Ep. 373: Finding Your Worth, feat. Erin Herle

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient jiu-jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to bjjmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of jiu-jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. [Music] Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 373. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach and we're rocking in 2026 with Aaron Hurley. Aaron, how's it going? Speaker 2: It is going. I think that's always been my answer on every episode, so I might as well keep it that way. Speaker 1: It's an okay answer. I mean, I would rather that it just be going and that you'd be doing all right than hear the things are doing terrible. So, you know, hey, it's going, I can live with that. Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll take it. It's everything's all right. Luckily, we've left 2025. That was not a great year for me. I'm waiting for the Chinese New Year to start so we can, you know, I can get out of this shedding of the snake and into the year of the horse, where things are supposedly, for me, a snake, is supposed to get better. So, this is a good start. Speaker 1: Was 2025 a great year for anybody? I don't think so. Speaker 2: I don't know, but I do love commiserating. So if anyone had a really bad year, feel free to DM me about it. Speaker 1: Well, let's do a quick introduction. Of course, long-time listeners of the show and our premium subscribers know exactly who you are. You've appeared with us many times and you did that awesome mindset course with us, The War Within. But why don't we just do a quick recap? Say hi to everybody, Aaron. Speaker 2: Yeah, I am a jiu-jitsu black belt. Um, I've actually been a black belt now longer than it took me to get a black belt. I did not start jiu-jitsu after being an athlete. I found jiu-jitsu and was like, I guess I'm an athlete now. I am now a mental performance consultant. The full title is certified mental performance consultant, where I help people get out of their own way. I work with like mental skills of imagery, visualization, but I use a lot of philosophy and like athletic identity, and I help people kind of figure out what they want, who they are, outside of their sport, within their sport. And, you know, this is so relevant for this episode because I struggled a lot with competition because I made it my life and I put all my eggs in one basket. And so this is kind of a a really close to home topic where I get to bring in my own lived experience and also like research and the other theories that I work with. And I think the the biggest thing about me especially now is that I got my permanent residency, I lived in Canada, and now I am officially moving back to LA where I'm from to figure out what is next. So I don't really, I'm not someone that like has competed in a while. I know I did do Masters Worlds last year, dropped in a competition, but largely my life is spent with cats and puzzles and Fortnite and Arc Raiders. So that is I guess like a whole encompassing thing about me right now and what I do and who I am. Speaker 1: This is a complete tangent, but I got people in my community talking about this. Do I need to get into Arc Raiders? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Why? Give me the pitch. Pitch me on Arc Raiders. What is this going to add to my life? Speaker 2: So similar to Fortnite in that there's like you drop in and the game is only so long, so you're not stuck in the story of like, I have to do this many hours, I have like you you know when to quit. Arc Raiders is where you are basically looting, which is my favorite, I'm a loot goblin in Fortnite. And you follow these quests and you try not to get killed by each other, and there's a proximity chat and all that. Most people when you're playing solo, won't kill you. And it's like they'll actually be like, oh, we're already hiding from all of these machines and whatnot trying to kill us, which are called arcs. And it's just a social experiment to be honest. There's like this uh, you can use the emotes, but like you you turn your mic on, a lot of people will go friendly, friendly, friendly, friendly. That's like because they don't want to get shot by someone else because they're, you know, trying to search for loot and grow their Raider skills and whatnot. So I like it. You don't like you can only spend up to 30 minutes what's called top side anyways. So for my addictive personality, I'm like, cool, I have time for one more. And then I'll do that and then I'll move on with my life and do something more productive. So I I think it's it's fun. It's just um, yeah, it's interesting. If you have a mic and you like talking crap to strangers, go ahead, get out there. Speaker 1: I mean, that's literally my whole job. I have a mic and I like talking crap to strangers. This sounds like something for me. Speaker 2: It fits, it fits. You should definitely try it out. Speaker 1: Well, let's dig into the topic that you mentioned. We've been kind of going back and forth on this. And odds are we're probably going to expand this into a whole course at some point, but I thought this would be an important enough conversation that we should give a summary and maybe dig some of the those nuggets of wisdom out of your head, Aaron. Let's talk about self-worth in jiu-jitsu. Now, this is a broad concept, encapsulates a lot of things like imposter syndrome and confidence. Maybe a good place to start is what is self-worth and what is the problem that as a mental performance coach in this sport you see many people having when it comes to self-worth and jiu-jitsu? Speaker 2: Self-worth is really tied to confidence, to your self-concept, to your identity, your personality, and we call it performance-based self-worth in terms of when those things kind of fuse. When you have those external factors such as belt promotions, rankings, how many times you tap and get tapped in training, medals, podium shots, all of that. Instagram followers, I think is also tied into it. Back in my day, that was like, you made a Facebook page, like an athlete page. It was like, hey everybody, follow me there. And it's hard in jiu-jitsu to separate them. It's a perfect storm of performance-based self-worth because of the fact that we have a belt system that's hierarchical, that's rooted in this public display, like you wear your belt, you wear these stripes. There's a lot of comparison that is being made. We don't have a regulated sport. We don't have a national or international governing body. We have the IBJJF that has a rule set. And I guess they would be the most official defining factor of like how many years you should spend at each belt, but it's largely subjective. It's based on a lot of different things and if you ask any coach, they will have different answers for what they are looking for. And yet we will should ourselves into thinking that a certain belt should be, you know, good at this, this, this. But if I were to describe, okay, so what are all the moves? What are all the things that each belt should, you know, be good at or how do you qualify yourself? They we don't have one. We don't have a standardized approach. So it being so subjective makes it very, very hard to root yourself in this like standard of, okay, this is what is required, this is what is required. And so therefore it ends up being, well, if I'm a purple belt, I have to be, quote unquote, better, which I hate that word because someone will be like, I want to be better. I want to be better this. I want to be better at that. I'm like, okay, so that's pretty vague. But I have to be better than the blue and white belts if I'm a purple belt. And, you know, the black belts and the brown belts are supposed to beat me. And so there's been this argument that I've kind of created of merit versus mercy. Is it something that I've earned? Is it a reflection of my capabilities? Or is it that person having mercy upon me or they're having a bad day or they're going easy on me? Can I trust my own competence? Understanding your own competence in this sport is very hard because it's dichotic. If I win, you lose. So it's not just I have performed this skill. I performed this offense and based on your defense or vice versa, then I can sort of evaluate and even analyze or criticize myself and my worth. And I think some of the language that we use is problematic because we don't say I earned a black belt. I have a black belt. A black belt has been bestowed upon me. Um, I guess you could say, but we say I am. I'm a purple belt. I'm a I'm a black belt. I am. And so we we fuse, automatically fuse our identity with that. And I think there's also we'll get more into this I think, but also like using more of the language is like, maybe it's business-minded marketing, but it's like, oh, we create champions on and off the mat. And I'm like, well, there should be some separation of the two. And I can go into more stories later on that, but yeah, so the fusing of the identity ends up becoming the contingencies of self-worth. And contingencies of self-worth is when it becomes your your own self-worth becomes unstable because it's contingent on performance, approval, competence. And so what happens is wins feel like, oh, okay, I did what I was supposed to. It ends up becoming relief, you know, okay, yeah, I did the thing, rather than, wow, this was an accomplishment or this is something that I did well and I want to um celebrate this or give myself credit. And losses feel more like a threat to who you are, what you what you uh offer, how useful you are, how valued you are by others. And because this is not a solo sport, yet we still compete alone. So we're training together, but we fight alone. And so the mistakes I make and my wins and my losses are solely mine, but yet I can't do it alone. I can't do it, you know, solo drills are not going to get me to the gold. And so we have to rely on others. And therefore the training sessions end up just constantly being this evaluative issue of like trying to see where we are on this totem pole of hierarchy. Speaker 1: Extremely well said. This makes me think, we should maybe start this off by asking, is the whole idea of self-worth and identity, is it an inherently good or a bad thing? Because when we talk about problems like this, often the implication is our identity is getting in our way. It's impacting our feeling of self-worth. We don't feel good about ourselves. And that can make people feel like having an identity then can be a a bad thing. Is that the case? I mean, we talked about how people identify as I am a black belt, or they get their sense of identity caught up in their performance in jiu-jitsu. Of course, that can be the beginning of a lot of confidence issues, but is it inherently a bad thing? Because for all of the people that I we talk to who struggle with confidence and self-worth in jiu-jitsu, for the people who do have those successes, I mean, arguably, their sense of self-worth works for them. How do we balance this? Is is it inherently a bad thing to strive for material or measurable results in jiu-jitsu? Should we all try to discard that completely or is there a way to balance those pursuits with a true sense of self-worth that can survive and thrive even under those difficult situations? Speaker 2: The latter. So I'm going to start with a quote from Shakespeare, which is like, cool, I finally get to use my English degree. But nothing is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. I live in that world of perception. Reality is one thing. Fact is one thing, but how you feel or think about something is going to influence and determine your behavior. And how you feel about things is largely is what dictates whether you try something new, whether you strive, whether you give effort, whether you count yourself in or out. And so that's the kind of as a mental performance consultant or coach, that's where I am. That's where I play. Because if I were to just be like, hey, so, you know, stress appraisal, if you, I was going over this today with someone and I spent a lot of time with this client on the perception of your resources versus your demands. So if we look at this task of winning a tournament, we can perceive it as, I think it's like making a molehill out of an anthill or something. I think I'm messing that up, but Speaker 1: Are you talking about making a mountain out of a molehill? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a better one. That's a better comparison. Speaker 1: You got to get up to speed on your garden pests. It's really important to know about uh lawn pest control if you want to be a jiu-jitsu mental performance coach. Speaker 2: And my idioms. So, you know, it's if I perceive my if, you know, I could be in a bad mood. I could be more irritable, right? And I'm not going to have a high threshold for discomfort. And I might read the signs of arousal as, oh man, this is happening again. Like this isn't going to help me. I can't be going to the bathroom seven times when in reality, if my body is getting ready for this, you know, fight or flight response, it's going to get rid of the things it doesn't need and shut down its digestive system. That's actually my body doing the right things and it's facilitative. So it's adaptive. It's not maladaptive. It's not debilitative. In other words, it's contextual. So I would say that a lot of the issues that I had personally were creating a sense of self based on performance outcomes. But performance outcomes are largely unstable, especially in this sport. Everything is very subjective. How the ref is going to interpret the rules, whether there's favoritism or bias. What you can't control so many things, you know, like a very trite and cliche saying out of mental training is control the controllables, but you don't know what the controllables are until you really go into it. In fact, I will go do some workshops and seminars and I'll play this game. I'm like, you're going to go on this side of the room if you think this is controllable. You're going to go on that side of the room if you think it's not controllable. And if you can argue for both, then you're going to stand in the middle. And I will pick on people for them to back their case. And rarely is everyone all on the same side. There's things that like I I call it the middle as influenciable, which is not a word, which I know because I told you, I have an undergraduate degree in English. Hello. But there is a largely like, well, the ref, right? How the ref interprets the rules? Can you are you controlling the ref? No. The ref can do whatever the ref wants. Will they get yelled at and screamed at? Yeah, but I'm they're used to that, right? So if they want to choose to just give the decision to someone else or if they want to give someone an advantage, whether it was warranted or not, they have the full power to do so and there's nothing you can do about it. In fact, if you argue, they're just going to penalize you anyways. And so you just, you know, as an athlete, you have to keep your mouth shut, which is really hard for me to do. And so there's this like, okay, so is it good or bad to rely on performance outcomes to build your self-worth? I would say it's it's just it's not reliable. It's not a reliable source. And if we are like, yes, things are contextual, but if I change who I am based on the room that I walk into. Now, for some, it's like, well, that's a role I play. When I am walking into a gym and I am the one leading the class, I'm going to behave a certain way. I'm going to take control of the room. I'm going to lead, I'm going to guide, I'm going to mentor, I'm going to teach. And then when I'm the student, it would be inappropriate for me to be like, no, no, no, no, no, I do it this way, right? It's cool if I share with my partner some things, but it's not my it's not appropriate for me to be teaching, right? So it's more of I'm being led. I'm a follower. And so the roles and duties and responsibilities change. However, my values, my core values do not change. My character, my integrity do not change. The person that I am at the core is not changed, but what I might do or how I may behave might change. So it's always important to be able to define one, your athletic identity, which is the amount to which that you're dedicating your life to this sport and how much of your identity takes up, you know, this thing. Unfortunately, for me, I didn't have much at all to to to kind of gravitate towards instead of I think I went to like hardcore shows and, you know, I just that's pretty much it. I didn't even really get upset with cats yet, you know? And so, like, I was like, oh my gosh, whenever, because I started with Hama, and I remember Hama one time was like, well, you're really you're really flexible. And I immediately was like, does that mean I'm going to be good? And he was like, if you want, like, yes, you know, he didn't really know how to answer that. And so my question was always like, well, am I good? Am I good? I'm always looking for outside validation because I didn't have it. I didn't have the validation that who I was was just like, oh, I could just exist. I could just be a human being and have worth. It was more of like, people pleasing and wanting to show that I'm a good partner. So therefore, I will be asked to roll more. And, oh, I have to win tournaments because if I enter tournaments and I lose, then I'm not going to get asked onto any super fights. Not that that was like a huge thing back in my day. And so I didn't really have the opportunity to build that outside of anything because I didn't really care about school. I was like, yeah, whatever. I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD yet. I didn't get diagnosed until I was, I think, a blue belt and I was about 22. And so I just was like, well, I don't know who I am. And I'm going to allow this sport to take over my entire life and this is going to define me. And using jiu-jitsu outcomes, how can I use an outcome that I can barely control? Like I could do everything so-called right and still it not work. In fact, I was around high-level athletes really early on, like Hama. And, you know, and then later on I started working for Gracie Mag where I was the one interviewing these high-level athletes. And sometimes they would just come to me and they'd say, well, he had a better day than me. And it was like, oh, so you couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was that caused you to lose. It wasn't a lapse in concentration or confidence or a bad decision or too, you know, not strong enough, not fast enough, not whatever. You couldn't just pinpoint it because there's so many variables and so like there's infinite ways to win a match. And so and vice versa, there's infinite ways to lose. And so it was very hard for them to be able to say why, except for it wasn't written in the stars for me. You know, you know, God, he prayed harder. God wanted him to win instead of me. There's a lot of just like, we don't know. We don't know exactly what variable. So, left to our own devices, we might chalk it up to, I'm just not good enough. Or I don't belong. Or I don't have what it takes without actually being able to define what that is. So, too long, didn't read would be basically, you don't want to rely on something that's unstable, that is uncontrollable, that is largely unreliable. I want to walk into a competition not putting my character on trial, not putting all of my worth on trial because just that very philosophy or mindset or intention is going to make things very cutthroat. And when things are cutthroat, it feels like being on a seesaw between, I could do it. Oh God, no, you can't. I could do it. Oh God, no, you can't. And so it's a very hard place to be in. Rather like, imagine if you could just go into a world championship and be like, if I win or I lose, I still have my family, I still have my job, I still have my hobbies, I still got my cat's love. Like, this is more stable. However, some people believe that you need to sacrifice. Some people believe that you need to struggle. Some people believe that you need to, you know, you just you can't win unless you want it bad enough. How bad do you want it? And that is where we look at, well, are you sacrificing too much? Are you putting too much on the line? Are you making this bigger than it is? And therefore, raising your arousal, which therefore uh ends up narrowing your your concentration and making you have tunnel vision? Like, yeah, probably. I would have done a lot better in competition. I did pretty well, but I would have done a lot better if I was more focused on the task in front of me and what was in front of me, rather than the meaning behind it that I was placing too much on. Speaker 1: You talked about perception and how so much of self-worth comes from not what's actually happening in the outside world, but how we perceive things inside ourselves. Jesse Phillips from Gentle Giant Jiu-Jitsu was on the podcast recently talking about burnout and expectations. And he had this great saying. He said, don't should on yourself. I love that because it ties into what you talked about as well, the tendency to use the word should, about how we feel we should be performing, should we be good at jiu-jitsu, should we be winning competitions? And getting our sense of identity so caught up in not who we really are or what we're doing, but how we think other people should perceive us or how we should be perceived by other people. That's not great from a sense of long-term self-worth. I'd love to hear you maybe expand a little bit about that, where that line blurs from how you perceive yourself versus how other people perceive you. Speaker 2: So technically, shooting yourself is a cognitive distortion, which is an irrational belief, which comes from rationally emotive behavioral therapy. So it's like, and this is another theory, but a theory that is really important is also the self-discrepancy. So this guy Higgins in 1987 said there were three beliefs about the self. And one of them is the who you are, so your actual self. Then there's the who you'd like to be, which is your ideal self. And this last one makes me think that he was British, who you think that you should be or your ought self. O U G H T for the non-British. I ought to do that. Um, so we don't really use that word too much. So people are like, what? So having those three lets you think, okay, so what have I done? What is there evidence for? That's my actual self. Then and and this is something where like, I've had to talk to people and maybe this is like, you know, harsh, but I've had to say to some more friends than clients, but like, let's say they want to end they want to go sacrifice and spend all this money to go to the worlds. And because they're like, oh, yeah, like I can win. And I have to be like, well, what in your previous performances has shown you that you could win? You can go there and just not like and just be like, I want to see. I just want to see how I do. I want to test myself. I want to challenge myself. I want to I want to have fun with my friends. I want to I want to go to California. I mean, you can have multiple motivations. But if you're your sole motivation is because you think you can win, I'm going to say, okay, so what is the evidence that you're using to be able to accomplish this or think that you can accomplish this? And so that's a kind of rare like inflated sense of self. Usually, it's people denying themselves worth or value saying, no, no, oh, I could never. And, you know, being like, oh, well, that person has won this and that person is an AOJ person and that, you know, trains at Autos and how could I compare? And it's like, well, just because they have access to resources doesn't actually mean that that means they're going to win or that they have an ability to manage their psychological states. But the ideal self is like, well, okay, goal setting, the future, intention setting, being like, okay, so what would I like to be? What am I striving towards? I'd like to have at least, it doesn't actually have to be a destination. It doesn't have to be so defined, like I'm going to be a world champion because I've done that and it's really, really disorienting when it doesn't come true. And so what would you like or what direction would you like to head? Um, how do you want to do it? So a hack for that is like an adverb. Yay, English. Is like, I want to do this, you know, patiently. I want to do this with conviction, with composure. And so then it doesn't really matter exactly the place you end up. Shoot for the moon and land amongst the stars kind of thing. And the who they should be. This is so important. We do not notice when we've internalized. So if you've ever watched or read anything on like how ads are so pervasive and how we have decided body standards. Like in the 90s, it was like Kate Moss and like they called Jessica Simpson fat when she looked just super healthy. And so this standard or image usually pushed by media. We're internalizing that. We're internalizing how people speak to us, our parents. I had a narcissistic dad growing up who would like to terrorize his own family. So I didn't have great like he they say that like how your parents speak to you is how your self-talk is, how you speak to yourself. Also, like what standards are being placed upon you. You like you can only use your phone if you get straight A's or things that are contingent or there's contingent rewards or worse, punishment. And so how are we internalizing these standards? And a lot of them are implicit. They're not explicitly stated. Rarely is a coach going to be like, actually, Liv Livia Giles, she with her, you know, all their Aussie humor, they they would put together a photo when she would be out at the Worlds or, you know, some big tournament. And they'd all hold up signs and I remember one of the signs said, if you lose, don't come home. And I love it because that's the type of stuff that maybe we don't really think about, but we feel. We feel like we might be rejected. We feel like we won't be respected. But then when you play it out and you're like, well, are these like if that really happened, you'd be like, you're a douche. You know, you just kind of like fight that head on. If anyone ever said that to me, I'd physically fight them or crying in a corner, then fight them or, you know, both simultaneously. But the internalization of other people's expectations is, well, does your gym have all these metals on the wall? Are they only gold medals? When people go out and compete, does everyone get a shout out? Does everyone or is it just the winners? Do people just not even get noticed? Is the attention from your coach geared towards the people that are winning? Like, we see this. I mean, children especially will pick up on this. But we also because it's so implicit, the coach might not even realize they're doing that. So this is when it comes down to a ego-oriented climate, motivational climate versus a task-focused climate. Is it Brad over there hit three guillotines? It was awesome. He's been working so hard on that. I recognize his efforts. And now he's been validated on, you know, the highest level. Versus, you know, so and so, you know, won three matches and that's it, you know. There's no affirmations of what they've done versus the, okay, they've we've they've clearly gotten better at jiu-jitsu. It's not just, oh yeah, that guy beat the number one seed. I care more about how. I care more about the performance and what was happening and what they learned from it and what the growth was and the debrief and what they did well versus just having done it. And being in the ranking. Like, I'm sorry, but flow grappling rankings are just like, what are you doing? What are you making those off of? I recently had to talk a client down. He's 15. He does jiu-jitsu and um high school wrestling. And, you know, he's like, I'm ranked now. There's a rivalry from my school, so I have to perform. And I'm like, that is nothing. Those if you choose to believe in that and let it affect your performance, then fine, but it's a distraction. Doesn't change whether you do the damn thing. It doesn't change the grips you make. It doesn't change the takedown that you go for. It doesn't change how to use your breathing to calm yourself down. Focus on the task and the outcome is a byproduct. Therefore, confidence is a byproduct. So when we are constantly thinking, oh, imposter syndrome, am I do I measure up? And it's like, don't worry about what others are thinking. Don't worry about the followers you're going to gain. Unfortunately, like the amount of followers you have is sort of how what dictates the amount of money that you get from a sponsor or whether you have a sponsor. And so we can get really distracted and I got really distracted by those things and I was told that, but it didn't matter because I was so entrenched by that point where you couldn't tell me that it didn't matter because I'm like, oh, no, it matters because I don't have a real job. This is all I'm doing. And if I'm not, quote unquote, making a name for myself, then people aren't going to want seminars from me and that's how I make my money. And so all of it was so entwined and entrenched on my performances, when in reality I should have been building myself outside of it and actually focusing on, well, what can I do outside of jiu-jitsu that is this unstable, unregulated sport? And so the going back to the the shooting yourself, we have to question, where did that come from? Who put that on me? Where did that pressure come from? Because I can tell you that all of it is self-inflicted, except if you have this like explicit like, you got to win. You need to win this if you're if you want to do this or, you know, if you want to be invited to this, you have to win this. And it's like, yeah, those are facts, but worrying about the outcome is actually just ruining your ability to focus on the present moment. Speaker 1: Extremely well said. I was actually just talking to one of our community members a few days ago and they were shitting on themselves. They were telling me that they felt like they were not as good at jiu-jitsu as they should be and felt like they were underperforming in class. And to that I said to them, well, why do you feel like you should be performing at a certain level? Are you willing to devote your entire life to jiu-jitsu and train like a pro athlete? No, you're doing this as a hobby. You're doing this, you know, a few times a week. You're playing conservatively because you're trying to avoid injury. That's all well and good. That's fine. There's no problem with putting boundaries on how you train so that this sport can be what you want it to be for you. You're not obligated to play the sport the way that everyone else does. There's a lot of people that I know quite well where I respect their jiu-jitsu, but I would never train the way that they do, not because it's bad or anything, but because it would require a level of commitment and physical risk that I'm not willing to take as someone who got into this because they enjoy this for fun. And this is another example, I think, of where we pick up other people's perceptions, maybe we look at their goals and their goals can be admirable, but we kind of absorb them and internalize them as they should be our own even if they actually aren't. So when people come to me and they say, you know, Steve, my big problem is I feel like I should be better at jiu-jitsu. One of the first things I like to ask is, why do you feel that way? Why should you be better at jiu-jitsu? Have you quit your job to train like full-time in jiu-jitsu? Have, you know, how old are you? When did you discover this? How long have you been training? What's your consistency? What's your tolerance for injury? What are you going to tell your family if you've got to put them on the back burner so that you can focus on mat time? If you're not willing to do all of those things, right, you shouldn't expect yourself to be performing at the same level as someone who got into this sport at 10 years old and has made it the basis for their entire life and career aspirations. And that's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with doing jiu-jitsu for personal enjoyment or to train it at your own pace. Man, we did a podcast recently with Drew Foster. He does this great competition and meta podcast for us called State of the Meta on BJJ Mental Models Premium. And he did a recap of the biggest lessons from 2025 that have kind of come from the community and what he's seen out there. One of the big things he talked about is people need to stop beating themselves up about whether they're being left behind in jiu-jitsu. There is so much pressure from all of the content that is out there. It feels like, I mean, if you look at the instructional market, people are certainly trying to position it like the jiu-jitsu sport is evolving and getting turned on its head multiple times a year. And whether that's true or not, I'm not qualified to say, but I think part of that is marketing. Everyone wants to put out a new instructional and position it as this is the new game changer that you must study. And that can create pressure in people that they feel like they should be up to date on all of these things and studying all of these things. And if they don't know what octopus guard 2.0 is, then their jiu-jitsu is a complete waste of time. And something that Drew said in this podcast was like, we need to abandon this notion of getting left behind. You're going to be fine. As long as you're training at a pace that works for you, you're going to be fine. You're going to figure out what you need to figure out and if something comes up and it's a problem and you don't know it, you'll learn it. But we need to release this pressure on ourselves that we should know everything and be good at everything. I see this a lot in terms of how people position themselves. They there's so much concern about am I learning everything that I should be? Am I getting as good as I should be? And focusing so much on that can take away a lot of the joy of the training, which is just this incremental process of getting better. Speaker 2: Right. So this is where that mastery. And I don't even like the word mastery. I like task-focused, but mastery is very, very hard to do in our sport. And we have to also remember that it's a martial art. Self-expression. Being able to modify things for you and your body type and your weight distribution and your personality. That's what's being reflected. And so just being good would be, okay, well, if I just want to be good, then how much am I abandoning of my core values? Well, if you've never actually gone through your core values, this is something from acceptance and commitment therapy, which is like a core pillar of my, you know, uh theory of performance excellence. And I have the theory of authentic performance. And being able to define what those stable qualities are of like, okay, how do I know if I'm if I'm being authentic? How do I have integrity? How do I know that I'm not abandoning myself or betraying myself for the pursuit of something external that to be honest is not going to change your life. There are world champions out there that can't do interviews, that are not really marketable people. There are so many other qualities that matter. And, you know, there's like a I remember watching a documentary and there was a school counselor from college and she brings in this athlete and she goes, okay, so remember, what does NFL stand for? He's like, not for long, right? So like being able to build yourself and build yourself as a human being. It doesn't mean that you have to go and create a career outside of it, but like enhance yourself. In fact, I was asked uh years ago by Flow to like write an article on like what it means to be an expert in jiu-jitsu. And I was like, that sounds so sacrilegious. Like, how am I to call myself an expert when this sport and and this art is constantly being evolved and innovated. Like, octopus guard, squid guard, like those were not a thing. K guard, matrix. These were not things. Maybe people were doing them, but they weren't known. They weren't shared. And so this monetization, this capitalism that has infiltrated these BJJ fanatics of like, these aren't even, I mean, I don't want to again, I don't want to like talk shit, but, you know, the BJJ fanatics aren't they're not worried about quality. Let's just say that. They're just looking for uh quantity of content. And I'm going to make another back in my day, your teacher, your coach was the gatekeeper of information. Like, I fine, like when I was a white belt, 2009, I did learn an Ezekiel on YouTube. And then I went and I did it. And I'm sorry, Brian, my coach, but I got it on him. And then went, I learned that from YouTube. And that was like, you know, we would laugh at like, okay, YouTube, YouTube, whatever. But if it gave me the idea, then cool. It's just information. But whether you're able to apply that information, you and I can talk theory all day, but if I'm not able to apply that for my clients or put it into a practical sense, there's just like, okay, so what do you want me to do with that information? And so something that you were talking about with being left behind was also like commitment level. And so if there is never a way to know more, we are constantly in search of more information. That's great. That is a pursuit. It does not have a destination. You will never know enough. And isn't that great? Isn't it great to be in a martial art and a hobby or, you know, this this level that like there's not like, okay, I beat the final boss or, you know, I just finished the Sopranos for like the third time and I'm like, damn, like I miss, I miss those characters or you finish a book. Like, you're never going to be done with jiu-jitsu. As long as you keep an open mind. Do you know how many white belts at my seminars have given me so much to help me teach and learn better? Because it was like, I was teaching my spider guard and someone was like, oh, it's like you're doing a hip escape in the air. And I'm like, yeah. And then, you know, I taught my my knee slice for so many years, not having the word for like how to stay in the middle of the legs. And then some white belt was like, yeah, like a wedge. And I'm like, God, that's the word for it, you know? Or like sometimes when I'm teaching, like a lot of the times that I care if the message is received. So I might have to explain things three different ways, but I'm going to make sure that you received the message that I'm not just like, well, you either get it or you don't. And so part of that is like, okay, cool, isn't this great that we never can know enough? And then there's the, you know, commitment level and being realistic about what you're willing to sacrifice. So in the research of athletic identity by Brewer, it's called athletic identity foreclosure. And it's when you commit so much of yourself to that one sport that you don't explore other avenues. And it doesn't have to be it's not really like other sports, although in positive youth development, they have said time and time again what they've realized is that kids who sample sports versus early specialization are more healthy, well-adjusted individuals. And in life, like if you, I had a uh someone I know who sports psychology, they sought out sports psychology years ago and their sports psychologist gave them homework of you have to come with a news article of something that's going on in the world because you are so obsessed with jiu-jitsu that you are unwilling to know about anything else. And therefore, you're putting too much weight on these outcomes as if it's the only thing that matters. And yeah, maybe you might feel like it's the only thing that gives you joy and it's the only thing that whatever. You could be yourself and it's like, that's great, but there are levels of like, well, you could socialize yourself and meet other people and train with doctors and train with chiropractors and train with, you know, whatever, like the mechanic down the street. And open yourself up to, well, maybe there is more to life than jiu-jitsu. What? Like, that's really hard for some people to understand. And that's how I was socialized of like, well, if you want it bad enough, then you're, you know, you're going to train no matter what. You lose your job, you train. You know, you have a bad day at work, you train. I mean, but oh God, you have a job? Like, that's weird. Um, and, you know, you if your mom dies, you train. And it was this harsh, harsh view that nothing matters more than jiu-jitsu. And so athletic identity foreclosure leads to someone who is underdeveloped. They may not even know how to cook themselves food because they're so concerned with only being good at jiu-jitsu. And so you can see when that happens and this, you know, I was in college even. I had but I didn't really care what I was studying. I wasn't invested in it. The only reason I switched to English is so that I could just write fairy tales and write poems and be like, I feel because I went, you know, I live from the Valley, so I went to Csun in Northridge, just the only public university around there area. So it was like, you got to literally move your desk to the circle and be like, I feel like there's saying this. And you're like, oh, well, why do you think that? Well, when he uses this word, it's like all of her interpretation. So I could just bullshit my way through versus like math and science, which also with science, you had more hours on campus. And I was like, well, that's less time for jiu-jitsu. So I was just completely giving myself to a sport that honestly, like it can give back, but it wasn't. It was not giving. I had to get like little Craigslist jobs here and there just to to, you know, pay off my credit card debt from going to Whole Foods every day. Just so I knew that the food that I was eating, I could literally weigh it at the salad bar or food bar, but also that I knew that it was like pretty clean and it was going to help me make weight. And so when all of my life is like, well, is that going to make me better at jiu-jitsu? Is that going to help me win? Is that going to, you know? And then when I lost, you know, here I am sacrificing and going, wow, the tournament's over. I didn't even place. I lost my first match. Not only did I not meet my own expectations, I didn't meet anyone's expectation. Oh, that random blog that was like, hey, Aaron Hurley's in this division. She won this. Maybe she'll win this. I was like, oh my God, that's an expectation and I have to. And if I don't, then it's all a lie. And so putting myself in this situation where I didn't actually enjoy my process because everyone was like, well, you know, just enjoy the process or trust the process or, you know, like just go back to the lab. And it was like, I don't like being there. I didn't like being there. I ended up becoming really almost suicidal because all of my worth was placed in things that I couldn't really control and that were like, you know, $5 medals that ended up in a shoe box anyways. I don't even know where any of those medals are right now because they don't matter. But what is on display is my black belt certificate and my, you know, master's degree diploma because those can't be taken away from me. And they they actually have relevance outside of the jiu-jitsu mats. And so when you have athletic identity foreclosure, it makes it really hard to go into a tournament and have less pressure when you've literally stacked all the cards against yourself and you've said, well, if I don't win, then that means that I'm not good. And if I'm not good, then I'm a buffoon. And it doesn't make sense why I'm committing so much rather than taking it lightly. And obviously, if you want to do something at the highest level, you assume that like, well, I have to be doing all of these things. And it's like, no, you don't. I remember there was um Penny Thomas. She won her first black belt world title only after she started doing more yoga and spending time reading and recovering and taking less classes. And it was like, what? You know, broke my brain. And so it sounds counterintuitive, but to remember that there are other things that matter in life and to not put your eggs in one basket is actually not only healthier, but long-term and sustainable. You might win a couple tournaments, but you're going to burn out. And with burnout, if you don't change your process, if you don't change your environment, if you don't change the very thing that caused the burnout in the first place, taking a break doesn't matter because it's not sustainable. Again. So this is a long-term sport. This is not something that you're like, well, I'm going to do it for a couple years until I age out. Or I'm going to do it until I can't do it, you know, I play club soccer and then that's it, you know, because I'm not going to go to college for soccer, whatever. Like, jiu-jitsu is for life, to be honest. It's not for everyone. It can be, it's for anybody, but it's not for everybody. And so it really is like, well, we're not trying to be elitist here. We're not trying to see who's the last standing. We're not trying to compare ourselves to others. It's like, what are you finding worth in and go do that. And try to make it so that at least the way that you show up is consistent and that it doesn't erode your sense of self and your self-esteem, which is more of a core issue than just self-worth. Because self-worth is, well, I'm useful here, but I'm not here. I'm useful here. And self-esteem is more global. And if you just feel like shit like about yourself 24/7, I'd probably look at seeing a psychiatrist or a mental health professional because that's no way to live. It's not a good way to be every day of your life. Speaker 1: You talked about yoga. Sebastian Broche, the founder of Yoga for BJJ, he's a he said to me one time, you know, I love jiu-jitsu, but I realized that jiu-jitsu doesn't love me back. And and that's why I think he got into the yoga for BJJ front is because he realized that there needs to be more than just going 100% and breaking down your body. There needs to be this flip side of this of replenishing yourself. I do think that is really important to have a relationship with everything that you do where you're not just throwing all of your efforts into this black hole and getting nothing back out of it. Let me ask you a question, for people who listen to this, whether they be hobbyists or performance athletes, what are some of the warning signs that they should be looking at to determine if maybe they are having self-worth issues that they haven't even identified within themselves? Speaker 2: Hmm, that's good. I would say, you know, the you have to be able to question your motivation for things. If it's not, if you don't have multiple sources of confidence, multiple sources of motivation, multiple sources of worth, multiple sources of evaluation, then that is usually problematic whether you can see it or not or whether things have surfaced or not. If you lose at a tournament and you can't get over it or can't talk about it for a month. If you are rolling and you are thinking about what you feel about that person as a whole based on like how well they beat you up in the gym. If your only evaluation method of your training is how many times you got tapped versus how many times you tap someone else. If your only uh source of of motivation is external. If you are in an environment, like I said, that like is really only honoring or worshiping even the idea of a high-level athlete who has proven proven themselves on the highest level and everyone else is just a bracket filler or everyone else is just like, yeah, they're mediocre or they're a gatekeeper or whatever. If you are so concerned with how well you do and you let it uh dictate how you treat others. Like a lot of the times we judge others and then we're like so afraid of being judged and it's like, are we not just projecting our own insecurities? So, also like that athletic identity, you know, for closure is like, do I have other ways of feeling like I matter? Who do I matter to? And it doesn't have to be a a big number at all. Like, you you should only have about five people that you're really taking in um what they're saying. And also, you know, authority is is a big one. Like, are you bowing down to dead guys on the wall? Are you, you know, are you in an environment where you can't ask higher belts to roll or that you're basically treated as less than? I mean, I remember back in the day there was a a whole a campaign that was white belts are people too. And it's like, why? Why did we have to say that? Because, you know, psychological safety, number one, is inclusion safety. Being like, oh, wait, this person has value because they're a human being, not because they prove that they're a good body for my guys, not because they're, oh, whether they signed up or not, whether they're putting money in my pocket. It's like, no, I will treat them with respect because they just exist. And I think that's a really hard thing for high achievers and perfectionists. Perfectionism gets a bad rep, but at the same time, there's two types. There's perfectionistic strivings, which is like shooting for the moon. There's like, oh, I have high goals. I really hold myself accountable. I don't take things super lightly because I want things to be better. I want to be better and I'm I'm always working on ways in which I can do that. But if it's perfectionistic concerns, that is where there's issues, meaning you're critical, you're harsh because self-compassion is the way. Self-compassion is the ability to bounce back because you're not criticizing yourself and saying that, oh, well, if I lose, it's a personal failing or a flaw. If you're a purple belt, you you're in line and you're at your gym and you you look to your right and you look at all the blue and white blue belts and white belts and you should yourself and say, I'm supposed to beat these people. I'm supposed to be more blank than them. I'm supposed to be wiser. I should know more. I should be able to pass their guard, whatever that is. And, you know, if I don't, then it's a personal failing on my end, not necessarily that they might have been a wrestler for seven years or gone to states, you know? And then if I look to my left, and this is the merit versus mercy. If I look to my left and I look at a brown belt or a black belt and think, well, if I beat them, it's because they gave it to me. I'm not supposed to beat them. They're supposed to be better than me. Well, that's not accounting for the fact that, well, they might be older than you. They might be training more than you and be more tired that day. There's legitimate reasons for that. And not every roll is defining. It's not that every roll is, you know, this is a performance and this is an indicator and a litmus test of where I am on the totem pole. But if you're in a group that like, well, you know, only purple belts and up can, you know, do this, be invited to this. Or, you know, the cliche, like when you're a purple belt, you don't have to do warm-ups anymore. You know, or you're not, people aren't as critical of you or whatever. We are constantly comparing ourselves to this should, this like standard that just doesn't exist. And so it's like, well, did I earn this or did they give it to me? And if I didn't earn it, then does it really mine? Is it really something that I can say? Well, that's why a lot with my clients I'll do homework where I'm like, well, you have to define three things that you did well and they have to be controllable things. It it can't be like, I don't I can't be outcome-oriented. Like, oh, I passed this guard. It's different if you say, I intended, my intention was to practice more of my knee slice and I was able to find that position more. But it's not whether it worked or not. It was like, well, I attempted it. There's effort over outcome. Or I broke a grip or, you know, Greg over there who constantly guillotines me. I was I was able to actually withstand one or or break the grip or or prevent it from happening. And that speaks to my ability to notice constraints or notice threats or notice opportunities for advancement. And so what are we doing and what are we improving? How can you define that that is solely me and something that I did, not just a situation that that I was put into. And so I think what's important is to say like, well, who's most susceptible to performance-based self-worth? And that's the high achiever, the perfectionist. And it's like, well, if I'm if I'm not progressing or getting better or, you know, winning matches or beating up the tough guys, then there's something wrong with me. It's a personal flaw or failing. Then there's the people like me that didn't have high self-esteem and were like, well, I need validation. So I was more of like, well, it feels really good when my coach gives me extra attention. It feels really good when I get recognized for my achievements in front of everybody else. And then when I don't, I lack the ability to validate myself. I lack the ability to find indicators of success outside of someone else noticing me. Then there's the late starters, like the people who basically feel they don't belong. I mean, a basic psychological need under self-determination theory is belonging. But what people don't pay attention to is it's not just membership or subscribing or being part of a group. It's mattering to those who matter to you. It must be reciprocated. And so we might ask like, well, do I do I deserve to even be here? I have to prove that I deserve to be here. I don't want to just be a bracket filler. I want to be someone who is a worthy opponent or whatever it is. And concerning ourselves with those things are just distractions because you don't have to prove your worth based on one thing. You might have to if your job demands that you are good at this or that you are knowledgeable about this, then yeah, like you're the hiring and firing may be done based off whether you are capable or better yet, like if you're willing to learn. And so why not focus on, well, you know, am I a human being? Do I deserve to be here? Well, yeah, you're a human being, that's fine. Yeah, you you qualify. And then there's the identity-fused athletes, the the huge athletic identity is like, jiu-jitsu is who I am, not just what I do. And that was where I fell too. It's like, I had perfectionism, but I also had like, well, if this is what I do, then I better be damn good at it because I'm dedicating so much time to it. How embarrassing. I remember going and training with some of my main training partners, but I was a full-time person who was training in the morning, the really competitive rounds, and then at night I was doing more technical, but I'd get beat. And I remember going to Kobra and being like, she has a she works all day. Like, she does she only trains like three times a week. Why is she beating me in this room? He's like, you're just tired because you train so much. I was like, oh, okay, that makes more sense. Then there's like the more evaluation people who are obsessed with like the achievement. Like, every round is a performance. Every round is a test. If I don't score enough on this person or if this person passes my guard, then that is an a direct indicator of how I'm doing. And then the transitional athlete, which is like, when someone is a blue belt and gets their purple belt, they're like, wait, I don't I don't know where I stand anymore. I don't know what the qualifications are. I don't know what I'm supposed to be. How do I compare? How do I matter? How do I where do I fit in this hierarchy, this totem pole? And so there's obviously people who are more susceptible, like I had, you know, uh early adverse childhood experiences, I guess is the appropriate way to call it. But dealing with someone who my first bully was basically my dad. And so that was really hard because I, no matter what I did, I had to feel like I earned his love. Now, tell me, I mean, I could go into my daddy issues, but that's a whole another thing, right? I was conditioned to believe that it wasn't that I could just be loved because I exist. It was, I brought you into this world naked, cold and hungry and I can bring you out of the world the same way. And I put a roof over your head. It's like, buddy, I didn't ask to be born. But that was a whole thing of, well, I have to earn it. I can't just take that. I can't just bestow that upon myself. I can't walk into a room being like, yeah, I'm the shit. It's like, well, why not? As long as you're a good human, I'm pretty sure it's okay to think that, yes, you deserve to be here. Speaker 1: Nice, nice. I want to ask one more thing. Something that you've elaborated and illuminated on here is that often these ways of perceiving our environment, they're not things that someone explicitly told us, but rather they're things that we picked up or invented ourselves. I would venture to guess that most jiu-jitsu coaches out there are not sitting their students down and saying, if you don't win championships, you ain't shit. But students often pick up that vibe anyway. As a coach or a senior person in the room, what can you do to better steer people's creation of these senses of identity so that they have a more productive sense of self-worth? Because again, I don't think that coaches out there are deliberately and explicitly creating these perceptions within people, but people invent them on their own. And I'm assuming there's something that the coach and the senior students can do to prevent that from happening or to guide people into a more productive direction, correct? Speaker 2: Correct. So what also is interesting is that this sort of performance-based self-worth can also be from a coach's what they call athlete-invested self-worth. When the coach says, I'm not a good coach unless I have winning athletes. Unless I have people that can beat others. Unless when my students, if I allow them to cross-train, they are beating other people up and they're representing me well. So when a coach is more concerned with what their students are doing and look what it looks like and being really involved in having like just performing constantly and being very image-focused and worrying about like impression management, that's really hard because you're not allowing people to show up as they are. So I am a big believer in authentic leadership is basically saying like, I'm a human. We are all afflicted with the human condition. I make mistakes. I don't know everything. But like a question, for example, like, oh, how do I deal with this? Well, not every coach is going to have an answer and you're not expected to. But you can say, well, I don't know, but I'll definitely look or I'll go ask my mentor or I'll go look up, you know, Submeta, Lochlan Giles and see what he says about this. I'm going to go find that out for you. I don't know, but I can find out. And that was way more honorable than either making it up or even going so far as punishing or criticizing or making fun of the person for asking those questions because you have insecurities yourself. And again, you're human. You're human. You're allowed to have insecurities. But try not to take them out on your students and try to recognize when you are maybe feeling triggered by your students. When in reality, their intention, largely, is to just get better. And if you're the one that's standing in the way of that, then I'd question why you even want to be a coach in the first place. Is it to hear your own voice? Is it to have people call you professor? Is it because you've you've been you don't have like you you really love power and control and authority? That's a red flag. So there's a lot of accountability that we don't have. We don't just because IBJJF requires a safe sport course being taken if you want to be a registered certified black belt under them. It doesn't mean that we're actually part of the reporting structure. There is no one to report to. And in fact, there's a lot of victim blaming. And a lot of the times when someone chooses to leave a gym, they end up being talked shit about behind their back or alienated by the community because they chose something that was more healthy for themselves. And there's no regulation on that. And of course, that's everywhere. There's a lot of ego everywhere. But it's it's really hard when you have to leave a gym because one person or someone felt undermined without having an actual conversation with them. So I've seen all of it. I've heard all of it. I don't want to shit on the culture because uh there are some great, great, great amazing people that I've met in this community. But it is a breeding ground for people who want performative sort of just like authority. And also, there is no regulation. It's a lot of hand-me-downs. It's a lot of, well, my coach did it this way, so I do it this way, which is a really horrible thing of like the same thing that happens in parenting. Well, my parents beat me and I turned out okay. And it's like, did you? Did you? Speaker 1: It is kind of funny because this is a sport that insists that it's very empirical and evidence-driven, but you're right, many coaches, they do what they do, they propagate the way they teach based on how they were taught, not based on what's proven to work or what the data says, but rather based on tradition. And so it's important for us to always remember, for all the talk about jiu-jitsu being the scientific sport, it's really not that scientific. It's subject to the same biases and, you know, cognitive traps that anything else is. And so we should never assume that just because our coach says something that that's the way that it is and it always has to be. Speaker 2: Please don't take marital or life advice from your coach. And if you are a coach who's giving out that advice, this whole, you know, oh, I help you be a champion on and off the mat. That's not your jurisdiction. You know, unless you're a life coach or whatever, like don't be handing out mental health advice if you're not a mental health professional. Even I am not a licensed mental health professional. I am not clinically trained. I do have a lot of training through counseling, but I did not go the clinical route because I'm not I didn't want to be beholden to just a specific state or province in order to be able to do ethical work. And so therefore I am able to work with anybody in any country and and whatnot. But I do have my own ethical code as far as the Association of Applied Sports Psychology under whom which I've gotten my certification under. So I did have to take ethics courses and I do have to take continuing education courses and I do try to contribute to my industry and my profession. And I care about that as a whole because the more people that go and, you know, do things in unethical ways, I mean, the more that they water down our sport. And I don't want to just become part of a a community that is predatory. I don't want to be I don't want to, you know, and and unfortunately I have. I I've had to actually go and give um statements for criminal cases against rapists that happened under my nose. And like, I hate that. I hate that I wasn't aware of it, that I just, you know, and and perhaps that I helped facilitate without knowing it. And so, yeah, there's a lot of issues in in this unregulated sport, but that's a whole another ball game. We're not going to get we're not going to get into the Olympic the Olympic games or be part of the Olympic Committee because nobody could even agree on one rule set because of too many egos and too many people that want to have their name on things and pee on things and be territorial and it's just like, man, like why can't we all get along? But honestly, like, why can't we have values and mission statements and actually enact them and actually commit to acting within those values? If you're gym doesn't have values, maybe that's also an issue. Go back to thinking, well, what do I value? What do I want to give to my students? What do I want to embody? And that's a really good start. Speaker 1: Well, thank you for sharing all of this, Aaron. This was super helpful information. I hope listeners got a ton of value out of this. And people who have listened to the podcast probably already know, but um when it comes to mental performance in the sport of jiu-jitsu, you're my number one recommendation for people who are looking for a coach to work with. Why don't we tell everyone where they can find you if they want to know what you're up to or ask you questions and how they can work with you if they're interested? Speaker 2: Yeah, so my website has all of my bio, some even like an academic portfolio, and also where you can schedule a chemistry call. Free 15-minute, although I am very known for staying on for even an hour for free with people um to get to know them. And then there's a small intake of just kind of some basic questions. And um you can book a call or, you know, lurk me. Otherwise, Instagram @aaronhurley is my main tag and then my business account is train your mind, Y A, train your mind on Instagram. So that's kind of where I am most, but again, 2025 was a harsh year. So 2026, I'm going to be doing more seminars in person. I would like to have more integrated opportunities to bring mental skills training to coaches. Anyone who's really good with ecodynamics, that's kind of up my alley. At least you're studying and finding ways to be a better coach. So anyone who's hungry to learn more, I would love to add to that. So working with more coaches is kind of a a goal of mine in 2026. Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, I will link all of your stuff in the show notes. And like I said, if you're looking for mental performance coaching in jiu-jitsu, Aaron's always my number one recommendation. So easy to find, just pop open your podcast player and go to notes or description or whatever. Check out Aaron. Make sure at the bare minimum you give her a follow. You'll also want to check out our stuff. Everything we make lives at bjjmentalmodels.com. The podcast, both full-length episodes and mini concept episodes are all completely free as well as our newsletter. So at the bare minimum, I encourage everyone to grab those. Next level up with us is BJJ Mental Models Premium. It's the world's largest audio library of jiu-jitsu master classes on strategy, concepts, tactics. We cover a lot of really interesting stuff. In fact, we've got uh courses with Aaron. We did an amazing mindset course on there and we're probably going to have more with her coming soon. And there is a an Aaron Hurley train your mind channel in our premium Discord as well. So if this is the kind of stuff that you get value out of talking to other people about, definitely join premium, get on our Discord and we have a lot of chats about conversations like this. I'm really passionate about doing what we can to try to help people through this incredibly prevalent issue in jiu-jitsu. I think that if we can coach people through just having a more solid, sustainable, joy-bringing mindset to jiu-jitsu, it just makes the sport better for everyone. So again, links in the show notes for to all of that stuff. All of Aaron's stuff plus ours. Ours is at bjjmentalmodels.com and with Aaron, I definitely recommend working with her as well. So again, links in the show notes. But Aaron, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciated this chat. Speaker 2: Thank you. Anytime I get a platform to speak about what I'm passionate about is this. I mean, I I was self-inflicted for a very long time and having the perspective of, you know, being able to have a wholehearted, holistic approach to jiu-jitsu. It's like, man, you you'll win a lot more when you're happy, I promise. Speaker 1: Very well said. Well, thank you, Aaron, again. And thank you to the listeners as well. Really appreciate everyone who spends time with us here each and every week and we will talk to you soon. [Music]