That little voice in your head

Is he your friend? Or is he pushing you around and kicking you, and maybe you don’t even realize what’s going on?

This comic took my breath away. Click the image to see the whole thing.

I wish I could smash that little motherfucker so easily. Imagine how that would feel. With a little voice like that in your head, you’re not only sabotaging yourself, but you’re probably being shitty with the people around you as well.

I’ve struggled with this my whole life. If I daydream carelessly, I’ll go over all the mean things I’ve done, all the mean things that have been done to me, and all those lost opportunities. Disappointment after shitty disappointment. I know I’m not the only person who does this. How good can it be for your spirit to constantly put yourself down and mull over your failures?

In jiu jitsu, though, I’m stubbornly optimistic. I’m not a natural athlete. I’m not even a quick study. I beat myself over the head with new material and it all has to be broken down and somehow jammed through this tiny straw that leads into my brain. But I’ve kept plugging away at it, and eventually I’ve become pretty good at it.

What if I could have this attitude all day long, with the rest of my life? What if we all could?

We lack the courage to even imagine the kind of person we could be. Not only could we be more physically strong, we could be more compassionate, more morally brave, more at ease with the people around us. But most people never access even a tiny shred of that potential. Not only is it hard work, but who’s helping with this? No major institution in modern society encourages us to work on being happier and healthier. We’re isolated, both socially and economically, into our broken “nuclear” families. The food most people eat makes them fat, sick, and lethargic. Religion could help you access a richer spiritual and moral life, but all you hear about is who you’re not supposed to be having sex with.

Another Bruce Lee quote (emphasis mine):

If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”

If you work hard on yourself, you can become stronger, both physically and morally. It ain’t easy though, and there’s not much help out there. You have to pick up the ball and run with it yourself. For me, it’s been crushing my ego on the mat and discovering that a lot of the barriers I ran into, I had put there myself (or just allowed to remain through passivity and excuse-making). I know man-hugging isn’t for everyone. If it’s not for you, I hope you find your own way to break through and become the person you should be.

How to win and still look like a loser

Opening up a can of dumbass in the closing moments of my fight

The good news: I won my debut MMA fight at Untamed 27 in Westport, Massachusetts.

The bad news: I had a bit of a “Hello Japan” moment and ended up looking like a jackass.

I ended up tapping my opponent about halfway through the second round. In the final moments of the fight, I was mounted on him and had thrown about ten unanswered punches. Inexplicably, I stopped and took a couple of seconds to raise my arms and look out at the crowd. Thus satisfied in my supreme douchebaggery, I returned to the pummeling.

Some people might think this is a pretty fine thing. But those who read my blog know I take a spiritual approach to fighting. I got into this as a way to hone my mind and my body. I’m not doing this to win, I’m doing it to become a better person. It would have been better to lose honorably than to look like a shithead winning. If you disagree, look at the picture above. I look like a real butthead! There are a lot of better photos from the fight, photos where I actually look good, and you can see  good technique in action. Unfortunately, this is the photo that’s going to exemplify what I take away from the experience.

Everyone at my school is congratulating me for my win, and I’d rather not talk about it. I just finished posting the following on my school’s message board:

Hey all,

I’m not sure if/when video is going to go up of last weekend’s fights. But when you see my fight, you’re going to see me prematurely celebrating before the fight is over. This was a big mistake on my part. When you compete and fight for the Academy you represent all of us. I let myself and the school down, and you all have my sincere apologies for this.

Yeah, it was my debut fight, and it was a momentary lapse. But it’s a serious matter because the Academy places a high value on honor and sportsmanship. I’ve always thought of myself as being in alignment with these values, too. I don’t know what came over me.

Anyway, like I said, my actions didn’t represent the Academy’s values. Please keep this in mind when you see the video. In retrospect, I would prefer to have lost the fight honorably than to win this way.

-Bronson

It’s true, too: I really haven’t tracked down exactly what it is that caused me to behave this way. It’s very much out of character for me. I do know I spent a lot of energy before the fight preparing to look tough and full of fight, no matter how bad it got in the cage. I hadn’t paid much thought to what would happen if I ended up winning decisively. I found myself in a situation I hadn’t  prepared for. Of course, this doesn’t excuse me in any way.

In the end, I did end up finding something out about myself, and that is this: As much shit as I talk about being an enlightened warrior (or at least a dude who is using this cliché as a guiding star in his training), I’m just as capable of behaving like a cocky jackass as anyone else. No matter how far you go with martial arts, and with MMA especially, it seems you’re always going to get sat down and shown just how much you have to learn about yourself.

To come: More pictures and video of the fight, and more about what I went through before and after. Despite my “Hello Japan” moment, I think I did a good job with being mentally prepared. I didn’t feel as nervous, or as weak from the adrenaline dump as I was worried I was going to.

Misleading, fearful MMA story on NPR

This segment aired on the supposedly enlightened NPR last week, including my local NPR station. I would summarize the infuriating displays of ignorance into a couple of bullet points, but there’s not a sentence in this article that’s free of arrogance, glib assumption, or just plain misinformation. The author even tries to imply that boxing is less violent because “the idea in boxing, which has always styled itself as “the sweet science,” is not to get hit.”

Feel free to hit up the “questions and comments” link in the top-right of that page.

I heard about this segment because my boss brought it up at lunch, and found myself checking off the same old checklist: MMA is less dangerous than boxing and pro football, there’s never been a death in a sanctioned event, etc. The difference between MMA as practiced today and its image in the eyes the public at large is pretty shocking.

On one hand, lots of us complain about what a yahoo the average MMA fan is. But what if more evolved people understood how complex the sport is, and how honorable most of its fighters are? MMA needs better evangelism.

(Bonus: See Dana White verbally jiu-jitsu Bill O’Reilley in a similar segment last year)