What is the point of winning

[Music]

having your hand raised

after hard-fought battle is one of the

most incredible feelings in the world

i admit that there might be a level

perhaps of narcissism and vanity there

but

i couldn’t help it i became addicted to

it when i was a teenager in brazil

i was obsessed with being the best in

the world at something i didn’t know

what that was but

i was desperately looking for something

i wanted a vehicle to manifest that

ambition i wanted to

i wanted to shine somehow and i just

didn’t know how

it was until i found the martial art of

brazilian jiu jitsu that i knew i had

found my passion and my quality in life

i knew i had found something special

something that was going to help me be

that person i wanted to be

to say that i was emotionally invested

in jiu-jitsu was an understatement i was

obsessed

it’s the only thing i wanted to talk

about had world war iii been going on i

wouldn’t have cared it didn’t matter

it was about the training it was about

the tournaments that’s all i cared about

i threw myself in the competition world

i fought

hundreds of times i won some i lost some

and in the process i learned something

about winning and losing

i learned that whenever i won i felt

great about myself

i felt invincible i felt powerful it’s

winning is this feeling you just want to

feel like that all the time it doesn’t

matter what kind of win we’re talking

about it could be having your hand

raised a metal or

perhaps a new car a new house makes some

money it feels great

but eventually inevitably what would

happen was

i’d go back to the beginning as if the

whole thing were a pendulum between

boredom and desire and i couldn’t quite

escape that

and you see if that were the worst part

that would have been fine but

whenever i lost i felt terrible i felt

like a failure i was devastated every

time i lost

never recovered from it right i still

torture myself over losses it took place

15 years ago you know how how do you

deal with this like i feel like a

failure my previous achievements mean

absolutely nothing

i noticed over time that i wasn’t the

only fighter dealing with this in fact

i noticed that a lot of people dealt

with this we’re all constantly

struggling

to find a balance between peace of mind

and achievement success

right can these things coexist it’s a

very important question

can we or is like one prerequisite for

the other do we have to feel like our

previous achievements mean nothing

for us to have the drive to keep going

over time this is a topic that

fascinated me the will

like what’s going on in there right and

the question that kept nagging me as a

as a competitor at the time was what’s

the point of winning

what’s the point of being better than

the person next to you if you know

perfectly well

it will not satisfy you you buy that car

the other day it’s just another car

you buy that house the next day just

another house can’t win that way what is

it that we’re chasing

are we chasing shadows i i had the

privilege

to be for my entire adult life in a

fiercely competitive

environment of an ecosystem of uber

driven alphas the fight world is a very

competitive world every person on the

mat

is trying to be you at all times i learn

a lot about pressure in those years

pressure you put on yourself pressure

that your peers put on you

uh pressure from your sponsors pressure

to win

it is a game of inches split second

decision

make that wrong decision one time in

your career could be over

that’s the kind of game we’re talking

about here it is very cutthroat

and i’ve been around that environment

for so long i’ve seen the darker side of

that sort of pressure i’ve seen

anxiety i’ve seen depression i’ve seen

even suicide

and i’m not gonna lie it’s even crossed

my mind when i lost like this is things

that you know i took losses very

very hard like it was very difficult for

me to deal with them and the thought of

suicide crossed my mind

like every time i lost a tournament a

lot of pressure so like

very high expectation to me to be the

best in the world right

but i wasn’t alone in fact fighters are

not alone in this the world health

organization estimates that

approximately

615 million people worldwide struggle

with depression or anxiety

these numbers are staggering they’re on

the rise

i believe they’re a reflex of a

civilization that is obsessed

with success financial success with fame

and not with happiness but when you put

all of this on a microscope

is winning really the only thing

i want to share a story with you guys a

very personal story

i was somewhat successful in the jiu

jitsu world i went out to win the two

most prestigious world titles i went out

to be one of the most successful

competitors

in the history of the sport um i was at

the top the pinnacle of my sport

right and that’s what i was that’s what

i wanted when i was a teenager right i

got it

you should be happy done right of course

it’s not done you want more

right and if you’re a martial artist the

greatest stage

on earth is the ufc the ultimate

fighting championship

it is the modern day coliseum for modern

day gladiators

i have a hard time thinking of a sport

that is as complex

as competitive it’s it’s out there like

it’s a very intense sport

um and i became obsessed with it i

wanted to i wanted to be a ufc champion

i was going to crown my martial arts

career

with one more win i was going to be a

ufc champion that was that like now i’m

done

after that i was going to be done right

things didn’t quite go my way i

i had a successful record i was winning

all my fights in the first round i was

undefeated

i was doing great i made it in the ufc

and when i made it in there

i won my first fight i went by

submission in the first round

and a few days later i received a

message from the ufc

i failed my drug test translation

you’re fired you’re cut now for a

middle-aged man like me

being cut from the ufc is practically a

professional death sentence it’s very

hard to recover from that

the truth of the matter is i didn’t want

to recover i was done i was so ashamed

of myself

i was so devastated because i had only

myself to blame because i ruined my

career

what am i going to do where i go from

here i don’t have the energy to recover

right i did push myself into the ring

one more time went to the cage

one more time i fought i won but i knew

i was done i didn’t want to be there i

was there

because i was not going to allow my

career to end on a negative note

no way i’m going to it’s not going to be

a ufc bill but it’s not going to be me

getting fired from the ufc either i got

a little bit more in me and that was it

i was done

you see what what fighting teaches you

is to be very honest with yourself you

can’t lie to yourself the mats don’t lie

that’s what i always tell my students

it’s a very real place you can’t pretend

to be good it’s not instagram mats are

not instagram you can’t

fake something you’re not you’re either

real you’re not you’re gonna win are you

gonna lose

and if you’re in that environment long

enough what happens is you begin to be

very honest with yourself you look at

yourself in the mirror and you can’t go

oh i’m gonna lie myself and be okay with

it you start becoming honest with

yourself and

when i looked at myself in the mirror i

i knew i was broken i was

psychologically broken

i didn’t want to recover i was done but

that wasn’t the only reason that was

torturing me

i was profoundly ashamed of myself for

having lied i lied to my friends i lied

to my coaches i liked my training

partners

these people had supported me for years

they had created an enormous expectation

for me and

i liked them and that hurt me that i

think that was the thing that hurt the

most that i was known for a liar

right and i didn’t want to be known as a

liar i wanted to be a truthful person i

want to be the guy who told people the

truth

i had to be cut from the ufc to learn

that about myself

those years were very lonely a lot of my

friends moved away from me um during

years of introspection i had to look

deep and find out what else is in there

my

am i a frustrated middle-aged fighter

who failed a drug test and got cut from

the ufc and ruined his career

is that it or just something else it’s

just someone else in there different

fighter perhaps not an mma fighter

but a different kind of fighter and i

wanted to find out i had to look inwards

i want to find out what defines me does

fighting define me

i had a name in the community i i made

decent money i traveled the world

teaching seminars

i two beautiful daughters successful

business i

my life wasn’t bad like it’s it’s a good

life but

somehow i felt like a failure in my own

skin i felt deep down in there

i failed not doing this is but it was

done i can’t go back in time i can’t go

back in ufc it’s over so how do i fix

this

i needed a new mindset i needed to look

at things differently i needed a new

perspective in life i needed to

i needed to admit to myself and come to

terms with the fact that i was not going

to be a ufc champion

that that ship had sailed i was not

going to collect the reward i was not

going to make

you know the money i was not going to

get the belt the fame the popularity the

ad duration

of the fans but the more i thought about

the things i wasn’t going to get the

more i realized these things

would have not satisfied me to begin

with how do i know that

well i i’ve been a champion jiu jitsu i

know that that didn’t fulfill me uh

i’ve been around ufc champions my whole

life it’s never enough i’ve been around

billionaires they don’t think they have

enough money

so what’s the end of like how do you get

out of this right uh and i knew i wasn’t

going to be satisfied so

i began to look elsewhere like how what

else is going on here like how else can

i solve this problem

at some point i started thinking about

the teenager that set out on his journey

that skinny teenager

was obsessed with having his hand raised

all the time right who loved gold medals

and that teenager was a different person

like he set out to prove himself to

himself it wasn’t about other people it

wasn’t about money there was no money

i never made any money when i was a

teenager it was it was pure it was i

wanted to be i wanted to be great i

wanted to grow i wanted to be a better

version of me

i remember as well that when i was a

teenager i was obsessed with frederick

nietzsche i just loved him i

for some reason he spoke to me in a way

that other writers did and i

i knew what he was talking about like

this guy understands me right

and i moved away from i never i didn’t

read him for years and a few years ago i

got back into reading him and i

i saw some strength there i saw that

through struggle we grow that’s what he

teaches us when we fail

we grow there’s there’s value in losing

there’s value in failing as long as we

use these things in a positive way

in his words you know happiness and

suffering are brothers and sisters

and even twins either grow up together

or remain small together

i i started thinking about all these

things and i realized that these were

issues that were universal

there were issues that i was struggling

with but i was gonna turn this around

i was gonna use that failure for

something else i was going to grow with

it

and i think we’ve all witnessed this at

some point in our lives we have

experienced

this kind of growth like something

terrible happens and we think we’re done

we’re devastated

and we rise above and we look back and

we go i’m so thankful that that happened

to me

right imagine you know perhaps you lost

a job at some point

and now you’re devastated because you

don’t get unemployed

but then later you get a job that’s your

dream job and you feel so much better so

much happier

and you look back and you go i’m so

happy i was fired i’m glad that happened

to me

or perhaps you had your heart broken at

some point and you look back and you go

you know i’m so happy i had my heart

broken because now i found true love i

have

i found someone so much better i dodged

that bullet i’m doing so much better now

we experience these things in life these

are hard lessons but they’re necessary

lessons

you see i think we all set out with huge

expectations for ourselves in life we

we want to be rich and famous we want to

be the best looking person in the room

we want to be the best fighter in the

world

whatever it is that we’re striving for

we’re always looking for something else

but we’re not finding satisfaction i

came to think of all this as perhaps

there are two different wins here

perhaps there’s a win

that we’re more familiar with perhaps

there’s a win where you know i get my

hand raised i make some money i buy a

new car and you feel good it’s temporary

but it feels good that’s one way

it’s valid i don’t think you should stop

chasing your dreams those are valid

dreams

but we know they don’t satisfy but

perhaps somewhere there’s there’s a

different dream

there’s a there’s a different way of

winning there’s something else a

different kind of win

what if we use the hard lessons to

improve to grow

and if one of those that growth

transforms us it makes us better

and we keep that because that stays with

us when we fail and we grow

because we’ve learned we keep that

lesson it doesn’t disappear after two or

three days

i began to see that these were the

things that most valuable was the growth

from the lesson was not

so much the fact that i had failed but

the fact that i found the strength to

rise above

i have no idea who that person would be

who had you know potentially would have

won a ufc bill

no clue but i would not trade places

with that person

because the lessons i learned are so

more meaningful the wisdom of acquiring

the things the lessons i’ve learned

about myself

about my inner strength about people

learn a lot about people

about life in general that i’m carrying

with me

millions of dollars they come they go

fame it’s not even that fun

i’ve experienced a little bit it’s

really not that fun

money not that important the lessons ah

that stays that i take with me forever

the wisdom

i think that teenager really deep down

he was really after wisdom he wasn’t

after popularity or money

he wanted to be the best version of

himself

what is the point of winning what my two

decades in the fiercely competitive

fight game have taught me is this

winning is good winning is necessary

winning is the right thing to do

but we need to understand you’re not

going to find satisfaction making more

money

you’re not going to spend satisfaction

be more famous you’re not going to find

satisfaction winning another gold medal

that’s not it we find satisfaction when

we grow

and the truth of the matter is the best

and fastest way to grow

is to fail i’m not suggesting we should

be trying to fail but

when we do fail we use that as a

trampoline and we grow with it

i no longer think that being better than

the person next to me is a meaningful

win i have grown more ambitious

the way i look at winning and losing now

is i don’t see them as ends they are

means their means to something else

the building of character the strength

the transformation

the pursuit of something else the

pursuit of shaping us into something

better

i’m no longer mma fighter i am a coach

i’m a leader

and i’m a father and as such i feel the

responsibility to pass on to my students

and my daughters these lessons

when they fail and they fail all the

time i tell them you should use that

you’re not on the ground you can pick

yourself back up and when you do you’re

gonna be better for it

this is an opportunity to grow and

you’re gonna grow in a meaningful way

it’s not temporary it’s permanent this

sort of transformation

is permanent i

what being cut from the ufc has taught

me is this we are as great as the

challenges we choose to face in life

when we face these challenges and we

confront them wholeheartedly

we grow and when we grow we win the

ultimate victory

is not the popularity it’s not the medal

the ultimate victory is being proud of

who you are

thank you

[Applause]

[Music]