“Don’t let me bully you!” — that’s what a black belt once said to me while pressing his knee into my chest. “Do something!”
Those words come back to my mind again and again. Life lessons. Don’t let people push you around. Don’t let people mess with you.
The man was 15–20 years younger than me, but you can always learn from anyone.
You shouldn’t give up so easily. You have to fight. And that applies to every aspect of life, not only to Jiu-Jitsu.
I have to shift from “I survived” to “I was fighting” — and that’s a big psychological step. I already started doing it in my last class, but I need to stay even more focused. To fight.
People often say that BJJ changed their lives. Maybe this is what they mean: learning to fight under stressful conditions instead of just saying, “I give up.”
To survive — but to know why you survived. To control fear and anger. To control your breathing. To explode at the right moment. Maybe not just to say, “The guy was 50 pounds heavier,” but to analyze what I can do next time to escape, to improve my position, and maybe even to make him tap — and not let him bully me.
As Renzo Gracie is quoted in Sam Sheridan’s book The Fighter’s Mind:
“…if we go until one of us quits, it’s never gonna be me.”
Those are the words of one of the best black belts in the world. And I’m just at the starting line of an ultra-marathon that may not even have a finish line.
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