#392 - LESSONS Learned..

Ever notice how the smallest shift can change your whole day? We explored that idea through the lens of jiu-jitsu, then carried it straight into real life. By resetting familiar habits and questioning old assumptions, we found leverage in unexpected places: when to write goals, how to trigger action, and why owning your mistakes creates faster learning on and off the mat.

We start with a full reset on the mats—unlearning comfortable moves to design a style that truly fits. That process mirrors personal routines. Instead of drafting a to-do list at dawn and losing steam by noon, we moved goal setting and daily reminders to the moment work ends. The result is fresher motivation, a tighter window to act, and fewer excuses. It’s a simple micro adjustment with an outsized payoff, like tweaking grip pressure to make a pass unstoppable.

From there, we dig into structure. Stacking alarms throughout the day might sound intense, but those cues teach your internal clock. Over time, you can feel when to switch tasks, take a break, or lace up for a workout. The training wheels come off as timing becomes intuitive. We also unpack a tougher truth: it’s harder to improve what already works than to fix what’s broken. That’s why the reflect-correct-apply loop matters. Break down your wins, hunt for hidden slack, and apply changes fast—next roll, next block of the day, next creative rep.

If you’re chasing progress in relationships, career, comedy, or combat sports, the path is the same. Personalize your system, place small changes at leverage points, and keep iterating. Micro adjustments compound. Reset where needed, refine what’s good, and let your results prove the difference.

If this resonates, follow along, share it with a friend who needs a push, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. What micro adjustment will you try today?

Transcript

Jiu-Jitsu As A Mirror For Life

Resetting Technique And Finding Style

Routines, Goals, And Daily Lists

Shifting Planning To After Work

Owning Mistakes And Applying Fixes

Timely Reminders And Alarms

Reflect, Correct, And Improve The Good

Micro Adjustments And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Lessons learned. You know, one of the reasons that I love training jujitsu is it because you can reflect on it two things in your life. You know, like recently I've reset everything that I know in jiu-jitsu, and I'm kind of starting over, but using things that work the best for me to make my own uh style. Everybody has their own style in jiu-jitsu, no different than uh singing or fighting. I mean, it is an art, it is one of the many arts of fighting, right? But um as far as life goes, um, I try to evolve and uh improve my routines, even when I think I got them great. You know, so perfect example. Every morning I write down my list of goals, and I also have a reminder list of things that I need to do in a day, a daily list. And uh I always do it first thing in the morning, but uh starting today, I am actually going to be doing my reminder list and my to-do's list uh directly after work because it it mo it like it would motivate me to see my reminder list of my goals, like things that I had to accomplish today, which is different than like singular things that I may have to accomplish in one day. There's dailies and there's just things that you might do for just one day and you don't repeat it, right? But uh anyway, my point is that uh this morning I realized that being motivated to do the things that you want to accomplish after work would be best to get that dose of motivation, right? Directly after work. So that I'm pumped up and I'm firing on all cylinders, you know. Um, and then to write my goals, uh, my additional things that I wanted to get that done that day directly after work as well, right? So just by making that small shift, it gives me a fresh reminder, not eight hours before one of things that, you know, I should be getting accomplished. And it gives me an immediate actions to-do list. So, you know, the reason why I call this episode lesson learned, lessons learned, is um I just feel like learning is not just always a continuous cycle, or at least it should be, right? Um, but I don't mind admitting it uh that I was wrong because that gave that gives me the opportunity to know that uh I learned from something to make it better, right? And I kind of feel like whether, not to digress too much, whether it's relationships or uh personal advancement, professionalism, jujitsu, comedy, whatever, right? Knowing that you've made a mistake is a great learning opportunity provided by you to learn what you did wrong and correct it and then apply it. Apply that correction on your next role with in jujitsu or on your next joke or whatever it is it might be, you know. And um, yeah, so I'm excited to see how much better today is going to be. So I'm making this podcast episode uh as I'm driving, as I always do, um uh in my car. And uh I'm this is a reminder for myself to follow through with my own plan. You know, I mean, you know how sometimes somebody tells you something like, hey, remind me, they asked for a reminder, but they might do it like hours before, like the sooner that you want a reminder, the better. It's kind of like almost if you set an alarm to go off five hours before you wanted an alarm. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. So why not set an alarm for directly when you want to do something? And by the way, I do that too. I have like 12 alarms that go off in my entire day. Everything from getting out of bed to making sure you're out of bed to stopping work to uh, you know, you know, do something else, like exercise or whatever else. Um, and those reminders are great because after a while, once you have those alarms, you sort of routinely start to like get that internal timing to realize, like, hey, I've been working eight hours or more than enough, or I should take a break right now. And oh, look, it's 12 exactly, it's noon exactly. You know, um, no different than your uh, I think they call it like an internal clock. Like if you get up at four o'clock every single morning with an alarm, after a while, you're probably not gonna need that alarm. Your body is gonna be used to getting up at that exact time. But anyway, without digressing too much, um I think it's important to always reflect, to correct, and to apply, which is a major lesson that is routinely taught in the military. You know, uh reflect what you did right. And uh it's always harder to see what you did right than what you did wrong in any circumstance, you know, even in a win, in a victory. Um, but to um correcting things that are wrong is easy, but improving things that are right is always harder, right? It's like telling somebody that you don't like them when you don't like them compared to telling bad news to somebody that you do like. It's always harder improving on the good and working on the good. Um, but that's what you got to do to be better, and that's what I'm all about. So uh to the start of my uh new micro adjustment, which is one of my new favorite words now, micro adjustment, because that's what I'm doing in jiu-jitsu, making a lot of small corrections that are having big effects. Uh, I hope everyone has a beautiful day. And that being mentioned, I'm Benja. Well done. Check me out.