Let me let you in on a secret. "Secret Techniques" are never what gets you somewhere. They can be accessories to success, if the knowledge is even worth while, but never can you build a whole foundation on it.
I've been chasing secret techniques for a long time. So long, that i forget sometimes the key isn't necessary what you're doing, but going ahead and doing it, committing to it, and putting hard work in. The basis for any success is always hard work. You can't escape that fact. There is a reason why we admire top athletes and sports stars. It's because they have shown they have worked hard enough at a single task and attained a mastery, when most of us fall short to ever do the same.
We as a society respect hard work, theres no doubt about it, mostly because so few of us truly know it.
Most of us never get the big picture of what it is. The sports heroes we follow may only be good at one thing in their life, and thats what carries them. One thing. It's all you need, just work hard enough at that one thing, and dedicate yourself completely.
Thats why we frown on steroid use. Not because it hurts the athletes health, but because it means they took the easy way out. It means they are just like the rest of us. Their hard work is artificial.
I've had victories on the mat that meant next to nothing to me, because it wasn't hard work. I didn't train hard enough, or i felt like i got a lucky win. Those are not victories. You only remain victorious if that effort comes through struggle. Those are the things that make us. Sometimes the struggle isn't even in the arena of competition. Sometimes the struggle is just getting there. The training, the financial burden, the relationship strains, it all comes to fruition when you win. Its a validation of yes, you put in hard work, allow yourself the pleasure of recognizing it.
Struggle gives purpose. Reject the notion that anything in life should come easy, because if it does, it carries no meaning.
Sometimes it doesn't matter if you win or lose. It's how you struggle.
Athletics are an avenue to know yourself. Theres a million different ways to do it, but all of them involve encountering adversity. The man who skips out on adversity has never known the true reason of doing anything; Testing yourself.
We feel who we are in our everyday life doesn't accurately represent us. We encounter the mundane, the unremarkable, and the flat out boring things that fill most of our workdays. Unless we are lucky enough to find and work enough in a field we are truly passionate about, our potential to represent who we think we really are is not capable in everyday life.
Theres nothing great about the drive to work. Theres nothing great about your tuna sandwitch for lunch. Theres nothing great about your boss yelling at you.
The people who possess such a trait to find these things great are either a enlightened buddha, or suffer from complacency induced insanity. Some people relish this things. These are people that forgot their dreams along the way. Maybe they convinced themselves that they really are doing what they want, and changed their highest aspirations to fit whatever life they made themselves. It's hard to come back from that point.
To really appreciate the little things, you have to see life from the highest peak. Thats why you don't see people dragging along in the day to day muck teaching seminars on how to achieve happiness on the weekend. Its the same reason that enlightened monks can be truly happy just by watching the leaves fall. They have had the struggle, the doubts, the fears, until it all accumulated into seeing things as they are.
"A ship is safe in harbor, but thats not what ships are built for," would accurately describe how i few.
Most of are safe in the harbor, because if we take the middle road we don't have to fall short of whatever expectations we think we know.
I've been there. I like to think i'm past that, but it's not a permeant place you can escape. You have to keep making forward progress. Sometimes you rise to the occasion, and sometimes you fall short, but if you know you had the hard work, you had the struggle, you did everything you could until the point you would rather die than give up the fight and the moment comes and you still fall short, you are left with no regrets.
Failure is usually the easy way out, which is why we feel bad when it happens. However if you put as much struggle, as much aversion to failure as it took the person who won, you've not lost.
To be able to struggle, fight, and learn something about yourself is the true victory.
You have no true opponents. When you decided to compete, the person in front of you might have complete domination of you on his mind. He may even hate you. Make sure to thank him. Without the man standing across from you ready to challenge you, you can never know yourself or your abilities. You need someone to push you and pressure you to make the victory worth it, or the defeat beautiful. There's no dishonor in defeat. Theres dishonor in quitting. Few will ever see the difference, because few will ever want it that bad.
Three weeks ago i took second place in a tournament. This was not my first loss, nor will it be the last, and i was upset about it. The fact i lost was very secondary to the fact i didn't truly push myself. I didn't push the attack. I had the gas left. I wasn't ready to push to the point of complete bodily shutdown to avoid a loss. If i had done this, i could of brushed defeat off and learned. Instead, i left the match learning nothing about myself, and with very few points to improve on because i never really opened up.
If someone wants to beat me they sure as hell better earn it. It's my responsibility as an opponent to push the other person to their struggle zone. If they don't rise to the occasion, and will themselves to put as much into it as i do, they lose, and vice versa.
I'll be the first say simply wanting something more isn't enough to win, but it goes a long, long way. I know as a blue belt in BJJ, if i really try, i can surprise myself with my ability. I've had the benefit to test myself in Brazil against the best in the world. I know where i stand in regards to the top. So i know i have the potential to take on and submit anyone, deep down inside. Others might not have that benefit and might have to rely solely on fate. To really believe in yourself is important. How do you develop the fate? By taking yourself places you've never been before. By risking it all in training. To be on the verge of quitting and recover from it. You must do this consistently. Fate is a trainable skill, and the harder i know i work, the more of it i have coming from the knowledge of myself. You can lose it if you don't work it enough. I've been guilty of that too. So work hark, and everything else will come easy. Theres no secrets. There's no shortcuts. Embrace the struggle.
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