Why You Shouldn't Give Up
Uncovering the myth of "hard work".
This year has been extremely challenging.
I started off the year feeling a bit aimless with my life and where I was going. I wrote an article in early January about how I was having “a quarter-life crisis”. Every post I write is honest, and that one was no different.
Since then, for a while at least, life did not “get better”. I was losing matches, my writing business was fading, and I was constantly battling random injuries throughout the spring — knee, hamstring, and back, to name a few.
But lately, although it’s not perfect, things have been looking up (this is the part where you should knock on some wood for me).
I’m competing frequently and fairly well, my writing has been growing and improving, and I’ve been working hard on the side on some new projects. I recently got ranked in the top 15 in the world in my weight class (for the second time, after I dropped from the rankings this spring), and I have plenty more big matches coming up over the next few months.
I’ve been very active in everything I’m doing and I’m doing a lot to reinvent myself.
Here are a few key ideas that I believe have helped me reinvent myself over the last few months:
Volume matters a lot.
I touched on this today in my Grappler’s Diary Instagram post, but I’m going to touch on it again here.
The volume of work that you put into a given craft is a key determinant of your success in that craft.
There’s a reason that people live in laundromats and sleep on mats so that they can train and compete in Jiu-Jitsu full-time. There’s a reason that digital writers like Nicolas Cole, Tim Denning, and Jessica Wildfire post an insane amount of content. There’s a reason why young musicians spend hours with their instruments practicing boring things like scales and simple tunes.
While “working smart” is great, a smart worker realizes that hard work (and a lot of it) is imperative to success.
These last few months, my work volume has been more intense than it was in months prior.
I’ve traveled the world training and competing. I’ve published little Instagram Atomic Essays pretty much every single day. I’ve written around 10k words per week — nearly every week. I’ve lifted weights and done cardio several times per week as well.
The result of all this work has been, well, results.
I’ve increased my efforts so that I can experience a greater reward.
When you think you’ve “made it”, you’re the weakest you’ll ever be.
I experienced success in 2022 in a way that I never had before.
I placed in one of the biggest martial arts tournaments in the world, won the biggest cash prize I ever had, wrote content that was viewed by millions, and became a ghostwriter. I completely reinvented myself from a random BJJ brown belt who was making about $800 bucks per month writing about trucking and software integration to a world-ranked grappler and ghostwriter for personal development coaches.
I wrote an ebook about this experience because I honestly thought I had “made it” in my life.
Life was good, and there was a path for me to follow that would lead me to even more comfort and professional success. I could have opened a gym, become a self-help guy, and competed sparingly — if I wanted to. I had all the precursors to do all these things.
But that success turned out to be the problem. I was becoming too comfortable with my steady incremental growth.
So comfortable, in fact, that I make a lot of sacrifices to get to the path that I am on now. I will have to make different sacrifices to take the next step.
This is the uncomfortable truth of pursuing success: what gets you to step 2 won’t get you to step 3, and what gets you to step 3 will not get you to step 4.
What helps you win at blue belt won’t get it done at purple belt, and then at brown belt, and then at black. Each domain of competition (or skill) requires different inputs to receive optimal outputs.
The game is always changing, and you can either adapt or get left behind.
The second you start coasting is the second you start falling behind.
Not letting success get to my head.
When I got ranked in the top 15 in the world at my weight in Jiu-Jitsu last year, my ego was flushed.
I was so proud, so motivated, and all I wanted to do was climb these rankings higher and higher. I wanted to be in the top 10 and then the top 5— and I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to get there.
It did not once occur to me that a few bad performances would remove me from these rankings entirely — yet that’s what happened.
When I became complacent, I stopped making progress.
I didn’t get as many “big match opportunities” as I thought, and I didn’t seek them out. My career stalled a bit. I thought getting ranked and winning matches would give me everything I wanted, but in reality, all I got from my small success was the illusion of expectations.
I struggled with this.
That was probably why I started losing matches and struggling in competition early this year.
I was scared to lose, so I did.
In order to stop losing, you have to stop fearing the loss.
This spring, after losing a big match in England and getting beat up in Texas every day for a month, I got way bolder than I was before.
I invested more than $10,000 into my personal and professional development. I bought myself several training trips to Texas (and other places). I competed in matches where I lost money on the trips. I competed in sketchy matches where the promoter “forgot” to pay me. I spent nearly $7000 on business writing courses to help me become a better writer and ghostwriter and better at making money online.
I made these investments, and then I also invested hundreds of hours into practicing my crafts.
So now today, when I get comments like “You’re a good writer”, “You’re a good competitor”, or “You’re doing really well”, I don’t see that as the miracle that I saw it as when I was beginning to see big results last year.
I see this as someone observing my investments paying off.
Closing Thoughts
Progress isn’t free in anything. It’s usually uncomfortable to try to do things well.
There are always sacrifices. There are always bumps in the road. There is always failure.
There are always moments in any endeavor when you feel like it’s not going to work out. Moments when quitting is more convenient than persisting.
But no one ever wrote a great story by doing what was convenient. No one “went with the flow” straight to the place they have always wanted to go.
For me, these last few months, there have been hundreds of moments where I’ve questioned what’s coming next, if anything I’m doing is worth it, or if I should even keep going down this path at all.
I mean, I have a bachelor’s degree. I could always get a real job and simply blend into society.
But I don’t want to give up. I’m ready for anything, except for that.
Maybe you feel the same way.
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