Turning Negative into Positive

Applying advanced martial arts to everyday life situations

All this talk by my Jiu Jitsu instructor made no sense. I didn’t get it. How could I turn feeling negative into feeling positive? And how could I possibly view an attack as positive? How could I feel good about being abused or bullied? It just seemed like phony hype.

Over time, however, something happened: I began to see I could do it. I slowly began to understand what he was talking about.

Years of training

I had begun training in Jiu Jitsu in early 1990. The art is complex, and it can easily take four to six years to earn a first degree black belt degree. By 1995 I was a brown belt, and had applied to train as an assistant instructor. Full instructorship meant you were a sensei, which involved at least four additional and rigorous years of study, not including your normal Jiu Jitsu training. Over time, what had started out as a few hours a week had became thousands of hours.

Jiu Jitsu Instructor Exam

In 1995 I sat for my written exam, a prerequisite for becoming a Jiu Jitsu sensei. If I passed the exam, I would be qualified as an assistant instructor. I would then need to achieve first degree black belt rank and fulfill additional prerequisites before becoming a full instructor. While my black belt was fairly close, full instructorship was several years away.

An excerpt from the exam asked:

Q. What Does the “Dynamics of Teaching” mean to me?
A. … They remind me to accept who I am, where I am, and what I know — and to feel good about that. They provide me with inspiration — such as “be positive”. I [try to] find that phrase early in the day. I’m working that point, including the seeming contradiction of turning negative energy into positive energy. This concept [of transforming the polarity of energy and attitude] seems to violate basic principles of engineering and physics. But I’m doing it!

So, what was I learning about? And seemingly so giddy over?

It was like learning how to take a river which could flood homes and businesses, and turn it into something positive — a producer of electricity. I was learning how to accept the negative of a physical attack, and transform it into something better, something ending on a more positive note.

I was learning that the way to overcome negativity in the world began with learning how to overcome it within myself, and how to — in a very real sense — become one with it, become one with the attacker. To recognize it, accept it and convert it.

Jiu Jitsu teaches students how to ‘mirror the attacker’. I was learning what that really meant. I was becoming a human transformer.

Daily Affirmations Don’t Stop a Punch

It wasn’t about simple affirmations, like “be positive.” Simple affirmations don’t work on their own, especially when someone is taking a heavy-fisted swing at you. So I used my affirmation as a trigger, to help place me in a Jiu Jitsu mindset all day long. I was at the beginning, slowly learning the ‘way’ of the martial arts.

And I was learning about universal principles. In a world of relativity, I was discovering universal absolutes, that worked in any situation. Instead of having to remember literally thousands of Jiu Jitsu techniques, I was learning to focus on something much more fundamental: underlying principles.

At first the principles I was being taught were mental, in the sense that I did a lot of intellectualizing. I think we all did. After a while, I began finding ways to apply them in my everyday life — along with continued intellectualization. Over time, however, even the intellectualizing tapered off, because the results of everyday, practical applications were seeping in. I was living the experience. The practice was slowly becoming a part of who I was, and am. I was doing it without thinking.

In martial arts it takes 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions for something to become a conditioned reflex. So, I did my everyday life repetitions, not just the physical ones in the dojo. Truth is, I practiced far more off the mat than on the mat.

And after a lot of years and thousands of hours of study and training, some life lessons slowly emerged. For example, I started examining myself in ways I never had before. I came up against some pretty fundamental and practical issues. I’d ask,

“What am I practicing? And are my practices and the ways in which I am applying them taking me in the direction I am needing to go?”

A grab is a gift

My first sensei used to say, “When someone grabs you, it’s a gift.”

He explained that the very things we typically recoil from should instead be viewed as something to embrace.

“Why is it a gift,” he asked? “Because now you know where his hand is. You don’t have to guess what he’s going to do with that hand. It’s out of action. It’s no longer a threat.”

Truth has a funny way of self-leveling us. It reveals us. At times it makes us turn away from its bright light, because it has an uncomfortable way of illuminating and exposing weaknesses, buried behaviors and uncomfortable biases. In time, often with an attitude, I started to confront things a little better.

My first degree black belt composition was called “No Stone Unturned.” I tackled some uncomfortable topics. I was learning the world of the Jiu Jitsu black belt: how to stand in the face the unknown and how to be comfortable navigating in it.

I was discovering that things are relative, and that a higher perspective always help. Because what would really get to me on one day, would be nothing the next.

Jiu Jitsu was slowly eroding me, wearing away my thin skin.

Hour by hour, over months and then years, I was learning how to navigate better in the relative nature of life. I was becoming a martial artist.