me weak.
The first step to becoming strong is to stop lying to yourself.
The illusion of the self-made man.
I saw a video the other day on one of those corny motivational Instagram accounts that was a clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking at a university.
He was wearing a cap and gown that was probably the biggest cap and gown they ever made, and he was talking about “the self-made man” and why no one is really self-made. It was a powerful speech and I think it definitely applies to me.
The speech was a reminder of the truth of success. The truth of strength.
The truth is that no one achieves great things alone. No one becomes successful alone. No one wins alone.
No matter how tough and stoic you are, if you are drowning and you don’t get help, that’s it. Sayonara.
If you don’t get the help you need, you’re done, Bucko.
So this takes us now to the idea of true strength and how you can earn it.
Strength is love.
Ooooo, corny, right?
It’s true.
Fake tough personas are probably the weakest archetype. You are so insecure and concerned with yourself that you don’t have the ability to love. You are caught in your own facade. You are not vulnerable. You are not weak. You are not really being human.
There’s a reason we say someone is “robotic”.
This faux strength is a lonely life to lead.
What I’ve found in my whole journey through combat sports, life, and beyond is that the strongest I’ve ever felt is never in my own head. It’s never my perception of myself that creates strength.
Instead, strength is the ability to look fear in the face, smile at it, and run towards it. To transcend fear. To act as if it weren’t there even though you know it is.
It’s to ask for help when you are drowning. To help others for no reason other than because you want to. To acknowledge the help and love that you have received along the way — even if it won’t get you anywhere.
But hey, most people aren’t ready for that kind of vulnerability.
Most people are too weak to be confrontational in any regard.
Closing Thoughts
Sometimes, these articles where I talk about what it means to be strong, what it means to love, and all that other mushy gushy stuff can be hard.
I’m worried about a few things.
Mainly, I’m worried about coming off as weak and I’m worried about coming off as cringey — like I think know all these things that other people don’t. They’re opposite fears, but they work together. The cringiest people are usually the weakest.
However, one thing I do know to be true (no matter how this piece comes off) is that I am wrong all the time, and if I’m really working hard on my own development, these ideas will either be silly to me or 10 times deeper a year from now.
The perk of trying to learn every day is you make an idiot of your former self.
But putting yourself and your ideas out there is the first step. You can’t be right if you’re not willing to be wrong a few times in the process.
You can’t be truly strong if you’re not willing to look weak a few times along the way.
And besides, what better way to live than by constantly learning, growing, and experimenting?
Today’s issue of The Grappler’s Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models!
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