The #1 thing killing your grappling…

…and how to overcome it!

Want to know the #1 thing that’s holding your grappling back…

…and how to fix it?

Then this post will probably be the biggest “Aha!” breakthrough you’ll have this year,

Put on your seatbelt. This will be a wild ride…

First, let me ask you… what do you BELIEVE?

I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to note whether you’re gut feeling is that these are either “good” or “bad”.

How do you feel about:

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? (good or bad?)

Kung Fu? (good or bad?)

Grappling with a gi? (good or bad?)

Tae Kwon Do?

Eating meat (good or bad?)

Being vegan? (good or bad?)

Taking steroids? (good or bad?)

Guns? (good or bad?)

Donald Trump? (good or bad?)

Barack Obama? (good or bad?)

You probably had a gut feeling of “good” or “bad” on some level to most of those, didn’t you?

Well, the reason you did that is because of something called…

Duality: The Way Your Brain Understands Everything

You see, your brain divides pretty much everything into 2 categories (that’s the “dual” part).

That’s how you understand things. You can’t comprehend something without comparing it to something. So, you form “opposites” in your mind.

(And yes, this ties into the whole “Yin/Yang” thing)

So, you’ve got things like man and woman, front and back, hard and soft, up and down, cold and warm and all that stuff.

But you need to understand something…

Duality is NOT reality!

You Bruce Lee fans may recognize this quote:

“If you want the truth to stand clear before you, be neither for nor against”

He was trying to tell you that our brain’s categorizing things causes us to NOT SEE THE TRUTH!

It’s only categorizing things so you can comprehend them… but doing that causes you to misunderstand them.

Holy cow, right?

And here’s where things get a little dicey…

Because you categorize things into groups like:

ME… and NOT ME…

RIGHT… and WRONG

GOOD… and BAD

… and then you CHOOSE one side, you LIMIT yourself to only that category. And limiting yourself… well, it limits you.

This Duality is the Source of Your Problems!

Let’s just focus on the ME and NOT ME part for now. First, recognize that your brain is a programmed device.

You are the sum total of:

your experiences, successes and FAILURES
your thoughts
your memories
things people have said to you
society’s beliefs and norms
your environment

And your brain has unwittingly taken all those things, and categorized them into ME and NOT ME…

…and over time, that’s created your SELF IDENTITY…

…and gradually this self identity gets very STRONG, DEFINED and HARDER & HARDER TO CHANGE.

Now, remember that all that categorization causes you to NOT SEE THE TRUTH, right?

Oh boy, are you starting to see the problem?

And can you see that other people’s words, your negative experiences and failures, and societies norms have unintentionally created NEGATIVE and LIMITING BELIEFS about yourself that almost certainly aren’t true?

So, what’s a guy / girl to do about all this?

How To Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

First, get it clear in your mind that dualism is IN YOUR HEAD. It’s just something your brain does to help you comprehend things, but

It’s… Not… Real.

Stop thinking that everything has one true RIGHT and WRONG, or that ME and NOT ME is a real thing.

Without getting into quantum physics, let’s just remember that EVERYTHING, including you, is just a bunch of molecules swirling around some empty space. Under a microscope, it’s all one undivided thing.

Realize that things you dislike and see as BAD or WRONG actually MUST EXIST in order for us to comprehend things we see as good or right.

With that in mind, let’s now soften our stance on what’s right or wrong and become more unbiased and less judgmental of good and bad, right and wrong, me and not me.

***On a Side note***

Probably the most effective way to do that is meditate daily. When you meditate, you train your brain to stop judging and categorizing things (duality).

You are literally training it to stop thinking as much as possible, and detaching yourself from the thoughts when you do have them.

***End side note***

And finally, let’s let go of who we think we are… and aren’t… and let our identities become much more fluid and changeable.

That static, unchanging self-identity of yours is an illusion you’ve unwittingly created from all the external and internal input your brain has received over the years.

The truth is, your self-identity continually evolves based on the new inputs your brain receives every moment.

The best ways to make sure it evolves the way you want is to:

Control your “internal” inputs:

Increase positive thoughts and affirmations
Decrease negative thoughts
Speak only words you want your brain to believe
Meditate to slow down the polarizing thoughts and internal dialogue

Control your “external” inputs:

Avoid people who speak negatively
Surround yourself with people who feed you positivity
Avoid watching the news daily
Keep a clean environment
Surround yourself with signs of success

Break your ME and NOT ME Self Identity

Check this out… this trick works like magic! Find things the “ME” would never do…

…then go do them.

Your brain quickly realizes the person it THOUGHT you were is wrong, because that person would never do that thing you just did.

Your subconscious instantly has a WTF? moment, and you suddenly become much more fluid in who you allow yourself to be, opening yourself to possibilities for greatness you thought only others (i.e. “NOT ME”) could have.

Boom… previous limiting self identity shattered! Cool, eh?

The Bottom Line Is…

What’s been holding you back… is YOU. It’s the self-identity, complete with all it’s limiting beliefs, that you’ve developed fought to maintain that keeps you where you are.

The reality is that your STATIC SELF IDENTITY IS A LIE.

And the proof, as I showed you above, is that once you do something your current self-identity wouldn’t ever do, you are de-facto not that person anymore because that person wouldn’t have done that.

So when you do that thing, you are instantly becoming someone other than the current illusion of your self-identity.

Every moment of every day, you are being programmed to the next “new version” of you. You are always becoming.

If you use the tools I gave you above, you are in charge of who that new version is.