Leave Your Ego at the Door
The Machado Brothers are some of my jiu-jitsu heroes. Their motto is:
Leave Your Ego at the Door
That sounds good, and you hear it all the time in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academies, but what does it really mean? Most of us think it means that you don't have to go balls-out every roll. Or we think it means that we should tap if we are caught in a submission. Sometimes it reminds us that we were all once noobs and we should go out of our way to help our newest students or, when we are rolling with one, not to submit them mercilessly.
It's all of those things, but it's more too.
I found this article by Wayne Dwyer: Seven Steps for Overcoming Ego's Hold On You. It's as good as anything I remember having read regarding the ill effects of ego, but it's chock full o' spiritual gobbledygook -- if that's your thing, give it read. You don't have to because I'm going to paraphrase it for you and hit you with the highlights.
Stop Being Offended
You cannot control the actions of other people. But you can control your reaction to them.
I remember one of the first Advanced Classes I ever taught at the academy. After showing a technique, one of my teammates said, "I don't know if that's going to work."
Instead of being offended, I just looked at him,smiled at him and said, "Yeh. Not for you."
Let Go of Your Need to Win
"You may enjoy competing, and have fun in a world where winning is everything, but you don’t have to be there in your thoughts ... All you can say on a given day is that you performed at a certain level in comparison to the levels of others on that day ... Let go of needing to win by not agreeing that the opposite of winning is losing."
The old jiu-jitsu saying is that there is no win-lose. Only win-learn.
Let Go of Your Need to Be Right
Some of the spirit of Jiu-Jitsu and, perhaps, the source of its strength is that it is ever-evolving. Unlike most traditional martial arts where the "master" knows everything, the tradition of jiu-jitsu is the opposite. The "master" is ever-learning and does not mind picking up something from a neophyte.
Consider the story of the "Americana." The Americana (aka the keylock or the paintbrush) is probably the first submission new Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students learn, but it wasn't always that way.
The Americana was introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu after the American wrestler, Bob Anderson, showed it to Rolls Gracie. At the time (1978) Rolls was a jiu-jitsu god, perhaps THE jiu-jitsu god. And yet he adopted a technique from someone who had no jiu-jitsu experience and made it part of his jiu-jitsu curriculum. Indeed, because he didn't "need to be right", we all know the bent armlock named after the American, Bob Anderson. The Americana.
Let Go of Your Need to Be Superior
In jiu-jitsu, some people will improve faster than you. Sometimes you'll hit a plateau and meanwhile your best buddy will hit a growth spurt and surpass you.
It's all good. You shouldn't be comparing you to him anyway. You should be comparing your yesterday's self to today's self. Period.
"True nobility isn’t about being better than someone else. It’s about being better than you used to be."
Let Go of Your Need to Have More
Dwyer's point here is that when you let go of your need to have more, that you naturally give more. And it is in the giving and teaching that we grow.
"It is in the giving that we receive."
Let Go of Identifying Yourself on the Basis of Your Achievements
Don't count your taps.
I can't tell you who I submitted yesterday, but I remember times I was tapped a year ago.
Dwyer kind of says that, but he gets a little ... ummm ... esoteric.
Let Go of Your Reputation
Some of us think we wear our reputations around our waists.
One of my favorite stories regarding belt color and reputation comes via my brother-in-law who is a black belt. One day, he said he let a white belt get too deep into his collar and had to tap to a cross collar choke.
The white belt looked at him and said, "Why did you let me do that?"
My brother-in-law looked down at his belt, tugged at it and said, "You don't get this for doing that."
"Your reputation is not located in you. It resides in the minds of others. Therefore, you have no control over it at all."
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