Day 210: I will never fail - well not in front of you.

Fascinating isn't it when our pre-programmed mind shows us things about ourselves and what we have allowed - just recently I noticed my mind being tricky about the point of failure in front of others.

It's funny how the mind does not want a person you like to see you defeated in any situation - its like the ego cannot handle the idea of that person seeing you lose at something, and so you do anything possible to avoid that person seeing you in this position. Any person in life that tells you that they have never failed at anything, or are undefeatable or infallible in some way is lying, never forget that.

Now as some people know, I am very much interested by martial arts, I have been a martial artist since I was young, and in my life I have trained many different martial arts, and trained in many different gyms/training facilities.

My current gym is full of great athletes, but the mental competition is not as bad as other places I've trained in before. The focus is mainly on everyone improving their arts together, which makes it a supportive environment for training.

Now I am respected in my gym, as is everyone else, because we all come from various martial arts backgrounds, to learn from each other and assist each other to grow. A part of this is firstly to never try to injure your training partners, there is no place for egos in supportive martial arts gyms, so anyone who cannot accept losses and victories in day to day life, is not equipped mentally to be a martial artist.

Everyone in my gym is a very high level professional martial artist, so all of us get the better of each other on certain days in grappling, striking or wrestling exchanges, we all know who the most effective martial artists are in a live combat situation, but none of us are there to stamp that authority.

However, while I thought I understood all these things, the principles of a martial artist etc, its amazing how my mind fucked with me just recently - so someone I know that I like, said to me that they would like to come and watch me train, and maybe join in -

In my mind was thoughts like "ok if she comes in on a day where I'm winning all the exchanges with my partners then cool, but if she comes in on a day where I'm losing some rounds here and there, I really don't want her to see me fail. Also while shes in the gym I'm gona be distracted by her watching which will mess my focus up, or mess up some of my training partners focus".

Fascinating isn't it, the ego, I mean really - and then from this thought I started coming up with ways to avoid agreeing to let her come to my gym, just based on the chance that when she comes in and I'm rolling, sparring or wrestling with one of my top partners, who's getting the better of me in that moment and "how bad" that would look, and also fearing she would be the only female in the gym, so i didn't want her effecting anyone else's focus lol.

I said this to one of my best training partners, and we laughed about it, as he said its the exact same reason why he doesn't let his partner come down the gym, but within the moment I could see that this is not something that really is supporting either of us.

I've seen this pattern of behaviour before in my life, in relation to other things, like for instance when I was younger in teenage years and early 20s, I went though a long period of never discussing details about certain conspiracy type stuff that I would claim to know things about, because at the time my ego didn't want that person to know the truth that while I know a lot, there is holes in my understanding of certain things, just like everyone else, that I was trying to avoid admitting at that time in my life.

So this cycle of pre-programmed behaviour, of fearing people seeing me in a "less advantageous/all knowing" position, which my ego has perceived to be a "weakened state" is not supporting me in living whats best for all life whatsoever, so join me in my next blog as I continue to uproot the core of this problem and walk to transcend the point.