12 Things The Chewster Is Thankful For (Episode 392)

Speaker 1: What up, guys? Welcome to the Jiu-Jitsu podcast. We took a week off last week for Thanksgiving. Many of you guys probably noticed it. Um we were both traveling to see family and uh it was our first one off since 2018. We've uh we've done an episode every week, single week. So, with that said, Thanksgiving just happened. We're in the holiday season. I figured we would start off uh or do a podcast uh uh this week with 12 things that I'm thankful for. So, this is obviously not a comprehensive list. I couldn't possibly put everything that I'm thankful for on one podcast. But there are 12 things that maybe will get you to think about, give you some ideas to chew on. And some of them are going to be kind of intuitive things to think be thankful for. So, um we'll get into the list here shortly with 12 things that uh the Chuster is thankful for. Appreciate you guys for being with us this week. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make the podcast happen. 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And if you guys want to check them out, you can go to their website at charlottesweb.com along with CBD stuff. They also have everything from CBN products to also functional mushroom products like Reishi, Lion's Mane, um and other options. And again, all those are designed to support you in different functions from cognitive health and brain function to stress management. And if you guys want to check out their stuff and save 30%, Jiu-Jitsu 30 is the code for 30% off the order at charlottesweb.com. If you guys want to support the podcast directly, become a Patreon member. And again, all of you guys that are current Patreon members, we do appreciate you guys. And if you guys want to check out the perks that we offer, you can go to the Patreon at patreon.com/thejiujitsupodcast to support the podcast directly. Um and if you guys want to uh get my daily email that this uh podcast is based on, you can get that by going to my website at jiu-jitsu.net/join. And when you join up, um you will get access to a guide that I give away called Focus Jiu-Jitsu, both an uh an ebook version, PDF, and also a video, depending if you don't want to read or not. And it goes through some different strategies on how to get more focus and more improvement with your training. And then I send my daily email afterwards and you can unsubscribe at any time. Also, guys, just letting you know, um because I know we don't talk about it much here, but Eugene is um he's a a physical therapist for hire. Um and so for uh for any of you guys that are banged up, broken, sore, whatever, if you would like to get the help of the guy who's helped me out a ton with my body over the last decade plus, then he has a service that you can sort of get a consult uh a consultation and everything with him. Um he is the guy that basically is the go-to guy for all of all the guys in our gym. He's helped me out numerous times before my MMA fights, before competitions where I've got something jacked up and he, you know, gives me exercises to either work around it or fix it. And I think in probably in probably in a couple of cases has helped me avoid having to go under the knife because I was able to address some of the imbalances ahead of time before they got too far out of whack, right? Because a lot of times what do we do? We have something that's sore, we're feeling banged up, whatever, and we just kind of ignore it. Throw some tape on it, wear a knee brace, you know, take some ibuprofen, whatever we got to do to work around it, we kind of ignore it, we never address it, and then eventually it gets really bad and then we have to quit or stop for a while or have surgery. Opposed to, hey, here is a really short action plan of a little a few things you can do every day to address that and hopefully get over that situation. Eugene, if they want to get more information, where should they go, sir? Speaker 2: Yeah, you can reach out to Jiu-Jitsu Therapist uh at gmail.com or go to my website jiu-jitsutherapist.com and there's a contact link on there, you can send me an email that way. Speaker 1: Cool. And I'm going to get back to you. If you work with him, good stuff. I get no cut of it or anything like that. It just it's one of those things where I know so many people that are banged up in Jiu-Jitsu and they don't address it. And, you know, just because you're older doesn't mean you have to be broken. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of things you can do to fix it and you don't have to be and I'm not. Um and I've been training for 20 plus years and probably put way more grappling mileage than anybody here listening. Not saying that for everybody. Some of you guys might have me beat, but I imagine that for 99% of the people listening to this podcast, I've probably put more mat hours on my body than you have, um over the years. And again, my body's still together and I think a big part of that is figuring out how my body is messed messed up so that I can address those problems and sort of maintain it. Think of it as maintenance. It's like eventually your body becomes like an old rickety car and you just know that every Thursday you got to tap the or top the oil off. Kind of happens with your body. You just got to know your ins and outs and having an expert to do that would be very helpful. So, with all that said, guys, let's get into this podcast and talk about 12 things I'm thankful for. Speaker 1: All right, guys. So, let's get into these uh 12 ideas, these 12 things that I'm thankful for as we uh we move out of, you know, the Thanksgiving holiday and into Christmas time and things like that. You know, in a time to where we kind of, you know, we look back at everything and you can kind of show some you can be grateful for what you have, right? It's important. Um some of these are going to maybe sound like you shouldn't be grateful for them, but I'll explain why I'm grateful for them. Uh the first thing is that I'm grateful and thankful for my lack of talent. Most or not most, but many people are born with these like natural gifts and abilities. Um I was never hindered with such impediments. I I say this because like I've watched people come in who have natural physical gifts, right? Uh natural like, you know, just God-given gifts to something like athletics, for instance, especially like in BJJ. And a lot of times they struggle because their gifts give them a boost in the beginning, but then when the hard work is required, they start to struggle, right? With me, from everything that I've done, from wrestling to Jiu-Jitsu to, you know, the stuff I do in business, I mean, anything and everything that I've ever done, writing, all the stuff that I do, uh none of it came particularly easy and I was always terrible at it in the beginning. Like nobody ever looked at me and saw like a rising star or some future successful champion at anything. I never had that. Um I remember when I would be on the mats early on in wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu and everything else, like all the guys I would come in with, they were, you know, the coaches would always be fixated on the other guys because I wasn't that guy. I wasn't the stand out in the beginning. Um Now, even though I don't have, you know, this natural talent, what I do have is highly developed skills and I had those because I developed the ability to work hard. So, you when you go into everything and you just suck at everything to begin with, you either develop the ability to work hard and just put your nose down to the grinder or you just quit. Obviously, I didn't quit. So, that's how I got better at things. And so, you know, these days, again, I I I say I don't have natural talent, what I have is highly developed skills. Um And again, this comes from going into things kind of expecting things to be tough, difficult. Um and sort of looking at it as, yeah, it's hard, it always is. What am I going to do? So what, right? And so that's one thing I'm thankful for, um just as I was going through this, this was originally an email and that's one of the things that I'm thankful for is my lack of talent and natural God-given ability. Don't have much. Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's um it's helpful, obviously, if you're not necessarily if you have an expectation, you're like, hey, I'm expecting that I might struggle with this. It's going to there's a certain price of admission, essentially. Like I know I'm going to have to pay a certain amount of time, effort, whatever. Um I think the advantage is, you know, you're discouraged less because you kind of have some expectations. Um but but on the other hand, you did have a little bit of of expectations. I remember you talking about actually having some skill in wrestling, right? Having some experience in wrestling, going to Jiu-Jitsu and being like, man, I'm going to I'm going to crush everybody and then having a little bit of realization, you know, a kind of reality check there. And that but still having the capacity to work hard. Like you probably had to work hard at wrestling uh to get decent at it, right? So, you kind of knew, hey, this is kind of the price of admission. So, I I think having an expectation, maybe it didn't quite align when you started Jiu-Jitsu, but then knowing you're going to need to probably work at it. I think it's a it's a great thing. I I don't know if I like for me personally, I didn't know like I've never done really martial arts in any real capacity. I only played like team sports. So, I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be good at this at all. I thought I was fairly athletic, but, you know, I think I caught on decently, okay. Um but again, I just kind of I don't know. I never expected to I don't know. I didn't really have a lot of expectations getting into Jiu-Jitsu. Like especially at the time, it was more like, I'm just going to do this thing because I I like the UFC and it seems kind of cool and I want to be able to defend myself a little bit and I never even thought like a blue belt was going to be a possibility, you know, or purple or anything beyond that. So, I just kind of did it just to do it. Um didn't really have a lot of expectations. So, I don't know if that was helpful or not just to keep showing up and get my ass kicked a little. Speaker 1: I think expectations, the lack of is generally a good thing because expectations tend to make you pretty fragile. If you go into something expecting an outcome to happen or getting really attached to a particular outcome, it's generally a hindrance more than it is a a a blessing, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you think that maybe having low expectations like I don't know, this may be a tricky question. Like somebody that's never been good at something, right? And you start Jiu-Jitsu, do you like, well, I'm just never going to be good at this thing. But if you stick with it, I mean, there there is people we see that kind of turn the corner. We don't know what that is, but they're kind of suck. I mean, they don't suck. They're just not very good, not super talented, not super athletic, aren't quite catching on, and all of a sudden they kind of turn the corner and they start competing and they get a little bit of confidence. I mean, I don't know. Speaker 1: Well, sure. But, you know, the thing is this, it's not about that you suck and that you're always going to suck. It's just here's an example. Um the other day, Luca, he's, you know, my son, is at the breakfast table, we're having breakfast together and he looks at me and Jess and goes, I spy with my little eye something blue. And he's staring at his blue water bottle. Now, he said that as clear as day. And we've we've we don't really play that game with him very often. So, it was kind of a surprise. He's never really said that sentence together. And it was a pretty good sentence for a, you know, two and a half year old. So, me and Jess look at each other like, WTF, like, what was that, right? And, you know, the thing that I've noticed about Luca is that he periodically has these little level ups. You know, like like any guy body that grew up gaming, right? You know what a level up is, right? Like your character acquires some skills and then they get the level up and then sort of in an instant, you press a couple buttons and all of a sudden your character is stronger, they have new abilities, yada yada so forth. Sometimes that's how it is with Luca. Like literally be like overnight, all of a sudden he like picks up new words or I'll go I I remember last year was really apparent. I would go for a trip for a weekend. I'd come back and he would all of a sudden have new words that he couldn't even close to say the time before. And so, you know, the thing that a lot of times is very hard for people in Jiu-Jitsu or for people in grappling who are the uninitiated is that these level ups in your game that you're talking about where things start to click and you start to figure it out, they don't come in this nice, predictable, linear sort of way. It's not a step-by-step kind of thing. It's this up and down roller coaster that some eventually jumps. And, you know, most of the time people experience the progress in like messy failure followed by all of a sudden they get a jump in their game. Um a lot of the books that talk about that I've read that discuss like deep learning talk about this that counter-intuitively when we're when we seem like we're really getting something, we think that that's where deep learning is or we're really learning it, but learning is generally a difficult thing and it's challenging and it's messy and it's all over the place and then it isn't. And that's kind of what happens. And so I think for me getting into Jiu-Jitsu, kind of going back to it to string this together, I I initially came in and thought I was going to be good. The very first day, I quickly realized that that wasn't going to be the case. I got smashed by everybody and realized that it's basically wrestling all over again, right? And in wrestling, I remember my coach telling us this, he's like, listen, you guys are going to train and someday there's going to be a light bulb moment and you don't know what's going to how it happened or how you how to explain it, but all of a sudden you got better. And that's exactly how my Jiu-Jitsu's been and it's happened so many times that it's almost predictable. Like I kind of know that this is going to happen. I train, I do situational rolling, I focus on it and so forth, you know, and then within some weeks, all of a sudden I'm going to notice a jump in my game in that particular area that I'm focused on. And so you can have, you know, standards and focusing on like what you can control and the way that you approach your training and so forth. You just don't want to put the expectation of how this is all supposed to go because that's the part you don't control. You can control the effort you put in, you can control what you're focused on, but you can't control if your training partner's doing really well that day or, you know, if maybe for some reason you just haven't done enough um had enough time in position with a technique, you just have to put in your time. Um and so I think I always say like low low expectations and high standards. High standards for what you can control in the way that you put yourself forward, just low expectations on how it's supposed to go. Don't don't come into this with this bar of I'm supposed to be this or that and you focus more on what you're supposed to do to make those to make a good positive outcome happen, um but you don't be too attached to it. Speaker 2: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. And you've also had that experience, you know, like I said, you got good at something and then you saw that maybe you need to you're not as good as you thought you were going to be and then you got back to it and you knew what the process was, which is very helpful. Speaker 1: Here's another thing I'm thankful for. I'm thankful that I was I grew up first world poor. So, like years ago, I used to say that I was poor, right? That I grew up poor. But then when you travel to countries where you see people living on dirt floors, um and with like, you know, houses in tropical areas with no air conditioning and things like that and people that are scraping by by selling fruit on the beach, you realize, hey, if you if you're in America and you have like we had a roof overhead, we had food in our bellies and when you actually can I remember Thomas Sowell talking about this, when you compare the square footage that is allotted to say poor people in the United States, like we live like better than pretty much most of the world, right? Like I mean, even as a poor family, we had section eight homes, food stamps and so forth. But like I I had a room. You know what I mean? So, like I didn't have much in the room. I didn't have a lot of cool stuff, but like I had a room and I had some different things. But I grew up we grew up poor, right? And growing up like that really gives you an appreciation for a lot of the smaller things. And it's also helped keep me free from diving into excessive debt to keep up with the Joneses and thinking that like an expensive car or some massive home is going to bring me happiness. You know, like I remember talking to one of the guys uh who's in real estate, real estate agent and he was telling me about someone who recently bought a home and the home is almost 5,000 square feet and it's for a woman and like her one kid and a dog. And you're like, that is a massive freaking home for like two people and a dog, right? Like I mean, and I'm not saying that maybe there's a reason they have it, but a lot of times it's like people get into this, they buy all this stuff because they think that somehow that's going to fill some void in them. Yeah. Um and, you know, when you grow up with not a lot of stuff, you realize that like, no, that's not that. Like if you got a void in you, the void has something to do with not like the material stuff. That's kind of what's being fed to you. It's it's something deeper than that. Now, there's nothing wrong with having nice stuff if you want it, as long as it doesn't take away from the stuff that's actually important to you, right? And a lot of times for most people, if you were to ask them, having to work extra hours, having to be stressed out to afford expensive stuff, probably isn't an ideal situation for them opposed to spending more time with their family, uh being able to be more relaxed in their day-to-day life and being able to have more free time to do what they want to do, right? So, I'm thankful I grew up first world poor. Speaker 2: Yeah. You don't um I think we don't have a lot, you don't need a lot in some ways. Like you are like, hey, I'm I can be really happy with very little. Yeah. You know, and um Speaker 1: Well, you grew up, obviously, you guys were refugees. So, you know, like you you know that you could have a you could have a good experience and that like life could not be all that. I mean, again, you want to give your kids plenty, right? But at the same time, you know that you can still have a lot of happiness with not a lot of material possessions. Speaker 2: Sure. Like and I think, you know, my parents, obviously, we came from Russia and like they lived very frugally there. And when we came here, you don't just change that up. You continue to live in a in a frugal manner and in some ways that's good, in some ways it's not. I mean, if you got a little bit of money, it's okay to enjoy yourself a little bit and um but with, you know, within reason, but I think my family kind of lived in the same with the same mindset of like, hey, we don't have hardly anything, even though there's more opportunity here uh in the US. And but I think that's what helped them kind of become, you know, successful. In my opinion, they were able to retire and things like that and live a I'd say live the American dream, which is I think still a thing that's possible. But I didn't have a whole lot. Like, you know, we had some a Nintendo and this and that. But when we got that Nintendo, damn, we were happy. My brother, I remember my brother getting a Nintendo, an NES system, man. I've never seen him so happy. And it was like, you know, it it was pretty cool to get that. Like, so you appreciate things, I think, when you don't have a lot, you appreciate when you do get something, you're more appreciative of it. But you also know that you you can survive with a lot less. And um my goal was like when I had kids is like to give them more than I had. And sometimes I'm like, man, am I spoiling them too much? Are they not understanding, you know, that some of the struggles like my parents went through? And I wouldn't say I struggled. I had every opportunity to be successful. I took advantage of a lot of those things. I didn't feel like I had the luxury to screw off a little bit, you know. So, I I kind of tried to take the most advantage I could. Same same thing for you, right? Like you you had to make your own way in a lot of ways. Like you didn't have a ton of family with a ton of money. It's like when you had an opportunity, you did you made the most of it. And I think that's that's make the most of what you have and I think you can find happiness and probably be successful in in, you know, in some capacity. Speaker 1: Yeah. Makes you hungry. Um and yeah, as a parent, you're like, you see the benefits of having gone through that and so you're kind of worried you're like, you don't want to go too soft on the kids. But at the same time, you know, you don't want your kids to to go without either, right? So, it's try to find that balance, I suppose. Speaker 2: That's a tough balance because I don't I have a I don't want my kids to struggle, but I think they need to struggle and they need to have some some challenges and sometimes I'm very I'm very quick to, you know, if they want something and, you know, I I give in a little bit more than I probably should. Sure. Which is on me because I don't want them to I don't want them to struggle, but I know struggling is really important. It's an important thing. And I think you got to be grateful for the ability to struggle and being able to struggle and overcome it. I think it's a it's a powerful tool to have. Speaker 1: Yeah. And speaking of struggle, I uh I am thankful for uh my mother. So, to kind of give you guys a little bit of back story. When I was one younger, I watched my mom, you know, basically go from a struggling alcoholic who had her kids taken away to essentially quitting alcohol cold turkey because she said God told her to, right? She was basically said she was driving. We were having this conversation before she uh died of cancer in 2011. I remember we were driving to the um the place to do the radiation treatment and she said that it was like we were at a stop light. She was like, this is the stop light where God told me to stop drinking. And uh, you know, within a short time, she pretty much had her life together. She owned a home, she had a stable relationship uh with a guy. She took a yearly vacation where she relaxed on the beach. And uh, you know, whether it was divine intervention or just good old-fashioned determination, maybe a little bit of both. Um it was a great lesson to see, right? Because as a young kid, I got to see my mom struggling, right? Because there was one point where, you know, I remember we it was me, my two sisters and my mom living in a one-bedroom apartment. Um, you know, we'd stay they slept on the bed. I would sleep in a reclining chair and uh I remember I have very vivid images of walking into the um the kitchen and just seeing my mom like with papers strung out on the kitchen table and crying. And I have no idea what she was crying about. I imagine it was bills and just being overwhelmed by everything she was doing. Sure. Um to, you know, fast forward, I saw her dig herself out of that hole and it kind of it's a great example of like, you know, no matter how bad it gets, um you're rarely out of the fight if you choose to fight back, right? Um, you know, and you see this all the time even when we're grappling, right? Like there's plenty of matches where you'll see someone rally back and win. Um, you know, someone's on the mats and they're getting beat, they're getting smashed, whatever, and then all of a sudden they escape out of the position, the other person's spent and they're exhausted and they come back and they, you know, come back to win the match. You see this in MMA as well and boxing and everything else. And I just thought it was it was a fantastic lesson to see to see someone real time that you, you know, that you were attached to dig themselves out of a hole and you couldn't even understand really what was going on until later on as an adult. And then when you're an adult, you could really appreciate for how damn difficult that is because, you know, alcohol consumes people, consumes their lives, right? Like a lot of people just they never get off of it and she basically in an instant decided, no, this is it, you know. Speaker 2: That that resilience is is something to, you know, that's it's pretty amazing, you know, just being that just being having that perspective of of not just not giving up on yourself and not kind of like giving up on to based on the circumstances you're you have and you're dealt with and I can't even imagine having three kids and uh being, you know, a single parent, right? Like, whoa. I mean, shit, it's hard enough. I'm, you know, I have a very I have a great relationship with my wife and we both work and we're both supportive of each other and we have two kids. But man, it's still hard. Speaker 1: Well, and imagine then being in like a one-bedroom apartment too, right? Like with like you don't have space for yourself. Right. And and man, and having a substance abuse problem, right? Where you're like, you're fighting off, you know, all kinds of stuff, all kinds of demons, right? Like that's a whole that that's a whole thing in all of itself climbing out of that hole. But I mean, kudos to your mom, man. That's that's amazing. She was able to do that and set such a good example. Um I I was fortunate to have, you know, two supportive parents, um that obviously like they I felt a lot of love from them and they were there. Again, they weren't big risk takers. I think, you know, they were always like very conservative in a lot of ways. Like I didn't take a lot of risks as a kid or have big huge dreams. It was more like, do these specific things that are very safe. Um, you know, but but it was it was great having supportive parents and um fortunate to to see their resilience, you know, coming to a country and not being able to speak the language and basically their education being null and void because it doesn't, you know, transfer to to the states. They have to kind of start from the bottom, which was almost like starting their lives over in their late 30s, which is pretty cool to see. Um but again, it's a point of resilience too, being able to pick everything up and and leave and and start over. And your mom kind of almost Speaker 1: to go into a country where like it's not your native language. Sure. Um you're in your late 30s, you have kids. Right? And you're taking a chance to go do this thing. And I remember you telling me about your dad like who, you know, basically would do all these different jobs and work his face off because, you know, he's just trying to get a chance. Yeah. Right? Yeah. He said uh there was like, I don't know who one of his first jobs like they were digging, I don't know if they were digging holes or what they were doing, something like electrical work or something. And it started raining. And uh they were sending everybody home and he wouldn't leave. He's like, give me something to do. Like, let me do something. I can do something. I'm not leaving essentially. It's like uh, you know, hard work and resilience. And I think, you know, the ability to start over and I think your mom, you know, uh to her credit was able to just kind of start over since you'd be like, all right, this is enough and and pick up the pieces and set a great example for you and your sisters. So, that's that's really cool too. Yeah. It's like you you said a bad example and then you said a good example. And, you know, there's a lot to be learned from like the bad examples. Like another thing that I'm thankful for, um is my absent father, right? Like as a as a father now, I have like a great blueprint for what to do because I saw exactly what you don't want to do. Um, you know, because I got to see like the the effects of it. I felt the effects and of, you know, a father that just wasn't there. And there's a lesson within that, right? Sometimes watching the mistakes of others and watching what not to do is just as instructive as what to do, right? Because a lot of times people are telling you what to do, what to do, do this, do this, do this. But sometimes knowing like, hey, this is just something you shouldn't do, that's very helpful. And, you know, both my father and then there were a lot of other people in my life early on, like family members who, you know, struggled with substance abuse. Um my mom, obviously, was one of them. My uncle was one of them. I remember my uncle, um was a brilliant guy. Um and I I remember walking into his home in this was like the early 90s and he had a computer where you could type into it and it would like come back and talk to you. Like you could basically it had like a really primitive script set up to where it could like talk to you. You would hear this very, hello, this, you know, hello, how are you? This very robotic voice, right? Um I mean, super cool house, like cool entertainment like, you know, center with all the radios and big speakers and stuff. I remember watching like a movie there once and it felt like the floor was shaking when the horses were coming in. It was so cool. Come back a year later because he'd gotten addicted to um some sort of drug. I don't really know what. But drugs and he had like a pillow. Like that's it. Everything was gone, sold. He sold everything. And you're like, whoa. So, like that's not something I want to do. And like as a father now, like I'm like, you know, like I'm I'm I'm constantly questioning myself like and like being sort of sort of critical of how I do things with Luca sometimes and like I literally it's like a it's like a match, you know, if maybe he he's, you know, having a meltdown and I'm trying to calm the situation and I'm trying different techniques and stuff like that, right? Um or if I if I get frustrated sometimes with something that he does, like I'm like, ah, I don't like that I did that. You know, you're constantly critical of this, but like I I know at least if I'm showing up and I'm there and I'm giving him quality time and like that's it's going to be all right opposed to like say my father who just wasn't there, right? I I didn't even meet him until I was like six, seven. Wow. Um, you know, it's not an ideal situation. Speaker 2: Yeah. I I think you're a great dad. I see you interact with Luca. It's awesome to see. Um and um, you know, I I for what I learned as far as being a parent, you know, I think the kids just they they desire attention. They just need attention. They need like your focus. So, like one of the things, you know, I've realized like sometimes I'm on my phone too much or I'm not giving them and they're like, they call me out on it. They're dad. Oh, yeah. Put your phone down. Call me out on it, you know. And I think it it's a realization. They just need it's just being there for them and supporting them in whatever capacity you can, just being attentive and present, which I think is so hard for us to do. I think because there's so much that's, you know, thrive like trying to get our attention, you know, all this like social media. We always talk about social media and stuff. For me, it's like, yeah, there's always so many distractions. It's just like just getting those distractions, letting things getting attention to your kids, I think is so important. And I think it's it works both ways because it's I mean, I think it's I feel so much better when I am able to interact with my kids fully focused on on them and what they're doing. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I I this is like why like, you know, I've talked about it multiple times on the on the podcast and stuff and in my emails. Um I have like a phone jail, right? So, this is my office and phone jail is about, I don't know, like what 30 feet over that way, you know, like it's over in a corner. Um in a corner that's not really in view of where me and Luca might play or in my office. It's just away from everything. So, this way when I'm, you know, hanging out with Jess, hanging out with Luca, doing my work, whatever it is, I'm I'm present in that moment with those people. Um like this morning it snowed in Louisville and, you know, or it snowed yesterday in Louisville and so we had all this snow. So, um we went out sledding, you know, we're out sledding this morning. You know, phone stays in the house, we're sledding. We're 100% in the moment sledding for an hour. Um, you know, and those I I and again, like you said, you mentally you feel better, right? And so I think phone jail is a really useful thing for people. Um if you can do it, find some corner of your home that like you don't really go to all the time, right? And just kind of put your charger there and charge it. And, you know, you know, some some people will say, oh, you know, emergencies, this or that. And yeah, I'm sure there's some sort of thing there. But for the most part, you know, if someone has an emergency, like for me, if someone has an emergency that's going to be really important to me, they can either get a hold of our gym manager or they can get a hold of my wife. You can't get a hold of those two people, it's not a real emergency for me, right? Like that's just the way I look at it. And again, I have employees and stuff to deal with. So, you know, most of you guys listening to this, probably some of you guys obviously will probably have more responsibility, but most of you guys, you know, probably don't have as many people sort of looking to you for what they need to do or for directions on stuff or you don't get bombarded with, you know, 20 to 50 text messages in a single day that you have to go through, right? Um and I use text messaging as like a as a almost like an answering machine, right? It's not I don't get to it immediately. I get to it when I get to it. Like kind of like how back in the day you had an answering machine and you would get back to it at a certain time of the day. You didn't you didn't you didn't get to the text message as it as if it had to be immediate. Um and those things help me out because again, by getting away from the phone and getting away from that constant bombardment, like you said, it allows you to be more present with the people that you're actually with. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's super important. I I've I've wasted more time than I care to admit, uh, you know, scrolling. I think we all have at one point in time and you feel kind of guilty about it. Like I sometimes feel like, man, I feel bad. Like I just wasted all this time doing meaningless stuff. So, it's just like knowing that feeling, like I'm like, I don't want to I don't really want to do that. I'd rather like I'd rather not do that. So, I for me, it's just like I'm starting to kind of I have like a box. I'm starting to put like my phone. I come in like I have like a little box that kind of closes. It it doesn't lock or anything, but it closes and boom, put it in there. Speaker 1: Out of mind. Yep. Yeah, it helps. Speaker 1: Another thing I'm thankful for is my wife. So, I think most of us would agree with this, having a strong support system is critical for basically anything you want to do. And uh, you know, from the moment me and my wife started dating, she was super supportive of pretty much everything I was I was trying to do. Here's an example of this and contrasting it. Back in 2009, I actually started trying to do YouTube videos. I just I loved YouTube. I enjoyed the format. I enjoyed videos and I was like, well, okay, maybe I'll make some videos and, you know, try something. And I remember my very first video that I tried to make was a video of me doing a Gi review. I was basically because, you know, for at the time I was um I found that I was looking up Gis because, you know, money was tight and I wanted to make sure I got a good Gi for me. And so, um I realized that there was no Gi review videos on a lot of the Gis that I had and I was like, well, maybe I'll share one and kind of tell people about them. And so I started doing this video and I just I struggled in front of the camera because it's one thing to talk to a human being and if you anybody's ever tried to talk in front of a camera, this can you might experience this. I've always been a chatty person. I've always been able to speak in front of a group of people, but talking in front of a mechanical eyeball was a bit of a different thing and it took a while to develop that skill. And so I remember I started making this video in 2009 and I just keep stumbling over my words and the girl that I was dating at the time, I mean, she starts just laughing. Just hysterically laughing. And she's just telling me, oh my God, this is so terrible that it is, right? And, you know, I remember like sort of tucking that away and just like, all right, well, I'm not going to do this. I came back and started doing it later again, obviously, at some point. Um and I remember, you know, my wife was a big proponent of it. So, I started doing it and I remember, um when I first started making the videos, I had a laptop that was just on the fritz and it would just randomly crap out. It literally would just turn off. I'd be in the middle of editing a video and then just turn off. And so she saw that and she went out and gathered some people together in the gym and pulled some money together and she went and bought a a new MacBook for me to uh to edit videos, right? Um I didn't tell her to. She just did it on her own accord. And like, you know, again, that's one of those people where and I could I would I remember I then I used to show her videos. Like when I was first getting started, she was my litmus test. I would let her watch a video and I would watch how she watched the video. If she didn't keep attention she was if she would get bored and like basically drift off, I would just I would delete the video and redo it because I'm like, well, if I can't keep my wife's attention, I'm not going to be able to keep anybody else's attention because my wife loves me, right? And she wouldn't even know that she was doing it. Like I never I never told her that I was doing this. I would just let her watch the videos and I would notice if she started like picking up her phone or if she started like messing with something else or if she watched the video all the way through. And so she was incredibly supportive of doing that, you know, like helping me out with all that stuff. And I with everything that I've done, she's always been supportive and I think that uh, you know, she's one of the big reasons I've been successful in the last 10 years is because I actually had someone that's in my corner being super supportive, um basically no matter what, success or fail. She's always been there in the last 10 years. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's having a having a partner that's like on your side. I mean, it's so amazing. It's such an important thing to be successful. Like I remember when I was like working, you know, full-time and I was like, I want to go to part-time and start my own practice. I want to start my own, see my own people, see my Jiu-Jitsu people that, you know, I feel like I can really help. Do some online content. She was the same way. I mean, she's like, you know, I I she would be really supportive of me and um yeah, she and in in some aspects, she'd have to work a little harder, right? Because I wasn't maybe making as much money initially, right? I was having to there's a growth phase to it where it's not things aren't quite progressing as you like. So, it takes some time to get things get some traction. So, I think it was um yeah, having somebody that supports you, but also uh you support them and you want to support them. Like she's got her own, you know, massage business and practice and she does she's very successful and she does a great job and like she loves to learn. So, she goes and does different trainings. I'm happy that I can support her and, you know, I'm like, hey, I'm going I'm getting ready for this Jiu-Jitsu tournament. She's like, all right, I'm going to be going training a little more. Okay, you know, we got to bend and flex, but we're able to help each other and kind of support each other. It's not always easy, right? It's always it can be a challenge and you got to give and take a little bit, but it's I mean, you can't do some of this stuff. I've seen and you've probably seen this more than I have. Like people come in, they have a partner that's like, I don't want you going to Jiu-Jitsu. Oh, bro. Or wife. They're like, and they stop and they fall off. It's like, it's like someone meeting a girl and you're like, oh, they're going to be gone. They're out of here. You already you almost kind of like sometimes you know it's going to happen. They start showing up a little less and then they're gone completely. It's like you want somebody that's like, hey, this is stuff I've been doing. This is what matters to me. I want to keep doing it. And, you know, having somebody that supports that's really important. Speaker 1: It's depressing. You know, it's one of these things where, you know, I think about it. Like, let's say you and I are going to be together, you know, because let's say, you know, if you're not 19 years old or something. Um, you know, assuming that you're like an older person, maybe like 20s, early 30s, whatever. Sure. And you meet someone and you're considering this person to be like the person that you plan to spend the rest of your life with. It's incredibly selfish to like get fixated on, you know, like, oh, you're you're training an extra day a week or a day a week or something like that. I don't want you to do that. I want you to spend more time with me. You're like, we have the rest of our lives together. But if you give me this time, I'm going to be happier to be with you. Exactly. You know. Um, you know, I don't know how it is for everybody, but like for me, it's like you you I always told my wife when we first started dating, I said, listen, I I need a big fence. I don't want to be on a leash. I just want a fence. Give me a fenced-in yard. You know what I mean? Like like this way we draw the boundaries, we know we have expectations for each other. I kind of know where your lines are and that sort of thing, but just let me run around. I don't want to feel like a dog on a short leash. Um, I want to feel like I have, you know, some movement to play around in and I don't feel like I'm being, you know, I think everybody's like that to some degree, right? It's one of the reasons why people hate working in big corporate jobs where they feel like some sort of cog in a machine. They they feel like they're a dog on a short leash opposed to being able to be an actual human and have freedom a little bit or some autonomy. And so that was a big thing with Jess, you know, I was like, I need this. And she's always been supportive of that. And when I see guys where they're, you know, or even women, when they're dating someone, a significant other, and that person starts to like yank them away from the things that they're enjoying doing, you know, I'm not saying it can't never work, but more often than not, most of the time it doesn't work out. Um, you know, and and later on that person comes back to the gym and they usually regret it. They regret the decision to like step away. Um opposed to like sticking to their guns and saying, hey, let me let me like keep doing this and, you know, work this thing out. So, um speaking of people in the gym, I'm thankful that I uh I'm fortunate for the people in the gym. Thankful for the people in the gym because I'm fortunate to spend my days teaching and training people that I genuinely think are pretty pretty awesome people. I also derive a great amount of purpose by helping other people. I don't know, maybe not everybody's this way, but for me, I believe if you can find a way to serve other people, it fills a void in you that many people experience sort of deep in their soul. Now, a lot of people try to fill it with stuff. We kind of talked about that earlier, right? Material stuff. Um, but when you have people that you're serving, when there's some other mission or purpose that's more than you as a person, I think that's a generally a good thing for us as humans. Um I think it's why people who have like a family, if wife and kids or husband and kids, that kind of thing, you derive a great sense of purpose. Most of the fathers that I know that are good dads, um, you know, when they had their kids, it was like it unlocked a new new new basically mode of thinking in them that gave them a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment that they didn't have before, that you can't put a finger on, you can't explain it to someone who hasn't experienced it. Um and likewise, you know, at least for me, I feel great sense of purpose doing the stuff that I do every morning or every day where you get to train with people and, you know, you get to watch people make positive changes, right? Like one of the big big wins for me is like sort of the gym dad recently was we had a member um who she came into the gym a year ago and she was suffering from some trauma that had happened, you know, obviously before she came into the gym and she would have panic attacks going in rolling on the mats. Just shut down. And she'd have to leave and she would, you know, start really would mess her up. And she kept coming and several of the coaches really helped her out like Kata and Ryan Peterson. They really went above and beyond uh the amount that they could that they needed to do, but they helped her out a bunch. And she recently competed about a year just recently, which has been almost exactly a year, competed in and won a match by submission and took second place in a competition. It was like, that's a huge win, right? And like it's not a world championship, it's nothing like that. But you watch someone go from, you know, panic attack to all of a sudden you can get out there and roll in a competition with all that with all that that energy, right? That's pretty impressive. And, you know, we we have a lot of people on a weekly basis that are having different wins of their own. And so that's cool to make that impact on someone and see it. For me, that's kind of that's the that's the drive, right? That's a lot of fun. And so I'm thankful for the people that come into the gym that allow me the uh the enjoyment of being able to do that. Speaker 2: Yeah, the fulfillment of it. Like, I mean, just even um in a Jiu-Jitsu sense for me, it's like watching some of these six I you know, I'm one of the coaches at 6:00 a.m. classes and then watching some of my guys that, you know, I I've really poured some energy into, go out there and do really well in a competition, right? Like having that I was like, man, I feel like I had a piece of that. Like it feels so good to watch their success. Like I'm not winning anything. They're the ones that are out there doing the thing and they're winning and they're accomplishing something. Even when they're not, they're going out there and they're, you know, doing the best they can. They're they're being good listeners, they're coachable. Um I think there's there's so much uh like you said, there's so much fulfillment in that. I even physical therapy, right? Like one of the things like when I'm working with some of my athletes, I'm watching them get out there and do well, actually get back to training because they miss it so much. Um it's so special. Like having them have some confidence back on the mats. It it's just it makes it worth it, you know what I mean? Like because people are like, man, I'm I'm so happy to get out here, get back out here. I've been off, you know, due to this injury and just coming back and getting to train again. It's pretty awesome. It's it's fulfilling and it's kind of like it kind of fills your cup, you know what I mean? Like it kind of gives you that that energy that you need essentially. And you're doing something you care about. And plus the people at the gym are awesome. We're all there. We all train together. It's just like you have a common goal, like a common bond just by training hard together and just being there. And you get to know people so much deeper beyond just Jiu-Jitsu. And that's where that community aspect comes in. And so we get together, you know, on the holidays or, you know, we we go out, you know, somebody's leaving the gym, we all try to have dinner together and just like, you know, because we we care about these people. We actually miss them. Probably more than a lot of a lot of people we see. So, yeah, it's it's it's having a like a gym family and a gym community that's really tight knit and is really, really important. And I think it's what keeps you coming back. Speaker 1: Next one is that I'm thankful that I grew up in the 80s and 90s. So, uh it may be a little bit of uh nostalgia. Um there's also some fun words I looked up recently. Uh about that, right? The uh let me bring them up real quick. There was one like it's like a Welsh word. Uh Hiraeth. I don't know, probably not saying that right. It's like a homesickness for a home that you that may not return or nostalgia for a lost time or past. Um there's another one for uh it's called Saudade, which is in Portuguese. Basically means a longing for someone or something you may never see again, like a childhood or whatever. So, it could be all those, right? Um, but I'm thankful for for thinking about it because I can't help but look at like some of the 80s and 90s stuff is like a little bit better, right? Sure, we didn't have the conveniences of today. Um, but we had a certain level of excitement. You could go to the movie store and it was like a a big moment on Friday night. You would get together with friends to play video games and board games and things like that instead of being so disconnected. Um, you know, and you we we grew up as kids with this time period where we grew up with technology, but we also were separated from it, right? It wasn't attached to us at all times. We um weren't constantly bombarded with it. We were able to go out and play outside and it wasn't considered to be detrimental or unsafe. You know, like now I listen to parents and like they they don't want their kids to go outside and play yet for fear of what could happen. But then I look back at my childhood and you're like, it's all we did, right? And crime was actually higher in some cases during the 90s than it was in in certain places. Um, you know, but I see like sort of a a generation now of tablet toddlers and teens craning their neck over their phones and I'm glad I never grew up with gadgets. I'm glad I never grew up in this environment with this mobile of convenience to me, like just given to me. I'm glad that, you know, I grew up at a time where you still were faced with boredom. You had to make your own fun up. You had a little bit of freedom as a kid. Um because I think all those things were were good things. And so I'm glad I experienced that. Um opposed to I've been born say like now. You know, I I don't I I I can't help but look at that and be like, man, we're going to, you know, with like my son, I'm like, it's going to be a challenging time because we're going to have to keep him away from certain things like our smartphones and stuff for a long period of time to let his brain develop. Um, you know, me and Jess already talked about it. I don't plan to give him like a smartphone until he's maybe like 15, 16. Um, you know, the research that's coming out is like that's kind of when their brain can handle it and not go off the rails, so to speak. Um, you know, and we don't give him a tablet really to play with. We go outside and play or play with blocks and stuff. But um, you know, I just I'm glad I grew up in that that time period before all this this technology and um these uh these gadgets that still your attention came into play. Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I I agree. Like I think um it was an interesting time. Like we would it's funny like you're talking about the 80s and 90s. Um yesterday, me and the kids were watching Home Alone. Oh, great. We watched that through the night. Great movie. Yeah. And um I was like, man, this is like just it just reminded you of the time a little bit and just reminded you of kind of I I remember being a kid watching that movie as well. So, it brought me back to like being a kid again and uh watching it with them and kind of laughing and just just so goofy and you know, um but it was just it's a it was a cool time because like you get like you said, there's an excitement. It's like, man, I'll be I would wait to get a CD. Like I'll wait for a for a CD to come out and I'd I'd wait till midnight and go to like whatever store that like I remember going like to one of the like stores and getting it or something. Or even you know, it's just a lot of fun. Going on Friday, go to Blockbuster. Be like, oh, I hope they have this movie in stock. You know, you can't just stream everything. It just made it just made you appreciate like smaller like the little things. Now it's like, oh, I can just stream whatever I want whenever I want. It doesn't feel special as unique as opposed to waiting for something and then actually getting it and you're like physically have it and get to manipulate it in your hands and actually enjoy it and Well, even think about like if you if you played that video, that's what you were watching. Like they've done this thing recently where like a lot of movies have been dumbed down where the they're creating movie scripts with the understanding that people are probably partly scrolling while they're watching the movie. Huh. And so like the dialogue is being dumbed down to sort of like where the characters will sort of say very obvious things during the movies and shows because they're basically sort of banking on the fact that people aren't actually giving their undivided attention to the show. Oh, wow. Right? Um, you know, when you played a CD or you played a VHS tape or, you know, you were with that thing, right? Uh and so now we've got more and even think about connections with people, right? You you appreciated your your connections with people far more because you weren't talking to them through text messages all the time. When you saw them, there was some excitement to them. When you spoke on the phone, you would speak to that person like all in opposed to sending out a bazillion texts a day and talking with people but never really actually feeling connected to anyone. Right. Which is why I I talk about this a lot, right? Like, sure, all this stuff is far more convenient and it's technologically advanced, right? But is it better? You know, because you got to think as humans, we're not our DNA is not set up for all this stuff, right? This is why like you could go text your face off and never feel like you've actually connected to a real person. But then you could go and see a friend for like 20 minutes and have a good conversation with them and you leave feeling kind of like you feel satisfied. You feel good. You feel fulfilled to some degree. Um opposed to, yeah, we can text like it's like when when COVID happened and the gym was closed for a little bit. Like we text and we communicated with people, but then it's like as soon as we got to the gym and you saw people. I remember the first night we got everybody together to train and we're all talking and hanging out. It was like, oh, that felt so good. Just humans, right? And so, you know, I I don't think people really think about that, right? All the technology that's coming out, right? Sure, it's more advanced, more technological, it's more convenient, but is it better? Is it better for you? Is it better for your life? Is it better for your children? Is it better? Is it is it adding to your life and making it better or is it just making it convenient? Because those things aren't necessarily the same, right? Convenient doesn't necessarily mean good. We can think about how convenient certain types of foods are, but how detrimental they are to our health. And you can think about the same way with a lot of the communication and everything. Another one I'm thankful for is I'm thankful for all the old older men and mentors that helped me out along the way. I can look back at basically about a dozen men, um who for one reason or another came about in my life and set me on a radically different direction that the different direction didn't really show early on. It's like imagine a boat going down, you know, the river or in the ocean. It's like they just knocked me a couple degrees one direction. But, you know, 10 years down the road, that's a big difference, right? And so I met a lot of guys over the years who didn't, you know, I didn't I didn't seek out most of them. A couple I did, but I didn't seek most of them out by for specifically for mentorship. They were just older guys who saw a young kid trying to do something, they helped. I never asked them a lot of times for things. They just offered. They let it be a chance to help. And I think that's a beautiful thing and, you know, and it's just something to keep in mind, right? Like I talk about this sometimes with people. When you go into a place like a Jiu-Jitsu gym as an example, it's a place where older people can mix with younger people and we have this shared common bond there. And, you know, even as an older person, you may not be the killer on the mat who can smash everybody. But, you know, you might have some some useful experience. You might have learned a couple things if you're a little bit older, right? And, you know, you might see that sometimes those younger people are willing to listen. Not all of them, of course, but some of them will, you know, will. I mean, that was for me, several of the mentors were older guys that were on the mats who like saw me doing. I remember one guy in particular, um Al, he saw me on the mats and or before we got on the mats and I was reading a book on investing. He just so happened to be a real estate investor. He owned several businesses and things like that. And he's like talking to me about it. He also grew up, he's self-made, grew up poor. And so he he just started taking me to like, hey, let me go get you lunch. Let me show you some stuff. He showed me houses he bought, how much he bought them for, what he sold them for. He showed me a couple of his businesses. And I remember he used to like go out to his, you know, he owns a couple of Subways and I I would go out there and like fix his his technical stuff, like his computers there. And so, you know, again, he just helped out and that gave me a different perspective because I think that's the sometimes the benefit you get from people is not necessarily just the lessons that they give and everything else, but like the proximity of being close to them and seeing how they do things. That in itself can be pretty changing. I know that even me like when I went down to train and like learn some Jiu-Jitsu from Sean Hammonds, my my coach, right? That dude changed my Jiu-Jitsu around in a huge way, both with some of the techniques that he showed, but also just being in proximity to him and seeing how he did things. I was like, oh, this is cool. I like I want to create this and I was just watching him like a hawk seeing how he did things. Yeah. I was learning lots just from being around him. And I think sometimes that's a beautiful thing about when you can find a mentor of sorts, you can uh you can learn a lot from them just by being around them. Doesn't have to be things that are spoken. Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I I agree. I mean, I've learned so much honestly from you like in the on on the side of like, you know, creating a business, right? Creating even creating content, some ideas and like just working together, just how to how to make things grow because you you've done so much in your, you know, in your kind of path like figuring out what works and what doesn't and how to kind of, you know, the importance of like, hey, you should do these things to to help grow attention or or even just like, you know, attract the people that you feel like would be a good fit for what you do, right? So, I'm yeah, I've it's it's really important. Like I mean, especially you said you, you know, kind of you grew up without a lot of like father you had some men in your life that were like your grandfather, you said it was a pretty big influence, but just having like male role models in some ways, people that like were were men that did things. I think it's really important for for a young man to to kind of see that, you know. Speaker 1: That's huge because, you know, what does it mean to be a man? You know, like it's a very uh it's a very hard thing to pin down. And so usually we look around as young men, we look around at the other men around us and we say, oh, that's what we're supposed to do. Yeah. You know, and if the men around you are a bunch of dirt balls, there's a good chance you're going to be a dirt ball. But if you look around and you see men that are good men, that are doing things, that are, you know, supporting their families, they're building businesses, they're serving other people, they're taking care of their health, they're, you know, they're doing good stuff with their lives, then you go, oh, this is this is probably what I should be doing. And kind of going back to it, I had a beautiful ability to sort of see contrast where I saw what people did when they got into drugs and crime and things like that. And then I also saw men who, you know, their lives wouldn't impress anybody. They wouldn't be on Instagram flexing or whatever. They were living a very normal, uninspiring life to many, but at the same time, you know, they they raised their children, they took care of their family, they spent quality time with their family, sometimes even with me, with this person I'm thinking about, and you look back at that, you're like, that's a life well lived. Even if it's not going to be like super cool, they're not driving a Lambo or a Ferrari or something, right? And so I had the ability to contrast these and look at these things and go, huh, okay, cool. Like, you know, you get to see those things and you get to see like, what do you want? Do you want to go this direction or do you want to go to this direction? Because you see what's going to happen if you go that way and you see what's going to happen if you go that way. So, it's like, even if you really push hard and, you know, you you're doing this stuff, even if you fall a little short, there's still a lot of cool stuff that can happen, you know, in a I don't want to say uninspiring, but just like a very basic, normal existence. You know, um so much of the social media stuff is about this I try not to, you know, take part in it, but you see so many people where they're putting on this front, this lifestyle, right? And it's just it's nonsense. Um and so again, being able to uh to see those that contrast, to have those that was really useful. And uh, guys, I think that's it. Thank you so much for being here. Um, thanks to our sponsors for helping make the podcast happen. Athletic, THC and cannabinoid mints. If you guys want to check them out, they're microdose THC mint with about two milligrams of THC along with other cannabinoids. It helps support you in whatever you're doing. 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By the way, for all our Patreon listeners, we appreciate you and thank you for your long-time support. And if you guys want to get access to the library content that they have, as well as some of the other content, you can check those out at patreon.com/thejiujitsupodcast. And last but not least, guys, if you would like to get my daily email that I send out, then you can check it out at jiu-jitsu.net/join. And when you join up, let me actually see. I I wonder if that thing's still active. It may have broke down. I I had some software. I say that now. But if you guys want to go to that website, jiu-jitsu.net/join, you can get access to a free guide that I give away called Focus Jiu-Jitsu. It has a video version of it, plus a PDF. And then after that, you then get access to my daily email. And you can unsubscribe at any time. And uh, guys, I think that's it. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate you guys. I'm thankful for you. We hope you had a good Thanksgiving if you're in the United States. And I hope you guys are having a good time in uh, you know, in December and uh, we'll see you next time.