You Need to Try to Be a Hero
Embracing personal lore.
One of the best parts about my life is that it is full of “lore,” especially in the last few years.
Trials (ADCC and otherwise), tribulations, failures, stories, tests, and more. Moments where it all made sense and moments where I questioned even the basic structure of what I was doing. Moments where I felt like a failure and moments where I felt like a hero.
At times, the constant ups and downs break me down. They scare me. They’re not always fun. There are a lot of days where I would prefer to live in a hut on the beach with access to a coconut tree instead of living within spitting distance of one of the biggest Jiu-Jitsu hubs in the world.
But that’s not my reality.
My life is not so much one of yearning, it’s one of action. With action, you get results — both good and bad.
Today, we’re going to talk about what it means to live a good life.
Hypochondria is a symptom of unlimited access to information.
As someone whose income is based on their athletic ability and performance, I spend a lot of time learning about health and fitness.
I’m obsessed with learning how to perform better.
I study training tips for Jiu-Jitsu and otherwise, I research diet and nutrition, I study ways to optimize my sleep, work around my injuries, and much more. I need to learn this stuff and sometimes I get so caught up in it that I focus more on my optimizations than the actual performances themselves.
I freak out so much about getting good rest that I can’t sleep because I’m anxious about sleep. I freak out about diet and purchase too much healthy food that goes bad. I study so much Jiu-Jitsu that by the time I get on the mat, I have “analysis paralysis” and absolutely no idea what to work on.
I worry about optimizing everything when in reality, the obsession with optimizing everything detracts from their quality. The truth is that having everything perfect does not make you perform that much better.
Thanks to the internet, you’re constantly getting information all the time. You could talk to ChatGPT and Google and just read things about things all day long. You can learn a lot of facts that way.
But no one tells stories about the guy who had all of his optimizations perfect. Bryan Johnson (the guy who’s trying to cheat death) might live longer than most of us, but what story will he tell? There is no story there except for the fact that his story will be long.
By cheating death, you’re running from life.
No one’s a hero.
It’s so hard to find a good role model.
In Jiu-Jitsu, even the top athletes are deeply flawed. Maybe I’m just not as impressionable as I used to be, but I don’t really know who to emulate anymore apart from stealing a few techniques from different guys.
I know for a fact that I am deeply flawed myself.
Before my purple belt world title in 2019, I dealt with severe burnout, overtraining, and anxiety, and I went out and got drunk at the gym Christmas party the weekend before. I took 3 days off in the days leading up to the tournament and I somehow won worlds.
It was not what I would prescribe to anyone else, but it’s what happened.
My best BJJ competition performance to date was ADCC 2024, a tournament in which in the lead-up I dealt with injuries, anxiety, insomnia, and frustration at the sport. I did not go in perfectly optimized. If anything, I went in hoping that it would end soon and that I would not make a fool of myself.
I’m not the hero that I want to be. No one is, I think. We’re all flawed. The best Jiu-Jitsu athlete in the world is kind of an asshole. Most of the others are on steroids.
Where’s the magical lore? Does it exist anywhere anymore?
Even outside of sports, most of the greatest people in the history of the world had dark sides.
Power corrupts — and yet we’re all seeking it in some way or another. Either over others or over ourselves.
So what do you do?
The solution is simple and it’s 2 steps, but they’re not easy.
Try to be the hero that you need. Focus on small actions. What would you do right now if you were the hero of your story? How would you save yourself? What would you do better? What would you stop doing altogether? Reject your limiting beliefs, your bad habits, and the ideas you have about yourself and lean into the idea of becoming the person that you need to be.
Embrace the idea of a narrative with no ending. Preparing for a Jiu-Jitsu competition is a story. Before that world tournament where I got drunk and partied a few days before, I also was obsessively disciplined with my training for 9 months. When I experience hardships now, I try to remind myself that the ups and downs are just part of the story and they happen at all different. We’re in a movie, and the movie ends when you decide it does.
Closing Thoughts
You need to try to be a hero.
You need to embrace the lore of your life. The good things, the bad things, the challenges, the frustrations, and the demons. While some of the parts of you are not as pretty and not as fun, they’re all part of your experience.
Darkness in your life is not a bug, it’s a feature.
A good life is not measured by your accomplishments, your success, your failures, your follower count, your income, or whatever other external metric that you are probably thinking you need to chase.
No, at the end of the day, a good life is one that is constantly embracing challenges. Constantly learning. Constantly evolving.
You don’t need whatever you think you need, you need to be the person that you need most.
The Grappler’s Diary is sponsored by BJJ Mental Models, the world’s #1 Jiu-Jitsu podcast!
This week we’re joined by Dr. Michael Israetel! Mike is a PhD in sports physiology and a newly minted Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Josh Vogel.
In this episode, Mike teaches the intricacies of training intensity in Jiu-Jitsu.
Topics include: the different intensity zones (light, moderate, and hard), their respective roles in skill acquisition, training intensity during competition preparation, training strategies among partners of varying skill levels, the significance of developing a focused game plan, and tailored approaches for casual practitioners versus competitors.
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