#375: Always Show Up. - Life Lessons, & Jiu-Jitsu.

Finding balance is essential for mental health and creativity. My jiu-jitsu practice serves as that escape from overthinking, though my training schedule recently changed.

• Almost skipped a promotion ceremony believing I didn't deserve recognition
• Friend encouraged me to attend, saying others might see progress I couldn't recognize
• Coach's message validated this: "You don't see what we see"
• Received an unexpected stripe promotion
• The difference between a white belt and black belt is simply continuing to show up
• Being just 1% better every day means being 100% better in 100 days
• Connected with someone celebrating 300 days of sobriety through Instagram
• Social media can create meaningful connections with people at all levels

Keep showing up, keep being a good friend, keep working to be the best version of yourself every day.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Balance: Finding Life's Release
• 0:50 Deserving Recognition in Jiu-Jitsu
• 2:14 The 1% Better Philosophy
• 4:08 300 Days Sober: Unexpected Inspiration
• 5:13 Final Thoughts and Sign-off

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

You know something that I do that I continuously refer to as the balance. It's the thing that gets me out of my mind to help me relax and to live my life and to alleviate stress, and it helps me with my creative writing and my comedy and everything, because I feel like you need something in your life to get you out of your head, to help again relax, you, untangle problems, and for me it's jujitsu. But the point is this my schedule changed and I'm not training jujitsu, unfortunately, as frequently and as often. And there was recently a promotion. Once every six months or so there's a promotion in jiu-jitsu and if you get enough stripes you get a new belt, and there's five belts. It goes white, blue, purple, brown, black.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Point is, I didn't feel like I deserved it and I wasn't going to go. Interestingly enough, a good friend of mine he told me that I'm paraphrasing, but he basically told me that I should go Because when he heard that I said that I'm not going to go and I wasn't going to because I didn't deserve it, he said you don't know that, because maybe you might make in life a lot of changes in a short amount of time like a lot of advancements, so it's not necessarily what I see or what I think. It's what the coach sees, it's what my training partners feel and experience. And I went and it was so crazy. It's kind of like if you ever go to church, you know like the pastor might say something. It's so specific, it's almost like a friend of yours emailed that pastor, right? Well, a similar thing happened to when I went to the promotion ceremonies, because when I was there, the coach, hugo, awesome, great guy, along with Vic and Eddie, but Hugo was speaking and he said you know, you might think that you might not deserve this, okay, and he was talking about everybody. He said it's important to come to these either way, and there was very few people that came on that day. He said because you don't see what we see, all right, but we do, all right, we see the improvements that you make. So you might not think that you deserve it, but we see what you don't Right.

Speaker 1: 2:26

And uh, sure enough, uh, I got a stripe and I think that's a big part of jujitsu is not just the, not just the um, the scaling of it, how I continue to can, can get better, but the lessons learned, the friendships made, and um, and it's just. I'm really thankful for my team of guys and the coaches and everything and my friends and stuff, but it's just another random life lesson that I thought was important enough that I wanted to document, get out there and let other people hear about, because maybe it'll help you in your life too. You know, maybe you think that you're not losing enough weight. Okay, maybe you think that you're you're not smart enough or not doing good enough, right, but there's an old saying in jujitsu which is the only difference between a white belt and a black belt A black belt is just a white belt. That continue to show up and I feel like, for those important days and those days that you think are less important, just keep showing up, keep going to the gym, keep being a good friend, a great confidant, whatever it is, fill in the blank, whatever you are to somebody else and, most importantly, to you. I think it's always important to be that best version of yourself and, as I always tell everybody and I really do believe this if you're just 1% better every single day, in a hundred days you'll be a hundred percent better. You will literally be a better version of yourself.

Speaker 1: 3:48

I had somebody recently reach out to me on Instagram and I told her that and it was just an initial message, because I guess she met me through comedy and she messaged me or something like that, or I messaged, however, it was right, but I told her about that 1% better every single day. You'll be 100%. And she responded back and it was very inspirational and again I'm paraphrasing. But she said tomorrow I'm going to be 300% better, which I didn't really understand what she said at first until she continued to speak and she said because tomorrow I'm going to be 300 days sober from alcohol and man.

Speaker 1: 4:28

If that isn't motivating, like, I don't really know what it is, and that's one of the reasons why I love Instagram so much is because you always meet like the most cool people, beautiful celebrities. I've reached out to tons of celebrities and I've actually had to message me back People that you think you would never reach out to, or vice versa. I reach out to high, low and in between, and you'd be surprised how cool people are if you just give them a chance. So, to that lady in specific, who will remain nameless, I really appreciate you sharing that. That just motivated me.

Speaker 1: 5:04

That was the coolest thing that I heard the entire day and maybe if something that I said, will you know, help you get a little bit better in life and if it does, that's great. Otherwise, at the very least, as I always mentioned, this is another physical imprint of me taking a life lesson, learning it, making an additional memory of it and noting it, you know, to implement it in my life, taking a moment to stop and just recognize and appreciate, and to not forget and to apply stuff you know over and over again. So, that being mentioned, I hope everybody has a beautiful day. Thank you so much for your time. I'm Ben Joel Dunn. Check me out. Peace.