Nothing new...

Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. Figuratively, a lesson that has manifested itself in my professional and personal life numerous times and, literally, one that I experienced early in my Martial Art career when I was partnered with a 5’1”, 105 lb female police sergeant and senior black belt at our school.  At the time, I was still in my teens and feeling pretty good about myself - I studied hard, moved well and had a ton of dojo-based evidence that had me believing I could overcome most attacks. In short, I was supremely confident in my abilities and had a plan. The thing, though, is that my plan did not account for my partner being just as supremely confident in their ability to land a punch. It took about a nano-second for the pain to permeate my cheekbone.  I stood there for a moment, partially embarrassed but mostly introspective regarding how something that had previously worked so flawlessly (hundreds of times) had failed so miserably in that moment. The answer lay in one word...complacency. I overestimated my capability, underestimated hers and failed to see that my training conditions were breeding both shortcomings.

You see, until then, most of my experience was with people like me - relatively new and more entrenched in the academic process of creating an experience that felt good and supported our ego-fueled narrative than we were in actually testing our limits and truly developing our ourselves. We would cue each other with a “ready?” request. We would deliver arrow straight punches that would rarely be encountered in the street. We would subconsciously send our strike a little off target to ensure, if our partner missed a block, they would not get hurt. Each of us were involved in a confidence-boosting, habit forming dance focused on creating situations where the odds of success were extremely high. Unfortunately, those who are intent on delivering hurt are not all that focused on dancing.

The lesson from that night set into motion nearly a lifetime of searching, a quest that became even more urgent when I began to teach. I felt that it was no longer just about me but about my students - I had an obligation to be better… an obligation to make THEM better. While I derived deep joy from sharing an ancient art, I was convinced that the traditional methods I was honing and propagating were just not realistic enough for the street. 

I began studying under multiple masters, reading vociferously and participating in countless seminars with the desire to find the art that would best answer the challenges of today’s world. In the process of this discovery journey, though, here is what I learned …. that there was nothing really new in the Martial Arts. That, much like the search for the perfect diet, the perfect workout or the perfect business model, we are each sometimes so pre-dispositioned to concede the power of knowledge and growth to others that we fail to remember that unlocking real power and progress is not based on mimicking someone else’s truth but instead on crafting your own - using foundational truths and teachings merely as ingredients vs the whole recipe for success.

I believe to truly validate and leverage these learnings, you need failure… you need chaos, you need variability and you need to be forever questioning and evolving based on your growing repository of experiences and interactions. That evolution, if approached with an open mind, will strip away the noise and reveal your own personal strengths and weaknesses and THAT is where the true “secret” lies. While I was able to take something from virtually every book, seminar, partner and teacher, it was the amalgamation of theses collective learnings into something that best worked for ME, calibrated around my strengths, that ultimately accelerated my personal growth. I stopped attempting to force my body to perform motions it was not built to do well and instead embraced those that best capitalized on my size, inherent traits and even personality. The result is that my movements felt much more natural and intuitive regardless of partner or situation. Thinking back on the domino that fell that night in the dojo, I learned that you need to be prepared for anything but assume nothing. I needed to constantly remind myself to approach every interaction and relationship with unbiased eyes; understanding that every situation had the potential for variables that I had never have seen before but also had the potential to play out exactly as I would expect. Over calibrating either way proved to be disastrous. Learning how to just be present and trust that my intuition, instinct and inherent strengths (mixed with healthy humility) would guide me appropriately is where true magic began to happen... allowing me to walk that fine line between complacency and confidence.

So what does all of this have to do with business, or life for that matter? Everything. As a culture, we often search for the next big thing. A magical discovery on how we can somehow instantaneously elevate ourselves to the next level. So convinced are we, at times, that there is something better out there, that we become distracted by the essence of what will really make a difference… our personal experiences, our strengths and the connections with the people that we work for, the people that we work with, the people that partner with us, the people we compete against or the people that we serve (our employees, customers, students and fellow humans). Regardless of approach/technique, the core fundamental tenants about trust, passion, say/do, alignment of purpose and communication are indisputable truths that will drive virtually all change and, by extension, growth. Calibrate these things correctly with the right context for the environment at hand and the chance for success is extremely high. Try to force some academic model that has been shown to work in disparate case studies or low-risk situations and you are left with a bloody cheek. Does this mean you should not continue to seek out new knowledge or models? Of course not. There is always something to be gained through research. Sometimes the learnings are large epiphanies or sometimes more nuanced but they are always there. For me, the trick was finding how to synthesize that, take what was useful, dovetailing it with my individual capabilities and having the courage to discard the rest.

The net is this… in order to avoid (or at least limit) getting punched in the face, you need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and understand that YOUR environment and the people YOU interact with (be it friend or foe) will dictate the best approach for any given situation.  You also need to trust that these experiences will allow you to harden and forge instincts, intuitions, and approaches that will inherently work for you. Will the occasional misstep occur? Of course, but those are the moments that you know you are growing… creating new conditions to add to your library of knowledge from which to draw from. Oh, and by the way… that incredibly talented partner of mine from way back when, never caught me with my hands down again.