Learning How to Stay Down

Let's get to this week's TLC first...

TLC

Tune

Logic - 44 More. I love the way Logic raps and I'd say that this is my Favourite Logic song.

Lesson

Content

The Joe Rogan Experience - Steven Pressfield. I'm picky with Rogan eps, but SP authored my favourite book and does very little media like this - this was a great episode.

‘Learning How To Stay Down’

You’ve heard it before - you’ll hear it again…

‘When you get knocked down, you get back up again’.

Cliche, yes.

Overused - also yes.

However, it's good advice (not great) and a lesson from my martial arts day.

Martial arts is literally this.

You’re learning how to put someone down, they’re learning how to put you down.

Among many other traits, this makes a martial artist someone who has got up every time.

Here is where I want to dive deeper and explain why this isn't 'great advice.

I want to add another layer to getting back up.

Like life, martial arts provides many ways of ‘knocking you down’.

Punches, kicks, elbows, knees, wrestling, sweeps, trips, throws etc. 

Each time you get knocked down, you stay down for a period of time that is sufficient for the damage you have taken.

Maybe you get swept and pop back.

Maybe you get punched and use the full 10 count.

The point - learning how long to stay down and knowing how long you need to recover is a higher-order skill.

Bouncing right back looks great - but:

• Did you reflect? 

• Did you take time to reassess? 

• Did you reflect on how you got here? 

• Did you up-skill so you don’t make the same mistake again? 

• Have you recovered? 

I believe bouncing straight back is often an ego move.

You don’t want people to see you down, so you pop straight back up as damaged goods trying to hide your wounds.

If you put your ego aside and made use of the situation you’ve got yourself into (because you’re not there by accident), you could come back a far superior version.

Instead, getting up quickly leads to another mistake, similar to the last one.

Why? 

Because you didn’t change anything.

Oh, and don’t forget the knock your confidence will take from making the same mistake back-to-back. 

Bouncing straight back looks great.

But sometimes sacrificing short-term pain (ego pain) for long-term gain (growth) is just a matter of some patience and not giving a fuck what others think of you… 

xoxo