Hey, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to talk about how to embrace failure. So when I was in college, I got interested in Brazilian jujitsu. If you're not familiar with jujitsu, it's a ground martial art that focuses primarily on submission. So no striking.

I found it to be a beautiful martial art and essentially got addicted to it. The first summer of training, I trained twice a day, six days a week. And that first month was pretty demoralizing because I got my butt kicked. Now, obviously when you're starting out in anything, you're going to be one of the least skilled people there or alongside a number of other people at the same beginner level. But the time slots I trained in always had people with higher belt ranks.

So every match I went into, I got submitted. I would learn something new at the beginning of class, then we would grapple and I would tap out every single time. It would be an arm bar, a rear naked, choke, a Kimora. And of course in the beginning, this was fine because I was new and expected this to happen. But after a month of this of exerting, so much effort, so much energy to still be getting tapped out each time was tough and it often brought up a lot of emotion for me.

Maybe you've noticed this with things in your own life. You have something you care about, you're pouring your heart and time into it, really trying to get it right, but feeling like nothing's happening. You're not making any movement and it can take the wind out of your sails, at least it did for me. But I continued. And one day something interesting happened.

I was grappling with someone ranked higher than me and for the full five minute session, he couldn't tap me out. So I went back to the sideline, tried to play it off cool like that's what normally happens. But inside I was like, Whoa, what just happened? That was interesting. Uh, so I took a sip of water, went back into the next match and again, went the full five minutes and didn't get tapped out. This time, I'm like looking around seeing if anyone's noticing.

This hadn't happened before. And so I'm starting to think, wow, like something is shifting here. Went back to the sideline, took another sip of water, went back out with more confidence. This time got tapped out. So it wasn't happening every time, but something was shifting.

And shortly after this, I developed a reputation in the jujitsu school as someone that was very difficult to get a submission on. I wasn't doing much offense. I was basically just spending five minutes in a ball, protecting myself. But, uh, that first month of making all of these different mistakes is what led to an understanding of the things not to do. And for me, it created a bulletproof defense.

Eventually I was able to move on the offense and start getting my own submissions as well. So what does this have to do with you? Well, I'm sure you can resonate with the idea of, of something that you're going into in your life that you're struggling with, having a hard time getting it right. And it could be stuff with a relationship or wondering why you keep falling into the same patterns with people, communication struggles, or maybe a new role in your work not getting the best feedback or as a parent feeling like you're not always saying the right thing and getting angry when you wish you could be calm. I think there's something to, keeping in mind the story of me going through my jujitsu journey, uh, and when you're in those moments of what you perceive as failures, perhaps you can see that as a learning opportunity, as your learning experience, as the thing that's developing the defense against those things happening again. See if you could try out that perspective and notice how it shifts your relationship to those moments.

Thank you for your practice. I'll talk to you soon and take care.