Hi all, its Sonu here. It really has been a while since our last post. As happens sometimes, life has gotten in the way, between work, family and love there hasn’t been a huge amount of time to write. For our first post back from this hiatus, I’m going to write a little bit about one of the things I hold very dear and near to my heart. It is something that I enjoy in my spare time, I think about it at work and sometimes after work. It has helped me get through some of the hardest, most crippling times in my life; it is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I owe a lot to this martial art, it keeps me sane and helps me destress, it helps me deal with awful days and challenging people, and above all I have met some of the most amazing, friendly and warm people out on the mats. To give a bit of a background on the sport, it is a grappling martial art that focuses on submissions; it is based on Japanese Jiu Jitsu (or Judo). It was introduced to the Gracie brothers in 1914 by Esai Maeda, and the rest as they say is history.

I have learned a lot from this deeply unique martial art and realized recently that a lot of these lessons can be applied quite easily to life. Here are my top 5:

1. Tap early, tap often

This idiom has been repeated many times over the years in all walks of life, for example, in technology we know it as ‘fail early fail often’. It’s actually one of the main mantras of silicon valley gurus. In BJJ it’s a simple concept, if it hurts, tap and start over. Sometimes you make a mistake, sometimes a trap is set and you don’t see it until it’s too late. When you get caught, you have two options, either tap, reset and start over or keep fighting and get your arm broken. The same is true for life, if you fail at something, recognise and acknowledge your failure, and reset. If you keep pushing, eventually you’ll end up in a spot where its impossible to go back.

2. Learn to Flow (like water)

Some nights in BJJ we go hard, we train intense, people sweat and can barely breathe at the end of class. At the same time, our professors recognized that there is value in what we call ‘flow rolling’. It’s a style of rolling where you turn off the part of the brain that’s trying to submit the other person and just go with the flow. If they push, you don’t resist, you just go with the push. It teaches your body to react to things your opponent does without thinking. It teaches you this odd concept of not resisting and instead turning their advantage into a possible disadvantage. Its an important life lesson to learn too, to just roll with the punches. You don’t always have to push back on things, sometimes it makes more sense to just let things flow and turn negatives into positives. You’d be surprised how often you end up on top by just following the flow.

3. Listen to Your Instincts

I’m not exactly sure how to describe this next point, but I’ll try my best; it follows quite closely to the last point. Sometimes when you get really good at things, when muscle memory starts kicking in, you can just shut your brain off and let your body listen to your instincts. The best way I can explain it is to do an experiment: throw a piece of paper in the air and calculate exactly where it will land on a piece of paper without any initial information. You may be able to come up with some grossly inaccurate estimate, but you will never be able to get an exact answer. On the other hand if I throw a piece of paper in the air and ask you to catch it, you’ll have no problem finding the exact spot where the paper will land and catching it. Without any advanced calculus you can, in an instant find the location of the paper. In BJJ I’ve found that sometimes you can put yourself into a similar state where you stop analyzing every little thing , and just let your body react instinctively. I’m not terribly good at this yet because I’m inexperienced, but I think some higher belts will confirm that they make use of this ‘tool’. In life, when you’re stressed, sometimes it makes sense to stop analyzing every little part of life, take a step back and react instinctively to the situation. It’s a tricky thing to wrap your head around, but I think you’ll find that you can make some of your best, quickest and most successful decisions this way.

4. Create space, Use your frames

In BJJ, every solid escape starts with creating space and making a good frame. You may be wondering what a frame is. Well it’s quite simple, we learn from a very young age that triangles are the strongest shape. So when you’re stuck under a 300 lb gorilla, the first thing you need to do is make some space between you and them, and try to create a triangle, either with two arms and your body, or a leg and two arms, whatever you can get in there. Its rather simple really, it makes more sense to work smart than work strong. The same concept can be applied in life. Work smart, stop trying to brute force your way to a solution. Take a step back, use the tools you have to build yourself a frame to start working from. If you have a very difficult problem at work, don’t just keep beating your head on the problem, ask for help from people who can support you. Don’t get them to do your work, but you’ll need their support to be successful.

5. Steel Sharpens Steel

I have this mentality of trying myself not to surround myself with mediocrity. This basically just means that I don’t like to be the best in a group of mediocre people. I’d rather be average in a group of incredible people. In BJJ there are some nights where you only get to train with the new students, and thats fine because those are the night you use to work on new techniques, try different things and tightening up aspects of your game. These nights are great, but the nights I really love are the ones where you are put into the shark tank; you get the brown belts, the purples, even a black belt or two. Those are the nights where you get sharper and learn more. Some people don’t agree with me on this, but I think in life its much the same; try to surround yourself with people who are better than you, that’s the only way to improve. There is merit of course in being a stand out in an average group, but what really feels good is being a stand out in a group of incredible people. The only way you get there is to let their steel sharpen yours, eventually you’ll become a shark too.