The Reality of Pursuing Things You're Not Good At

Backstory

January 27, 2024 – a day marked on my calendar for months had finally arrived. It was my first Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ) grading day. When I stepped out of my apartment, I noticed that the weather was rather warm for a winter day. I wasn’t feeling the cold wind chills that I was used to feeling for the last couple of days. As if it was some type of weird cinematic foreshadowing, I started to feel unusually anxious walking towards the gym. It was a strange feeling. I think it had to do with the fact that I injured my neck 5 days prior to the grading. I still felt jolts of sharp pain when I did certain movements. I quickly told my brain to shut-up and stop complaining. Afterall, today was going to be the day I finally got promoted. It was going to be the day I finally got recognized for what felt like years of dedication I put into the sport. You see, I got into BJJ at the start of 2020, and since then martial arts and combat sports have become a huge part of my life–teaching me many life lessons along the way. It has taught me to be more confident in different scenarios, to think under pressure, and to be open to new ideas. Most importantly, BJJ taught me how to take control of my life, and stay present minded even when I had a lot going on with school, work, and relationships. Now you may be wondering (at least I hope you’re wondering), if this guy spent 4 years training, he must be really good right? Nope. The truth is, I’m still just a lowly ranked white belt with zero stripes. If you’re not familiar with martial arts or rankings, I provided a nice little diagram below. Let’s just say I’ve been everyone’s punching bag for a really really long time now.. ​

The next question you might be wondering is how have you never received any promotions in the last 4 years. That’s actually a bit more interesting of a question. The answer is I really have no idea. Theoretically, I should be an advanced blue belt by now. I guess I always found a way to get injured and miss grading somehow. Nevertheless, none of that mattered because today I was confident that I would get at least three or four stripes added to my white belt. I was finally going to have something to show people for my hard work.

The grading started at 12:00 sharp. The room is filled with soft blue mats and is packed with way too many people, and there’s pools of sweat so large I keep slipping and losing my balance. It was definitely not the place most people would want to spend their Saturday afternoon. Yet, here I was fighting for my life and telling myself there’s no place I’d rather be. I somehow manage to gaslight myself into actually believing that last sentence, and I start to smile. My neck pains slowly fade away, and my muscle memory starts to kick in. I was flowing through the movements that I had drilled over and over again. Finally, it came time for sparring. I had to fight two different people, each for 6 minutes at a time. The coach lines everyone up in the room, and starts pairing people together. I’ve never been great at practicing religion, but in that moment I prayed that I would be paired with someone my size or smaller. The coach points to me and someone standing behind me. I turn around, and see my opponent. Once again the universe somehow found a way to screw up my prayers. I got paired with probably one of the fiercest female fighters I’ve ever met. For the sake of the story, let’s call her Gwen. Gwen was smaller than me, but way more skilled, and if I’m being honest, I was kind of scared of her. The round starts. "God 'dammit,' I think to myself, 'why is my mind blanking?'" Unfortunately, I thought a bit too long, and I got flipped. Next thing I know I’m on my back, and Gwen’s on top of me trying to strangle the life out of me. I will say this hasn’t been the first time a skilled fighter chick has tried to kill me, but that’s a story for another time. Anyways, I decide I’ve been bullied enough, and I sweep her off of me. Unfortunately, the sweep caused all my neck and spine pain to come back. I quickly realize that my body hasn’t fully healed from my injury earlier that week, so I play defense until the round ends. The buzzer goes off, and I help pull her back up to her feet. She thanks me and says I’m funny. I’m not sure what to really make of that. I smile and go off to the side to stretch and get ready for my second fight.

​The alarm goes off and the second round starts. This time I’m paired with a guy who’s about my height and weight.  I quickly pull him towards me and off balance him. I wrap my legs around him to prevent him from actively attacking me, and I start to set up the submission I knew best: the triangle choke. He realizes what I’m trying to do and somehow escapes. My attempt to submit him left me more drained than I anticipated, I was left unable to really defend myself for the rest of the round. He realizes I’m tired and pins my back against the ground, and puts me in an arm-triangle choke. He was much stronger than I thought he was. I tried my best to escape but unfortunately he got the upper hand, and I was forced to tap out. The round ends. I lost. It was definitely not one of my best days, but I was hoping that one bad day wouldn't overshadow months of effort.
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The grading finally ends, and all of us are lined up, and that means it’s finally time for recognitions: when stripes get awarded. The coaches congratulate everyone on their efforts. They start by getting everyone to clap for everyone who participated. The coaches then go on to mention that a lot of people unfortunatly wouldn’t be getting a stripe or a promotion today, but that we should clap for them for showing up and giving their best effort. I remembered how intimidated I was when I first started my journey in combat sports, so I clapped extra loudly. Little did I know I was actually clapping for myself 🙁. After the noise finally died down, the coaches started one by one calling people up to reward them with their promotion. They call up the first group of the people. The group that would be rewarded with their first stripe! A huge beginning milestone, but I was way past the point of a single stripe, which is why I had zero worry when they didn’t call my name. The next group gets called (i.e.., the two stripe group). Once again, I don’t hear my name. I start to get anxious. Maybe I was going to be part of the group that gets three stripes. I wait in anticipation, and try my best to keep some form of composure as the remaining names get called. When I didn’t hear my name for that third time, I realized I was going to be going home without anything to show people. I look over to the end of the room and see my childhood friend Rick (ricksugden.weebly.com), who came to the grading just to get a picture of me getting a stripe added to my belt. The night before we joked that it would be hilarious if I didn’t get any promotion. That’s why for a second I thought I was being punked, and that Rick told the coaches to hold off on giving me my stripes until the very end. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a prank; my stripes never came, and I stayed dead silent for the rest of the ceremony. I try my best to smile and be happy for everyone. I’m not sure if people were able to tell that my smiles were disingenuous, but at that moment I really didn’t care. I just grabbed my things and walked out without looking back.

Reflections

If you knew more personally, you’d know that I’ve had an insane amount of shit and unlucky days. However, all those other times I always felt like the outcome was out of my control. This time the outcome was supposed to be in my control. I was supposed to be rewarded for all the effort I put into the sport. Was hard work and dedication really just not enough? Was I actually just incompetent at jiu jitsu? The funny thing is that jiu jitsu was supposed to be a strategic thinking sport. It was supposed to be the sport that tech bros and grad students did well in. So not only did it feel like I was being called physically incompetent, it felt like I was also being called unintelligent because I couldn’t think and devise a plan on the spot. However, I think the thing that sucked the most was that I pretty much made jiu jitsu and MMA my entire personality for a while. After my PhD, jiu jitsu and health were my primary focus. I constantly said no to getting drinks and going out with different people just to be more sharp and focused. It made me feel as though there was no point to any of my efforts. I spent the rest of the day wondering if it was even worth it for me to continue pursuing jiu jitsu. 

It’s been over three weeks since the grading happened, and after a lot of thinking, here are some of my main takeaways regarding the idea of pursuing things you’re not really great at.

​1. Standing out at a lower level is preferable to being mediocre at a higher level.

Another way of looking at this is that it’s best to not be promoted until you are fully ready to be. Imagine being a blue belt, but every white belt who enters your gym is able to beat you in a fight. Or even worse, imagine graduating from your program or getting a promotion at work, but you’re unable to recall information from your degree and can’t perform the tasks that you’re required to be able to perform. At the end of the day, your coaches and mentors have a good idea of where your abilities are, and you should be humble in terms of how good you think you really are.

2. Focus on input goals rather than outcome goals.

I often find myself making a lot of outcome based goals. For a lot of people outcome goals may sound like the following:

• I want to be a New York Times best selling author
• I want to look like this influencer
• I want to be famous
• I want to be promoted at work 

Personally, when I set goals like these, I often get disappointed and sad when things don’t work out. 

This year I’m trying my best to forget the outcome and focus on setting input based goals. Input goals don’t require any other person’s or the universe’s judgment to pan out. Input goals sound like the following:

• I will practice my writing  once a week for 2 hours on top of my school work.
• I will workout 4 times a week so matter how busy I get.
• I will post a blog per month on social media
• I will read at least 2 papers a week to stay up-to-date with science and technology

The main difference between input goals and output goals is the fact that I have complete control over input goals and very little control over outcome goals. By shifting my focus towards input goals, I can let go of being anxious about the outcome because I know I at least did my part and that the rest is out of my control.

3.  People often overestimate the amount of effort and time they put into their crafts.

I feel like we all have a tendency to think we worked harder than we actually did. For instance, when I was in undergrad there would be days where I was at the library from 12pm till midnight. I would then go home and brag to my roommates and parents about how I studied for 12 hours that day. In reality, I probably studied for 5 hours. The truth was I spent a lot of time fidgeting and getting distracted by the people I was “studying” with. I probably also spent 2 of those 12 hours deciding where to get food and what type of coffee I should drink. This idea of overestimating how much time I was putting into my studies was actually the same principle that applied to my jiu jitsu training.

In the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that I've been training for the last 4 years, and that people were often shocked and left wondering how I was still just a white belt. Well, the reason I’ve never been promoted was because my training and practice wasn’t really consistent, and in reality, I just didn’t put in as much time as I thought I did. 

I started jiu jitsu in the winter of 2020 for about two months before the covid pandemic hit. Then for about 2 years, I watched YouTube tutorials and practiced those tutorial moves with my roommates. I then got back into jiu jitsu in 2021, but that only lasted for 8 weeks because I got into a relationship and forgot about training and exercise 🤷🏽‍♂️. I then got back into it again in 2023 after my relationship had ended, but then I dislocated my shoulder and had to sit out again. When I added up all the time I truly trained for, it came out to only being 10 months, which was really not a lot of time considering the fact that it usually takes 6 months for most people to just get a single stripe added to their white belt.

Anyways, next time you think you’re working super hard or put in a lot of effort, try adding up the “true” amount of hours you spent working. I’m sure there’s a lot of time trackers out there that can help you with this.

4. Have faith that things are going to work out.

On January 27th, I was really angry and upset that things didn’t go my way. I even briefly considered quitting jiu jitsu and finding something else to do. However, the one thing I hate more than things not going my way is people thinking that I’m too soft or that I give up when things get hard. You see, I’ve always had faith that things would work out if I just worked hard enough. In high school, biology was my worst subject, leading me to steer clear of the sciences. However, in university, I dedicated considerable time to understanding and exploring it further. Now, I'm pursuing my PhD in biomedical engineering. The same sentiment can be applied to most of my hobbies actually. I was never great at any of them to begin with, but I believed that one day I could be. For instance, I never thought I could sing and play the guitar at the same time, yet now, playing shows here and there has become one of my favourite things to do. On January 27th, 2024, I was really close to calling it quits, but I’m glad I didn’t because when I went back to the gym the very next week, the coaches ended up giving me my first stripe. They were in fact very pleased with my progress, and they even mentioned that they were really proud of all the effort I was putting in. Turns out it was all just an accident that I didn’t get my stripe on grading day 😂……

If you made it to the end of this blog, I just want to say thank you. It’s been a very long time since I spent the time to curate my thoughts into a blog, so it means a lot that you spent the time to read it. I’m planning to write more often, hopefully at least once a month. If you’re interested in reading similar stories about science, tech, philosophy, or just general life adventures, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter!

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