Be the wrestler.

View fullsize

Photo courtesy of Smallbones, via Wikimedia Commons

“The art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets that are sudden and unexpected.”
-- Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”

Winging it is almost never an option. Even jazz musicians agree on a key when playing together. I find that there is a certain amount of orchestration and planning requisite in success in all areas of life, even the ones that require spontaneity.

But dealing with other human beings requires an acknowledgment of the human element. In no sport is this more apparent than baseball. There’s no predicting when the right circumstances will conspire to give a middling pitcher a no-hitter. Maybe it’s an overcast afternoon game on getaway day, the away team anxious to get on the plane, the cloud-cover obstructing the release of the ball from the batter’s perspective. Maybe it’s these things, plus the fact that the journeyman pitcher received a birthday card from his grandmother that morning that contained a $20 bill -- just enough to settle the bet he had with the bullpen catcher on whether or not the starting third baseman pisses on his hands to toughen the skin. An event like this is just about one of the only things Sabermetrics can’t predict.

I have a friend who is a genius. Hand him an instrument, he’ll make it sing in an afternoon. Tell him to learn a language and he’ll absorb it. Supply him with enough information and he will tell you, with a troubling degree of certainty, how long you will live, what will likely kill you and how much money you will likely earn. As an actuary, he can do this for just about anyone.

He would also be the first to tell you that one of the only certainties in life is uncertainty. Even with the most precise instruments and the most negligible confidence intervals, there is still the outlier. The junk heap pitcher will throw a perfect game and go on to become an answer to a question on trivia night, laughed over between mouthfuls of 10-cent wings and dollar beers.

When you think about it, most of the situations we encounter in our day-to-day lives fall outside of our control. We must contend with circumstance at every turn. This can be unnerving, forcing some to recoil and launching others into control binges. 

Or we can be the wrestler. We can refine our strategy, craft it down to the most minute detail. And yet, we can still stand poised for whatever attacks might come. We can stand at the ready, our defenses raised and our senses attuned to the moment at hand.

Mindfulness in Jiu Jitsu

I had to take some time away from the mats this week, due to a nagging ankle injury. I've noticed that my thinking changes when I'm not training. It's easier to get caught in the thought feedback loop. Before I realize it, I'm sleep-walking through life. 

I never understood what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, "I'm not there. I'm gone." Until I did. But by then, the moment had passed. Jiu Jitsu, like the Dylan song, reminds us that this moment -- here and now -- is all that we have.

To that end, the good people at Inverted Gear let me guest blog about mindfulness in Jiu Jitsu. Check it out, and let me know what you think. You can read the post here.

An education by fear.

The bones in my nose were beginning to splinter under the weight of my larger training partner, his sternum cranking my face and neck toward my left shoulder. I could feel my neck popping, but couldn’t hear it over the music. As I prepared to escape, I remembered the first time I found myself in this position -- the panic that set in, the frantic bench-press attempt to push my training partner off of me. This time, I waited and took stock of the situation. As I did, I felt my partner’s weight shift, and I bridged my hips and escaped.

Physical and emotional pain can be terrifying. Our instinct, hammered into our DNA through evolution, is either to run from what we fear, or to fight it. But what about standing our ground? What about just experiencing it? This, I’m learning, is certainly more difficult than running, but it’s also much harder than fighting.

In the scenario I described above, the common error for the rookie Jiu Jitsu player is to attempt to shove their training partner off of them, freeing themselves from the crushing weight. But this shove only creates more trouble. It either causes their opponent to come crashing back onto them, or it sets them up for an armbar or other submission.

I’m discovering that the same is true off the Jiu Jitsu mat. Running from an unpleasant feeling or situation defers the discomfort. Shoving it back escalates it. But why is doing nothing except observing so much more difficult?

I think it’s because observation -- being present with the physical or mental discomfort -- forces a reckoning. It forces us to accept the present, not seek the convenient escape hatch of later or tomorrow. While it’s far more difficult at first, eventually, by waiting out the discomfort, it loses its power over us. It breaks itself over our patience and resolve. There is no need to try and break it.

By observing, fear and discomfort become our teachers.

Jiu Jitsu at dawn.

I own mornings. I wake up most of the time somewhere between 5 and 5:30 a.m. This time of the year, in this part of the country, it might as well still be night. There’s something ominous about the black winter mornings of the northeast, the wind whipping and bending the wire window screens, hissing across the snow, sometimes cold enough to yank the breath right out of your chest. It makes it hard to leave my bed – and that’s exactly why I do it.

I get up, click on the electric kettle and wait for its hiss to drown out the wind. Coffee time. The beans are ground. The Aeropress is primed and plunged, and just like that, the ugliness of another winter morning is swept away before dawn breaks. I drink my coffee, write in my five-minute journal, and then do no greater and no fewer than two pages of free writing on whatever topic comes to mind.

Always two pages. Always in a black Moleskine ruled notebook. Always with a Tactile Turn Shaker aluminum pen which always has a pilot G-2 extra fine cartridge inside. The ink is always black.

Then the real fun begins. My workout always has to be done before the sun is up.

If I haven’t written this on this blog before, then here it is: The two words I avoid most are always and never. I just used the word always eight times.

My entire life, I’ve put a high value on consistency. It’s mostly because I’m not that great at anything, athletic or otherwise. But I found out early that I could beat pretty much anybody at being consistent. Being consistent is one of the highest standards to which I can hold myself. So I do it. Consistently.

This is the time of year when consistency’s mortality rate is highest. The cold weeks following New Year’s are when good intentions freeze to death. What keeps my feet moving is owning the morning -- every morning, but especially Wednesdays.

Wednesday mornings are for Jiu Jitsu at dawn. The class starts at 7 a.m., which this Wednesday will be about twenty minutes before sunrise. I’m usually the lowest man on the totem pole on Wednesday mornings, so the bone crushing begins immediately and doesn’t let up for the full hour.

Before the academy windows fog over, between those early drills, I’ll catch the sun rising out of the corner of my eye. The dreaming suburb begins to stir. Eventually, daylight hits the window, overpowering the academy’s fluorescents. On clear mornings, orange dawn spills across the blue mats. I smile at this and work my game that much harder.

A skeptic's guide to New Year's resolutions.

Happy new year. As much as I loathe to write it, this is a post about resolutions. You're probably thinking, loathe is a strong word. Here's why I chose it.

I don't believe a new calendar hanging on your wall is the best reason to resolve to change. I think the best time to initiate change is right now. Or, more accurately, the best time to change was yesterday.

However, after spending time with Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations," I've come to appreciate that the nature of the universe is change. It's a constant. And to stand in the way of change -- particularly any reason at all to change for the better -- is to get crushed under the weight of the universe.

For the reason at the beginning of the previous paragraph, I've never had a new year's resolution, and I think that has been to my detriment. This year, I have nine. These are the big four:

1. Be more useful to others.
2. Blog three times per month.
3. Mediate for at least five minutes, three times per week.
4. Read a book per month.

You'll notice a common thread with three of four: they're measurable. I'm using Way of Life, a fantastic habit building and breaking app I heard about on a recent episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, to track my progress. Four days into the new year, all systems are go. Keeping things measurable has been critical. Here's why.

Before broadening my fitness horizons, I was a gym rat who dreaded the first week of January. I didn't dread it because the gym was crowded, or because the new members didn't know what they were doing, but more so, it was because the majority would be gone by the next week.

What was especially frustrating and depressing was that with a slight adjustment to their approach, I knew their new habit would stick. Here is an example of an adjustment I made to one of my other resolutions. Italic type is the rough draft. Bold type is the final cut. 

• Get better at Jiu Jitsu and earn my blue belt.
• Train Jiu Jitsu at least three times per week.

First, the obvious: one is measurable, the other isn't. Second, not so obvious. Let's look at the philosophy in the rough draft. It's goal-oriented. I'm a goal-oriented person (it's something I'm trying to change, but that's a post for another day). But getting to blue belt, or any belt -- or really, any arbitrary milestone in life -- has a way of leading to shortcuts and a loss of appreciation for the journey.

It also sets you up for total derailment if you hit a setback. What if I trained every day and didn't get the promotion? I'm more likely to give up on the resolution, or maybe on Jiu Jitsu.

By resolving to train three times a week, I'm better positioning myself for success for three reasons:

1. I can measure my progress.
2. I'm likely to better appreciate the journey.
3. I'm likely to absorb more Jiu Jitsu because I'm grounded in the present, not looking ahead toward a milestone.

Back to the gym example. Instead of resolving to lose 15 pounds (measurable, but not unlike my blue belt example) or resolving to get fit (kind of like resolving to get better at Jiu Jitsu), I'd advocate for resolving to exercise three times a week. Tying exercise to a place -- the gym -- adds another point of failure to the fitness equation. Besides, you can get better exercise for free all over the internet. I'd recommend getting yourself a light kettlebell and checking out Fitness Blender.

This concept doesn't just apply to fitness. The same is true of my mediation resolution. The bar is set low: only five minutes, only three times a week. That's intentional. I've made the onset of forming the habit as easy and accessible as possible. I know I can manage five minutes, and that makes me optimistic that I'll work up to longer sessions at greater frequency.

Of my big-four resolutions, the first -- be more useful to others -- is neither specific nor quantifiable. That makes it difficult to sustain. However, it's supported by the next three -- chiefly, blogging three times per month. It's my hope to make this blog more useful to you in 2016. My deepest thanks to you for reading.