Getting through "the low"
on choosing one's commitments and not giving up
(two friends practicing o-goshi - a basic hip throw)
As I’ve mentioned a few times, I started back to training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) in July after a 13-year break. It’s been an up-and-down ride for the last five months or so as I reconcile with how much I have forgotten and the fact that I am now in my early fifties instead of my mid-thirties. As much as BJJ is about technique, it is embodied technique, and so your body matters. All other things equal, speed and strength wins. Luckily, technique can overcome speed and strength most of the time, but it’s always better to have speed and strength, too. Now that I am one of the oldest practitioners on the mat, I have to deal with the fact that most of the guys I work out with are stronger and faster than I am, and certainly bounce back faster. Coming to terms with my lesser physicality has been part of the “down” in the up-and-down. But setting aside this fact for me, I think it is normal for a beginner starting a journey of learning to experience the up-and-down.
The pursuit of a skill, whether it is learning a martial art, learning to play chess, learning how to bake bread, wood-working, pottery, gardening, fly-fishing, or anything worth an investment of time and effort often yields some secrets to the beginner quickly. Just enough to make the beginner feel like s/he has a special gift for this craft, just enough to keep her/him coming back for the next lesson. There is a certain beginner’s arrogance that accrues in those first efforts that I have seen both in myself and others - oh, sure the master is really good, but obviously if I am this good after a few classes, I will be able to do what the master does in half the time it took her/him, maybe even less. And so you come at the new skill with a high for a few more sessions, and then as you gain the glimmerings of the beginner’s knowledge, you start to see just how vast the chasm actually is between where you stand with your meager skill and talent, and where the master stands. It’s as if there was a mist swirling between you and the master, concealing the actual journey so that it looked like you would just walk straight across to where the master stands, speaking to you. But now you realize you will have to hike down a trail into a vast, dark wilderness before you can begin to climb out to the other side where the master is. This realization is the low. You have to ask yourself now, with more full understanding, am I prepared to take this journey? Will I ever get to the other side? Never mind my original arrogance of thinking I could do it in half the time that the master took, can I even do it at all? This is the point where I think a lot of people abandon the journey.
I hit the low (probably the first of many) with my return to BJJ in probably early September. I was coming to terms with the fact that my body was not only not as strong and fast as it once was, but also that it took me longer to recover from workouts. Although my BJJ school offers classes six days each week, I needed to take a day off to recover between classes. And also, with my other commitments, it was hard to find time to hit my goal of three classes each week. I most often only get to two, which also disappointed me. I started saying to myself as I limped from my bed to the bathroom in the morning with my joints aching and my muscles beat, maybe this was a mistake.
Now, spoiler alert, I kept on going, as should be obvious at this point. But back in September as school was getting back into high gear and I was going into an extremely busy few months, it wasn’t clear that it wasn’t a mistake. Not every worthy thing is worth pursuing. There is only so much space in one life. There is a virtue to trying many things and abandoning most of them so that you can focus on the things that you are meant to do. Without exploration, you cannot find the things you are meant to do, but without commitment, you can drift from thing to thing, quitting whenever you hit the low, and moving on to the next thing that will give you the beginner’s high until you hit the low again. To get over the low and make the journey toward mastery, you have to make the pursuit part of your identity.
The identity literature uses a two by two that looks like this:
These categories were developed by a psychologist named James Marcia in a 1966 article. As you can see, the two by two asks two questions: have you explored your options? And, have you committed? The goal is to explore and commit.
According to the theory, you want to take your time and find the right things to commit to you in your life before you commit fully to them. In the United States and other wealthy, Western cultures, young people are encouraged to go into a period of moratorium - a period of exploration without commitment. The four-year college experience encourages this sort of exploration. But so does enlisting in the military for a four-year tour. There are other ways to engage in moratorium. The important thing is to not take on permanent obligations (getting married, having a child for example) during this period. The moratorium ends when you make a commitment to a set of activities that will define your identity.
This theory is oriented toward young people emerging into adulthood, but I’m at late mid-life, and I continue to explore and change, so I don’t think identity is a lock, but it is hard to grow without identity achievement.
In many traditional cultures, young people are forced into identities - they are forced into foreclosure. You are a farmer because your father was a farmer, and his father was a farmer, and so on. It doesn’t matter if you would be better as a weaver or blacksmith, or a poet or actor. Wealth gives us the privilege of time to explore in the West (not for everyone, but for most people it is an option - we can argue about this if you’d like - but that is my perspective) - a privilege that isn’t shared by people who have to struggle to keep themselves fed and sheltered. Happily it’s a diminishing number in the world, but still non-trivial. Sadly, even in the wealthy West, some people feel forced into identities and do not engage in exploration. People often go into law or medicine because they think it’s what is expected of them, and then lead wealthy but unsatisfied lives. I never seriously considered not going to college and not working in some white-collar role. But maybe I would have been happier as a skilled craftsman. I will never know.
I find identity diffusion the hardest quadrant to understand because I have always enjoyed exploring options and imagining possible selves - my problem is settling down and fully committing. Marcia describes the high-functioning, identity-diffuse person as a “playboy” that can “often be found functioning reasonably well on a college campus.” Not much has changed since 1966. This is my vision of what it would be like to inherit generational wealth and not have to find work or a career. I would just be lost without the pressure of having to earn. It seems to me that large inheritances come at a profound cost.
As a professor who mostly teaches undergraduates, I work with young people who are right in the midst of the identity development process that Marcia talks about. The most common theme I hear from them, though not always clearly articulated, is how will I know which career path to take? Which is the right one? When I sense that they are feeling anxious because they feel like they have to commit right now I try to tell them that I didn’t really find the work I loved (finance) until I was 30. And I didn’t find what I consider my true calling, teaching, until I was 40.
I remember talking to my boss when I was in the process of applying to do a PHD program while still in the Army, and him saying, “Are you sure this is what you want? Because you are on track for senior leadership - I could see you easily making colonel. But if you do the PHD program, you know that’s a career killer. Hardly anyone gets promoted after that.” My response was to tell him I had thought about it, talked it over with my wife, and I was prepared to bear that cost. His response was something like, “Good, because I’ve watched you over the last couple of years and you obviously love teaching. I think this is what you are meant to do, but I wanted you to make that decision knowing the consequences.” He talked about how I had set up seminars on how to use Excel and Access for employees in my division, but also in other divisions, and how I had been running a journal club open to any employee in the hospital. And he was right - how did I know I should be a teacher? Because it was what I kept coming back to when I was left to my own devices. I love working with people who want to make themselves a little better. I happily traded time in a classroom with people who want to learn for far more lucrative opportunities, and, although I get a little sad sometimes thinking I could have made colonel before I retired, I would make the same choice again knowing what I know now.
So the problem of identity achievement is making a commitment without full knowledge. Even with teaching, I didn’t know if I would be any good. I thought I would be, and I thought I would like it, but you have to make the commitment in a state of uncertainty. And when you choose, you close the door on other choices you might have made. I made the commitment to teaching because by the time I was in my late thirties - as it happens, also when I was studying jiu-jitsu the first time - I had been drawn back to teaching repeatedly. It was a hard road - earning a PHD is not for the faint of heart - talk about lows! - and it required a lot of sacrifice (I never made colonel). Now I’m fully committed to teaching - I hope I get to do it for the rest of my working life. Being a teacher is not just something I do, it is who I am. And yet, even though I am committed, I could change. Life is long and the road is unpredictable, but that’s a topic for another post.
All things worthy of our commitment and effort take time and discipline, and we can’t do all of them. We have to find the worthy things that resonate with our gifts and talents. The advantage of having lived ⅔ (statistically speaking) of my life is that I’ve explored a lot, and I can reflect on the things I keep coming back to. Professionally, my strengths are analytical. That’s why I was drawn to finance rather than operations. But I also love coaching, so I was drawn to teaching finance more than doing finance. The key lesson for me is to pay attention to the things you come back to. When you are given a choice, what are you drawn back to, time after time. That is most likely the thing you should be doing - professionally or personally.
Coming back to BJJ, we are embodied beings - to fully live a worthy life, we need to use our bodies. Although I no longer have my 30-year old body, I am blessed to be in good health. The martial arts have always drawn me, ever since I was a kid. They offer a little mystery, a little mysticism, and the people who master them seem to be able to do magical things. They blend together the mind and body, and through physicality teach lessons to the soul. They offer a lifetime of learning, which appeals to me, and a means to feeling competent. All great martial artists are also teachers, so once again that speaks to my love of coaching. To join a school is to join a community of like-minded people who are seeking to improve themselves. All of these things resonate with me. They are the values that I keep coming back to when I reflect on my life, much the way I was drawn to teaching, and that’s how I know in my head that this commitment to BJJ is the right thing. I’m trying to make that an identity commitment now - that I am a student of BJJ - to make it a part of who I am.
I remember the turning point for me, coming out of the low, with regard to my training in BJJ (at least for now). It was in early September - probably six or eight weeks into training. I was really questioning whether I should keep going back, as I mentioned above. I was working out with Kevin, the owner of the school, who is a fabulous teacher and all-around great human being. He invited me to spar with him. He was, of course, taking it easy with me and letting me work some things and giving me tips as I tried to do certain moves on him. During a pause he asked me, “So how is it going?” And I replied something like, “Well, to be honest, I’ve been feeling kind of blue. I feel like I should be better.” He quickly replied that I’d only be coming for a few weeks and to be patient, and then he remembered I had trained before, and so he better understood where I was. He nodded, and said, “Look, there’s a reason you’re back now. Just keep coming.”
And that is how you get through the low, whatever you are trying to become.