Savage / Zen Newsletter No. 87
May 2024
"The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth they can accept about themself without running away."
~ Luis Carcia, "Law of Ambition"
Does passion equal bias? A recent publication titled “A Potential Pitfall of Passion: Passion Is Associated With Performance Overconfidence” reminds us that facts don’t care about your feelings. How much you love a thing has little bearing on your ability to perform at or execute the thing.
That’s certainly not to say that you shouldn’t do things you like, or that there’s inherently a performance detriment to enjoying an activity. What it does mean is that assessments such as those concerning performance need to be objective, and preferably simple as possible.
How you think you looked doing a BJJ or climbing movement may be very different than how it actually looked on camera or to a judge. How heavy a barbell “feels” or a run / ride “feels” may vary wildly from what the ergometer conveys. Again, those subjective measures are far from invaluable, but they should not be our sole guidepost.
We see this raging through instant-gratification and outrage-porn culture. We succumb to what feels good now when we know very well what we want later — and the two are often divergent. The great coach John Danaher has described the need to be cold, calculated, and analytical; explicitly emotion-less.
I agree in many ways, but also couldn’t disagree more. Success, at a “greatest of your generation” level (ala Gordon Ryan) requires more than just “doing the right things” — stars quite literally have to align. It isn’t only grappling where we see this. Athletes who are great, but only want greatness, with no love for their game, fade almost as fast as their success. On the transverse, particularly in the fighting world, many a fighter has stayed in the ring / octagon far past their prime to collected a paycheck — too bad the CTEs are adding up faster than their salary.
NonProphet recently reminded me that “to learn to suffer is to learn to love.” Earlier this month my dogs taught me that endurance is about maturity. If one is to endure, that is to say they mature, the grueling nature that greatness in any endeavor requires; what will fuel them? For me the answer has to be love.
What I’m Listening To:
We all know Spotify curates “daylists” for you and ascribes algorithmic “tags” to describe said daylists. Well, I was quite dismayed when one such list was described as “divorced dad rock and trucks”… as I am neither divorced or a dad (yet?!). I was much relieved to discover a couple “grunge revival” playlists because apparently my taste died somewhere around 2010.
New Subscriber Download:
This is a Google Slides presentation of the exact content I use in my seminars. From when I first began training with Tony Blauer’s “Garage Gym”, to evolving defensive tactics training with local law enforcement, to participating in University active shooter trainings; this is a continually evolving process.
Fun fact, at the time the above pictures were taken, I think I was an early brown belt a LEO friend lent me their bulletproof vest so that I could train in it for a couple weeks and make sure I wasn’t selling bullshit that wouldn’t work in the gear they have to perform in.