When I tell people Jiu-Jitsu taught me a lot about life, they usually think I’m being cliche.
But for me, I started Jiu-Jitsu when I was just 17 years old. I was a wee-little senior in high school, and for the last few years of my teens, the only experiences I had that made any sense were from time spent on the mat.
Here are a few of the most impactful life lessons from my time doing Jiu-Jitsu:
The best things in life (and Jiu-Jitu) are simple things executed perfectly.
People think that the best grapplers have figured out “the secret moves” of Jiu-Jitsu. People think that the happiest people have figured out “the secret to life”.
There is no secret.
Sure, there are some important lessons and principles you need to understand to have a happy relationship with yourself (or excellent guard passing), but there’s no “secret”.
The skill is found in hard work, discipline, and repetition.
Failure exposes your character.
When you lose, there’s an assault on your ego. When you win, there’s an inflation of that ego.
When the ego goes away, there’s nothing to protect you from showing your true colours.
If you lose and you’re immature about it (you shouldn’t need me to explain to you what that looks like), it’s a sign of weak character. Character development happens off the mat and is exposed on the mat.
How to really hustle.
A lot of people don’t understand all of the things you have to do to make a full-time living in BJJ.
It’s not just hard training sessions, acaí bowls, and gold medals. There’s a lot of anxiety in this craft.
It’s hustling to get a seminar booked, hustling to push your online content, hustling to get matches, hustling to get the best training possible, all while trying to be as healthy and injury free as possible.
There’s no “9-5”. It never stops.
But I prefer it that way.
Trying to make a living in Jiu-Jitsu taught me how to really hustle toward something I loved.
When I started writing, I simply applied the same diligence to my writing that I did to my grappling.
Jiu-Jitsu is a beautiful skill because a lot of people can become quite good at it with diligent practice. It’s not like basketball where you need to be 6 feet to just make the team.
Conclusion
BJJ isn’t the perfect vehicle for learning everything there is to know about life, but it’s a pretty darn good one.
Those are just 3 of the key lessons I learned from BJJ. I hope you enjoyed them.
This post was written by Black Belt Competitor, Chris Wojcik (The Grapplers Diary)
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