[There's a contradiction in the title; post a comment when you see it.]
In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the objective is to strangle your opponent to the point of unconsciousness or to use leverage to apply enough pressure to a joint that if your opponent does not surrender, his arm, leg, ankle, or neck will break.
Although BJJ is fundamentally a violent sport, guys who stick with it are some of the most laid back, chill guys around. You don’t find many bullies at the gym because training martial arts kills your ego.
The first thing new students are told is to “check your ego at the door.” Although the ego ostensibly exists to protect you from the cruel world, the ego itself is fragile. It is an egg-shell thin helmet.
Tell a guy he is fat, ugly, or a loser. He’ll seethe and rage. He’ll be furious at the indignity. How dare he talk to me like that?!
Most men live in a fantasy world. We are all stars. Any guy who doesn’t offer to suck my dick is a hater.
I’ve never met a guy who, despite having never been in a fight, isn’t quite sure that he could handle himself. I’ve never met a man who wasn’t certain that the Hooters waitress wasn’t totally into him and that he could totally get with her if he wanted to.
Although some of us are excellent in some areas, for the most part we’re entirely ordinary. We live, shit, piss, cum, and die. Our egos lie to us.
Guys who can’t leave their egos at the entrance to the BJJ studio don’t last long. They can’t deal with the psychological blow of learning that, “I’m not special.”
After class, there’s usually an open mat or sparring. During a five-round sparring session, a new guy will be submitted 20-30 times.
Thirty times you are told, “I could break your arm. I could crank your knee, leaving you a cripple.”
Thirty times you are told, “If I didn’t let go of your neck, you would be unconscious. I could pin you down and fuck your ass. How you like me now?”
Being put into a situation where you are powerless isn’t something most men – especially “alpha males” – can do. Most guys wash out.
The guys who stick with training learn several valuable lessons. It’s only a game. You learn from each loss. Each loss makes you better. Most guys are home watching TV. Showing up is an accomplishment. Even the worst guy at the BJJ gym could defend himself against 80% of American men. What happens in training doesn’t matter. It’s only a game.
Now how does your ego harm your game?
I’ve had girls laugh in my face, throw drinks on me, tell me, “You need to take a shower,” call me the creepy old guy for showing up on college night. And that’s only the stuff that wasn’t so damaging that it hasn’t been repressed deep into my unconscious.
Who cares?
Going out on a Friday night isn’t a life-or-death situation. Some girls will hate me and try ruining my night. Some girls will love me. Sometimes nothing will happen and the night will be a total dud.
Before you go out, leave your ego at your apartment.
Have fun.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s only a game.
Save up to $10 on your first order at iHerb (free shipping for most orders, too!) with coupon code: EKO606. Shop at iHerb.
Interesting post. It makes me think of that idea of being unattached to getting what you want.
Nice post. Had a guy at my gym recently who wants to be a fighter. Big black dude who has been in prison for murder. Bout 6’2 220, tats, looks intimidating as fuck. Hes a pretty cool dude for the type and I had been tryin to help him with his boxing and muay thai. hes got some brute strength and athleticism but hardly any technique at all and he wants to bang all the time.
So basically he had been goin off and on for maybe a yr or so. Had 1 fight with a chump few months back. So he calls me out to spar in front of like alot of ppl at my gym and Im like ok I can go with you 1 rd before I gotta teach this class. So we are boxing and right of the rip I can see the adrenaline in his eyes and hes tryin to go hard with me. Im like wtf ok so I sit down on my feet so that all my punches are gonna have everything behind it. He comes at me wild with chin up and basically runs into my left hook and boom hes out. Falls like a tree and bounces off the mat like ric flair in a wrestling match. He tries to gather himself but its just not happenin and Im like chill bro. Then I went an taught my class.
His ego got crushed cuz everyone is scared and intimidated by this guy and everyone saw it. Havent seen him back since. If he had any sense hed be thankful that he learned this lesson in the gym and not in an actual fight. But I dunno if he will.
Totally agreed about this in game as well. When I first started approaching it was similar to when I first got into mma. I felt that fear well up in me. The fear of loss of face, etc. Then I told myself stop being a goddam pussy. GO! After awhile it became thrilling to feel that anticipation and anxiety. Thats when I knew it was go time.
Only the ego wants to win.
I know guys who are this way naturally. Most guys have men people like this. Your friend that doesn’t give a fuck and will hit on any girl at any time with absolutely no expectations of success – and sometimes they do succeed.
For a long time I wanted to emulate this. In some respects I still do, but I’ve started to think that being this way comes with its own consequences. In other words, I don’t think that you lose nothing by giving up your ego (as implied by the statement “who cares”). The illusion of being special drives people to suceed. It fosters ambition. Unless you believe you are special, unique, above average, etc. I don’t think you will ever BE those things, because in giving up your ego you’ve essentially admitted defeat.
You may have more immediate success with women or in BJJ, or some other arena of your life, but I would argue that you sacrifice some of your potential to be more in the future – or at least, you sacrifice some of the driving force that compels you towards realizing that potential.
Your comment suggests that it’s impossible to have passion without ego.
As I understand it, it’s not about giving up your “illusion of being special”.
It’s about adjusting your expectations, so that you can continue through adversity without having an existential crisis.
I agree that self-belief can and often will lead to achievement.
But killing the ego will help people who have been told they’re special their whole life on the merits of having a pulse, because at some point reality is going to say otherwise.
It depends on what you mean by “ego”. I find that there is a superficial ego and a legitimate ego. A superficial ego is where a person wants to claim credit for things they have not earned. Legitimate ego is where a person has pride for legitimate accomplishments.
I think having a legitimate ego is essential to be a psychologically healthy human.
I essentially agree with this. I’d modify my comment above to say that it applies only or mostly to legitimate ego.
It does get confusing when talking about ego. It’s common for Buddhists to talk about working towards an understanding and embodiment of egolessness, however this causes more confusion than it cures. We actually need a strong ego before we can even begin to talk about dismantling it.
Think about teenagers and peer pressure. You need a strong ego to be able to to stand out from the crowd in disagreement.
Jack makes a good point about irrational versus rational self confidence. There is a useful trick of self hypnosis where you deny aspects of reality and shut down a part of your brain in order to get access to savant powers. You can make your hand numb, you can be suggestible to forget parts of your past, you can enhance your confidence. By denying realities and creating beliefs that are not grounded in empirical evidence, you can hack your system to short term advantage.
Doing that is useful when you have a WEAK ego. When you are not strong enough to handle the blow to your self esteem that knowing of real world facts would cause.
If you have a strong ego, you can handle all the troublesome real world data and sort it all into a meaningful, workable coherent whole. A complete map dealt with by a strong ego is not only more accurate, ultimately it is more useful. IF you have a strong enough ego not to rely on the crutch of self-hypnosis to smooth the rough edges of experience out for you.
So there are two ways to talk about ego. A weak ego needs to be strengthened so that you don’t rely on others opinions for your self worth, and so that minor setbacks don’t also set back your self worth or leave you scrambling for meaning wondering who you really are.
And then a strong ego can afford to strengthen even more, by dismantling it’s false beliefs. Then a man can have the rug pulled out from under him and be in a state of un-knowing without panic. He can experience groundlessless and uncertainty without rushing to fill in the void with any old certainty he can grasp.
Pingback: Continue to strengthen your ego | Random Xpat Rantings
What is there to win, if not to satisfy the ego?
That reminds me of a Buddhist paradox. Buddhists hate on selfishness, so when explaining the motivation for enlightenment, they need to spin it as absolutely not about avoiding your own suffering or finding everlasting bliss (except when they are explaining that it will extinguish personal suffering and lead to personal everlasting bliss). So they say that the motivation “should” be about saving all beings from samsara, and leading them to egoless enlightenment.
But most people miss the catch-22 in that – the paradox. If other people are worth caring about, then so are you. So much for egolessness. The ego is real enough to care about. It can’t be real enough only when it’s in other people, but not in you.
Therefore, if you are a sentient being, it’s perfectly enlightened to care about yourself – to be selfish – to consider the wellbeing and happiness of your ego. Otherwise compassion is just a stupid lie that means nothing – something we should just get over – just like we are “supposed” to just get over having an ego.
But I’m ranting against straw men, in a way. Any school of thought will have it’s esoteric side, and the popular side. Buddhism is full of popular bullshit, and much of it is in need of an update or complete re-write. Authors such as Ken Wilber have worked to integrate into our modern understanding the insights of Buddhism along with developmental psychology, neuro-biology, sociology, and all our modern insights. The concept of an ego that needs transcending is quite clumsy, and what is bandied about as “Zen” in coffee shops and hippie backpack trails is usually so crude as to not be useful even as an introduction to the topic – best left ignored with a “ya, ok, sure”.
But yes, the accurate insight that I think D&P was pointing to is that you can’t visit your own funeral. If you really don’t need that validation of winning, then concept itself doesn’t even come up.
I have an entirely different philosophy, myself. Transcend and include. Keep the ego, enjoy the thrill of validation, allow the sin of pride, enjoy all kinds of hedonisms and suffer all kinds of worldly pains. Don’t even try to escape “samsara”. Just see it for what it is. There is an illusory and dream like quality to our sense of self. So what. It also seems real. Just enjoy it as much as possible – and trying to be egoless may or may not play much of a part in that enjoyment.
My experience on the mat makes me disagree about your observation that many Alphas don’t persist in training. They may have some of the superficial, overt characteristics, but they aren’t truly Alpha. There is a saying coined or most prominently displayed in an old Jim Webb novel about the Naval Academy. A senior keeps running a younger midshipman. These are, or were fairly typical long, fast and over punishing terrain that the younger man can’t handle. Whenever he starts to whine, the older naval cadet simply asks him a question, ‘Can’t you be bigger than yourself?’.
Long story short, if you want to play with the big dogs and play on the keen adventure rides you had better find something more within yourself than a list of petty complaints and cherished discomforts. I can’t see how any man who would willingly inject himself into some arena yet will not rise to and above the challenges can be thought of as a real Alpha. I don’t mean a thing you cannot do physically, but won’t. That, to me at least is no Alpha male.
Well, some people have said it before, but I don’t think it’s been stated exactly right.
VIEWING life as a game to be won is ego. Because it’s not.
Ego is partly a question of perspective. The opposite of ego is not the opposite of selfishness or arrogance, since excess humility and altruism can also be ego.
Egolessness, in the desirable sense, is mind like water presence in the now, coupled with healthy balanced congruent emotions.
I don’t think it’s actually that complicated to define, just hard to live.
I did BJJ for two years. Always came home bruised up and learned very slowly. Takes awhile for my mind to go into a fighting mode. The ego checking also came by in the results of 14 year old stars, and wirey muscle guys tapping you out fast too. The bodybuilder types often had tight shoulders, so you could tap them out in the shoulders pretty easily. I will have to take it up again sometime.
Pingback: Linkage Is Good For You: 7-22-12: Holmes Killer Edition | Society of Amateur Gentlemen
I’ll take a stab and say the contradiction is this your ego is basically who you want to be and becoming egoless means you need to not become that. Which in effect is a contradiction but true:
Get women = don’t care about them which brings them
Get promoted = act like you don’t “need” the promotion which hints that you may already have an out
It’s also a contradiction because the people who already have everything don’t need an ego and are therefore “egoless”
And this is why I think relationships are doomed to fail….
When you commit/invest yourself into someone, it’s impossible as a man not to have some sort of expectation of reciprocity in terms of respect and loyalty. That’s why you “invest”, to get something in return. This expectation is founded on ego, that your investment is worth something. To you it is, it’s time and effort out of your life, but to a significant other they might not care at all. So to get into a relationship is an ego investment on your part, and like any investment, you care about the outcome. Who knows, maybe it’s just my view, but I think if I’m going to make a commitment, I don’t think it’s too excessive to have an expectation out of the other person (although I understand women won’t care about this and they’re playing to win). Otherwise, what the fuck was the point of making some sort of commitment/agreement in the first place? And hence why I don’t see the point of relationships anymore.
Just to tag onto the point above about caring about the outcome, anyone whose been around these parts long enough knows the consequences of that.
Pingback: Best of D&P | rivsdiary