BTG 110 - When Stuck Do What You Fear

[Music] welcome to the breaking the guard podcast on today's episode I'm going to talk about what to do when you get stuck and one of the good things that I have found over the years is when you're not sure what you should be doing next think about what you're afraid of doing and that is usually a good indicator of what you need to be doing because now if it's something like you're afraid of dogs or you know afraid of heights maybe that's not what I mean but more from like a a work context or like a goal context what are you procrastinating right like what are you trying to avoid having to do because you know it's going to be tough it's going to be painful maybe it's a particular activity you don't enjoy doing but you know it has to be done that's usually a thing that you need to be doing right now right and we all have these in our life we have things that we've been putting off right cuz we're like uh you know I don't want to get into that right now you know I have a lot of other little things I can do to keep me busy instead of doing this thing especially when it comes to training you'll find that the things that you're afraid of are usually the things that are going to benefit you a lot for example everybody's is afraid of a hard conditioning workout right uh you know I've talked about doing you know latic capacity conditioning uh and that is the one workout I really don't look forward to that's probably the one I would want to delay and take a rain check on but that's also the one that's going to give you the most benefit uh as far as being able to endure tough scrambles or whatnot right who's the person maybe your avoiding sparring right maybe that's the guy that usually kicks your butt but he's the one that can level you up right he's the one that exploits the weaknesses in your game or that you have to step up to be able to defeat them so and you know this shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody any story that we ever watch becomes heroic when the hero has to conquer a fear right he has to go over something that he might be afraid of doing but he knows he has to do kind of like the same type of line of thinking that doing the right thing is the thing you need to be doing even though it has consequences right uh so it's in a similar spirit I feel so in your life look through things and I'll give you a few examples for example if we're talking about training right uh there are things that we need to think about in training for example where am I having the toughest battles right what position do I get beat in the most what position I do I not want to be in at any costs because that position that you fear the most is probably because that's your worst position you know you're the most vulnerable uh perhaps you get tapped out there or you get TKO or whatever so that fear is a position that you really want to be able to work on right so that's something that I would add into your game and start drilling it start doing more expose yourself to that weak point of your game more often and this is not the first time I've said something like this but I am I guess approaching it from a different angle as far as things that you might fear right so if there's a particular area in the fight game that you try to avoid at all cost maybe make that something that you don't avoid that in fact that you start from right do situational drills or tell your partners to try to put you in that position so that you can expose that weakness of yours and at a certain point you won't fear it as much because you'll have more experience you'll know how to handle it uh so that's one type of way we could use fear to improve us the other one is to use fear as a way of um as a tool for selecting workouts what workout am I trying to avoid right what's the one workout I don't want to do that's probably the one I should be doing because if I'm afraid of it it's probably because I suck at doing it or I just know it's very tough and it's not going to be fun and um you know I don't want to get super tired or whatever so that's the one I should be doing because the the more I engage in that activity the better I'm going to be at handling it I'm probably going to do it I'll you know the nature of conditioning workouts is they're never easy because if you're doing especially something like elatic capacity training the whole point of it is to be dead exhausted at the end so even when you get better at it basically you increase the level difficulty so it's always going to be tough right however there is Improvement right because you're going deeper every time so maybe I did two rounds the first time I did it now I did three rounds or then I did four rounds right and or the the quality of the rounds are improving so even though it's still tough every time and maybe equally as tough every time my output has increased so that's a measurable Improvement so uh again workout selection you know being a masochist right picking the things you don't want to do those are good ways of using that right another thing like I said sparring already mentioned people who you don't are afraid of sparring or maybe not I afraid might be a bit much but maybe you're like H you know there's a guy in the room and you're like avoiding their gaze right you don't want to match eyes and they get locked into a around right if you have someone like that in your room be proactive and just go up to them and take that round right even though it might suck even though you might get your butt kicked right you're going to learn something right and the more you could put yourself in those tough battles and come out alive you're realize okay it might be bad but it's not terrible right and you know ultimately hopefully we get better at at the very least we're able to be competitive with somebody that we not looking forward to battling at a and maybe at a certain point you overcome them right and that would be a wonderful turn around so those are a few ways you can use fear in daily life I feel like a lot of people procrastinate things and that's just a way of expressing a fear maybe not like in the traditional sense of being like ah scared right but you just don't really want to do this particular assignment or task because it's tedious or it's difficult and you rather just keep putting it off so if you have something like that tackle it right just take the initiative do it right now and get it off to your Ledger right and if you're not aware of these things then I would recommend that you make lists I have list I've used list for pretty much since I started competing when I was 14 or 15 and I would write down all the things I wanted to do things I need to do you know goals I had all these types of things right so if you're writing down your list of tasks like I use my phone now they have like a to-do list and every day I have things that I'm marking on what I need to do so it happens on occasion with me I'm not impervious to this either where there's a task that keeps getting pushed right like I say okay I was supposed to do today I I tackled a bunch of other things didn't get a chance to do it goes to the next day and usually when that happens that task might bounce two three four five times right um just because if you were able to bounce it once that means in your mind you could probably bounce it two three four times and not only that if you were bouncing at once it was probably because it was difficult or timec consuming so you're going to continue to do so so if you're able to detect that and like hey you know what I've I've postponed the same thing multiple times let's just freaking get it done even if it takes a whole day let's just get it out of the way uh because personally at least for me maybe because I'm you know I'm wired differently but whenever I have something like that that's like hanging on it really drives me nuts cuz I'm like ah like it's like I I have a almost like an anxiety right because I'm like man why can't I get this thing done right it's just like it's sticking around so if you find those types of things that are like tasks or appointments or things that you keep putting off make an initiative to do it right now don't wait for like another you know week or so tackle it as soon as you can and just try to get it off your list and most commonly at least in my experience it's harder in your head than it is in reality right uh and if you're not sure how to tackle that particular task you might have to break that task into its own items its own list right like okay what does that particular task entail write everything down and and that way what seems like one task might actually be like five and then they could start doing the sub tasks and that's going to give you at least progress rather than just postponing it entirely we're doing parts of this bigger task and that's my advice right so we'll keep this podcast a little on the shorter side right and just stay on theme here which is do the things that you're afraid of right those are usually a good indicator of things that you need to work on now I'm not talking about and again well there is some uh insight into doing things you're afraid of like conquering a fear of heights or claustrophobia or something like that if it's something that is doable for you but obviously there are what I've called healthy fears where it's just like you're afraid of you know uh getting stabbed right I'm like yeah that's a good thing you don't want to get stabbed right or you know you don't want to fall off a cliff or anything like that but it should I always feel like your fear should be reasonable right don't have irrational fears where you can't explain to somebody why you're afraid of it right or like how realistic that fear is right it's one thing uh you know to be afraid of let's say flying in an airplane because the airplane could crash right that is it's possible it has happened but what's the probability of it very low in fact you're more likely to get a car accident so if you're driving in cars all the time which most of us are then having a fear of flying in a plane doesn't make that much sense right um so that would be another thing as far as challenging fears that you may have and being sure that they they do hold some water right like if your fear is irrational where it's you would be embarrassed to tell somebody your fear or that no one else has that fear that you have that would be something to question and think about it like well is this really a thing right is this reasonable is this helping me or is this hurting me if you had a fear of like air travel for example you would be limited as far as places you can go to right cuz now you're going to have to drive across the country or you know take a boat and go across the ocean you know you need to travel internationally so it's definitely going to limit your life so is it benefiting you or is it hurting you more and you know these are the type of things that you would have to ask yourself about a fear that you might have and be able to objectively look at it and think what's really the problem here right and if there's a way to conquer that fear so that it's no longer uh an obstacle for you right and as an example of air travel the way I would see it uh again I don't have a fe of air travel but I can imagine what it would be like where you're kind of when you're a passenger in airplane for example you have no control there's nothing you can really do about it and if something does go wrong and the plane crashes you're pretty much toast so for me one statistically I feel very reassured that my chances are very low of having an incident second uh uh the worst case scenario I would die in my case I'm fine with that I can live with that well really I can't I would be dead but I mean it's not going to I know it's an eventuality one way or the other so it doesn't really affect me too much and at least I can say even at this point in my life I'm very satisfied with the life I've LED so if it ended you know at this very moment so be it right I've had a great life I want more of course I don't want to die but I can accept death is part of life and if it happens to come by way of plane crash so be it there are worse ways to die so uh plane crash would be a relatively quick death once you hit the ground uh I would imagine versus being tortured to death or you know starving to death or something like that which I would imagine it would be far worse so I have a few ways of being able to not be affected by that as much so that would require you know obviously not everybody's equipped like I am I think most people are more afraid of death than I am uh and I think that's something that everyone should be able to challenge right um because of course that's one of the the biggest fears that people have is of dying because we don't know what is really going to happen we have ideas and theories but no one really knows for sure uh so obviously that could be a little bit more challenging but if you can find a way to come to peace with that definitely going to make those type of fears of which are basically fears of death you know transferred into some activity a lot easier to deal with anyhow I won't get too you know into the weeds there and I met this more from a a training uh life goal type concept but you could see you can apply this in a lot of ways and uh again if all that went over your head the take the the easy takeaway here is whatever you're afraid of doing in training as far as being you know getting beat in training someone who's uh going to expose weaknesses of yours or some type of conditioning workout that you don't like doing see those out first be proactive conquer those fears by forcing yourself to get into them early and that's essentially going to empower you because now rather than being forced to do something you're doing it you're forcing that thing onto you right so it's a little more empowering because you're taking the Reigns rather than somebody pushing you into the into the fire so anyhow hopefully that gu that helps you guys and I will see you all next week