As I have continued to grow as a person I find myself able to deal with the difficulties of day to day life pretty well. This had me feeling pretty confident that I can just take on whatever now without that pesky anxiety rearing its ugly head, and boy was I wrong. I have my first BJJ (Brazilian Jui Jitsu) tournament coming up and I found myself getting really anxious and worked up about my upcoming weigh in. The thing that I find really interesting about this in retrospect is it is such a low stakes situation. Losing a tournament as a white belt is not something that would be all that surprising and would only serve as a valuable lesson as to what I need to work on.
What what giving so much anxiety was not really the tournament but the unknowns surrounding it. I was weighing in over weight so needed to do my first cut, and I was not super confident in the general tournament proceedings. These challenges are each opportunities to grow and prove to myself that not only can I successfully do a tournament as in this specific example but also prove that I can undertake new challenges and overcome them.
This is something that I think we all need to do in our lives to continue to grow as people. What the actual activities are don’t particularly matter beyond the fact that they scare you a little bit (or a lot if you feel like you can overcome it) and they also excite you or at least the end result excites you. As you do this more you start to realize that not only are you dreams within reach but you can achieve so much more than you ever could have imagined. At least that is what I am assuming happens if I continue to push through barriers I am just not quite far enough on my journey yet.