Better late than never!

So a few years ago I have my first no-gi jiu jitsu tournament. I remember being so nervous! We have our rules meeting and I'm looking around at all the guys in my division. I spot this one dude who looked like he was wearing a Superman suit under his skin! 

Right away my inner monologue kicks in "Look at the fucking size of him!!". Then the guy who is telling us the rules, starts announcing the first match ups. "Don't be matched with THAT guy! PLEASE Don't be matched with THAT guy!" and of COURSE I was matched with who me and my buddy had given the moniker "Mini Brock Lesnar!"

So - we get on the mat and my heart is racing like a lab rat. I'm across the way from the dude and he decides to take his tee off! "Oh for fucks sake!! Look at the size of him!". Then I'm thinking "You know what...he's man...just like me dammit!! Fuck this shit...lets go Tim".

The buzzer sounds and after a few moments, he goes for a single leg take down. Before I know it I'm on my back with this BEAST on top of me and my last thought before the 5 minutes of defending myself from submissions was "Yeah...he's not like me. He's WAAAAAAAAAY stronger!".

Suffice to say, I lost that match and the 2 others that followed. They had beaten me fair and square but I had also helped them do it. I froze! I'd allowed my nerves to get the better of me and I was close to just throwing it all in and saying "Bollocks to this!".

Skip to my next competition and I get beaten again by pretty much all of my opponents (except one dude who hadn't been there for that long). "Yeah...forget this mate...it's a young mans game...it's not for you buddy!" - (My inner monologue mixed with my ego trying to save me from any further anguish).

I was just convinced that I sucked and was going to suck forever. Yeah...scratch this competition shit! I figured that if at the very least I kept attending sessions...while I wouldn't get good...it was at least a good workout. So I'd do a few sessions here and there...miss a bunch of sessions...do a bunch of sessions and half ass it for the most part. Then one day my instructor Martyn writes a Facebook post that resonated with me in a massive way (I'm paraphrasing it a bit to make it sound a touch more gangster)

"Don't bitch about the results you didn't get, with the work you didn't put in!"

Now, I try to be honest with myself - it helps progression in all forms of life and I had to admit...I was being a lazy, self sabotaging bum! So I decided that I was going to do this competition thing again. I wasn't worried about the winning or the losing because this is not what all this was about. This was about getting past the nerves. This was about finally conquering something that had been with me far longer than at the time, I had realised...

When I was a young kid - I was FAST! I could run like the dickens and I was easily 1 of the top 2 fastest kids in my year. I'm around 7 years old and it's my first year in primary school. My sister goes to the same school and she's 3 years ahead of me (she was fast too). So - every year there's a sports day where all the fastest kids from all the schools in the region get together and basically see which kids are the fastest. In the great scheme of things, it's quite insignificant but for me at the time - it was the Olympics! I had the speed and qualifying should have been a mere formality - all I had to do was run and I'd get to the regional match ups. So the race begins and to my left and to my right are the kids in my year that I've blitzed so many times before. 

Silence...

this is it, come 3rd or higher and I'm in!

BOOM! And we're off! My legs were jelly, my heart was racing and my sister was on the sidelines screaming "COMON' TIMOTHY!!" (The only person alive allowed to call me that). The race ends...and I come 5th. 5th!!! So...I didn't make the regionals. I was distraught and far too young to realise that I'd allowed my nerves to get the better of me. My opponents didn't beat me - I beat me! After that...running wasn't so fun any more and it pretty much tailed off after that.

So when I finally realised that how I felt all those years ago, was how I felt when I stepped on the mat for that first match more than 20 years later - I HAD to do something about it! 

"No more being slack, no more self sabotage...you're going to put yourself through the fire until you can get this done!"

I remember the match where I finally achieved what I had wanted to. My dad was there with one of my closest friends and my 2 little brothers. The match was with a guy called James Orton. He beat me fair and square and I was perfectly fine with that because it was actually him beating me. He had more skill, better technique and I came off the mat smiling from ear to ear!

I've never wanted to be the best...I don't really care about things like that. The entire reason for my doing jiu jitsu in the first place was for my personal development and if that wasn't a step in the right direction - I don't know what was.

If you don't give up...eventually you have to make some form of progress. If I had decided to throw it all in, I would not be the person I am today!

Until the next post

Peace and Love beautiful people! :)

DAMMIT MAN! WHY ARE YOU SO HAPPY!?

So I don't get asked in that particular way but I am noticing more often that people are asking me why I'm always so happy. First things first...I'm not always happy. I have crappy days like everyone else with the difference being, my crappy days aren't all that crappy.

A few years ago I made a concious effort to eject everyone from my life that didn't add something positive to it. Constant and unnecessary conflicts with certain people in my life at the time distracted me from concentrating on being a better human.

"Yeah, but they're your friends!"

And to that I say, FUCK THAT SHIT! If you're always in constant conflict, they're constantly being douchey (or even worse - you are) then something needs to change. So...over the past few years I've ensured that the people who are in my circle are positive people. We have great conversations, there's RARELY any conflict (if any) and most of my friends, like me, are just trying to be better than they were yesterday. It's unfortunate, but not everyone thinks this way. They bitch and moan about things they can easily change but do not wish to and I don't think it's for me to tell them that they should be different. And knowing how I was back in my more negative days...the change had to come from within - no external source could have changed my view on the world without my wanting to see the world differently in the first place. My home girl Kya said it best.

"No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal."

I don't have this life of mine figured out. There's still so much room for improvement and so many things that I look at in my life that I liken to that cupboard in your house that you need to spend a decent amount of time sorting out, but every time you open the door and take a look..."Yeah...I'll do it another time".

However you choose to lead your life is entirely your call. Me? I have chosen to maintain a sense of positivity in all situations and this has connected me with like minded people. When I was negative...the same was also very true. The people in my life were negative - just like me.

Everything is a choice - and in the words of my good friend Liam (The Part-time Grappler) "It's up to you to find the positivity" and there's is always positivity to be taken from almost every situation. The universe presents you with the same lessons over and over until you learn from that lesson. When you do, it presents you with another lesson.

I choose to take the positivity from all situations presented to me.
I choose to be a happy and positive person.
I choose to add positivity to the lives of the people around me as they do me.
I choose to work toward making myself a better and more evolved human each day.

So...the question should not be "Why is Tim always so happy?" but rather
"Why do I care if someone is always happy?"
"Why am I not always happy?"

Food for thought.

Until the next post...

Peace and Love :)