Its amazing how much starting a family can change you. Business can’t even escape the change. In the business of Martial Arts and Fitness there is an increased level of animosity, gossip, dirty dealings, and assorted underhanded practices that can rival a High School girls locker room. I think it is the combination of testosterone and personal struggle under a public light that takes fragile egos and already paranoid people to new levels of dysfunction.
I have not been immune to any of the above afflictions over the years. I started early in this business, which saved me from coming to this industry to solve some personal imperfection. I came into it as a natural progression from childhood Karate Kid to modern day MMA coach. This organic growth still has had its toxic moments.
I am not pure by any sense of the word. I am as flawed and human as anyone else. The difference as of late is my focus. My focus has shifted from “me vs just about everyone else” to “I really don’t care.” It’s not that I don’t care. Its that I don’t care as much about what others (meaning those who oppose me) may say or do. I don’t care how I am viewed by my perceived rivals. I don’t have a need for as much ego gratification as I may have in the past.
The shift has been due to a baby boy taking up residence in my wife’s belly. I tied the knot back in September to make an honest woman out of Nancy and allowed myself to actually grow up a bit. Marriage made me think about how my life impact’s “us”. Having a baby on the way takes “us” to an amazing new level.
When I think about my business and the people that I train, I simply want to have some fun, get results, and make better people. If I make some champions along the way, even better. The level of satisfaction my family has brought me has made me understand what things carry a weight to be worth calling important. The frivolous and petty things I used to waste my life with now float away instead of weighing me down. The weight I carried before would drown me. The weight I carry now, makes me stronger.
If I am going to impart anything through my business and life’s work, I hope it is that you need to have real connections with people, substance matters and long term success is the game. That fight you won or lost today is really just a grain of sand on the beach of your life. It’s the accumulation of everything that will define your success or failure. It is not one moment that sets the tone. It is all the moments and how you grow, what you share, and what you create that will define success.
We will always train to win. Winning in one thing gives you the blueprint to win everything. The key is winning at a cost that still allows you to be greater at the end then you were in the beginning.
I started as a 6 year old boy who wanted to do Karate. I am now a soon to be 39 year old man that has an amazing wife, a son on the way, friends that I consider family, and a positive relationship with my parents. Training and competing has given me all of the above. It is the experience of training and fighting combined with relationships that became greater than “I” that have lead me to this place I call success.
Back to lab making monsters – Brian Wright