I slapped hands with my opponent. I felt eerily calm and not that nervous. It was on, and I just had to follow my training. I didn’t know any take downs, so my strategy was to stand up for as long as I could, and possibly pull guard. Suddenly, I made my move and ended up in his guard…Shit.

Me and my Jiu Jitsu Master in Seoul. Our gym is called TNT Jiu Jitsu.

Huh?

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I competed in my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competition last weekend. Guard is a position in Jiu Jitsu.

It was a great experience, and I wanted to share with you a few things I learned from competing:

• Our assumptions are often wrong.
• Leaving your comfort zone is still a great thing to do.
• I need to refine my guard and mount escapes ;)

So now I’ll talk about them in a little more detail. The first two, at least.

Why our assumptions are often wrong

I am currently just a one-stripe white belt, meaning I’m still in the basic stages of Jiu Jitsu. But that’s just part of the journey . Anyway, a few weeks ago, I found out that there was a competition coming up called The De La Riva Jut Jitsu Cup. I thought about joining even though I would be one of the least experienced-fighters there. Here are some things I that went through my mind:

• The fighters at competitions are solid, and I get my ass kicked every night in the gym
• The fighters start standing up, I know no takedowns
• I didn’t really know what to expect in a competition environment

Anyway, I decided that I would do it just for the experience. It sounded like something I wanted to do and I was a little nervous, so I just said “Screw it, I’m down.” And here’s a little story:

As soon as I’m committed, one of my friends at the gym decides to tell me that he broke his arm at his first comp. Then, others ask me if I am going to compete, and they have this shocked look on their faces when I say yes. Some even tell me to lose weight so I could compete in a lower weight class. While these things were not exactly confidence boosters, I felt that I still made the right choice in competing.

I didn’t expect to win. Since I don’t have any takedown defenses and I get my ass kicked at the gym almost every time I go there, I assumed that I would just get taken down right away and submitted by an armbar or kimura within the first minute. But I knew it would be a good experience anyway.

It’s great to leave your comfort zone

So the tournament rolls around and I am completely out of my element. I don’t even know what the scoring system is. And in Korean fashion, I find out the day before that the location of the tournament has changed. It was supposed to be a half hour from my apartment in Seoul, but I am told through the grapevine that the location has changed to somewhere 1.5 hours outside of Seoul I’ve never heard of. Finally it’s confirmed, and so off we go to the new location. Of course the event doesn’t start on time, but I am one of the first matches of the day. I weigh in at about 73kg (161 lbs) in the under 76kg  (167.5lbs) weight class.

Me warming up for my match.

After a few warmups, I meet my opponent. He looks unassuming and friendly, but he has 3 stripes on his white belt. I know he is good, and I also know that in actuality he is probably better than a three-striped white.

We slap hands and the 5-minute bout is on.

And the winner is…

My opponent. Which was expected. However, I surpassed my expectations! I lasted the whole 5 minutes and did not submit to him. He won on points. If you remember from the top of this post, I assumed I would lose rather easily. But I hung in there. Basically, I tried to escape from his guard, and I made one mistake and he swept me into mount. From mount, I could not escape! He was solid. When I went under his mount, my strategy was just to play defense as best as I could and wait for the bell to ring. If I had a chance, I would try to escape, but he basically held me in check until the bell rang.

There were about 35 people in my division. The guy I fought ended up getting 2nd place. He actually should have won in my opinion,  but he lost the final by 2 points.

Conclusion

My assumption was that I would lose rather quickly because I was inexperienced. However, I proudly lasted the whole 5 minutes, with the eventual 2nd place winner, nonetheless. This goes to show you that our assumptions are often wrong. We can predict things all we want, but we do not know what will happen until we truly experience it ourselves.

Everyone assumes that the only way to be successful is to go to college and get a good job, but there are thousands of people who are more successful without college degrees. (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Glen Alsopp)

Everyone assumes that the best way to get a job is to spam your resume out to companies on Monster.com, but that has been disproved.

Everyone assumes travel is expensive, but I have stayed in places like this one for less than $15/ a night:

One last note on assumptions

The world has more “noise” than ever before, so it is sometimes necessary to go by our assumptions and make short cuts. However, if something is important to you, such as a Jiu Jitsu competition or escaping from the rat race, do everything you can to test your assumptions. The results will often surprise you. And remember, you know what happens when you just assume something…Hint: Ass + U and Me…

P.S. If you haven’t seen my free report, The Five Myths of a Steady Paycheck, you can find it here.