Finding Your Power in the Arena of Adversity
[Music]
so it’s march 19
2011 and i am walking to a ufc octagon
to fight luis kane i don’t know if
you’ve ever been to a live fight before
but the tension in the air is thick
you can cut that tension with a knife
i’m in the cage the fight starts
every fight has this feeling out process
you’re making moves but not big moves
yet
neither person is you’re you’re feeling
each other out trying to get
the other person’s rhythm and timing
nobody wants to make that
first crucial mistake
i go first i miss
boom i get cracked
i fall down louise jumps on top of me
hammer fists elbows punching
and in that moment i chose to be a
quitter
i chose to give up i chose to not stand
up and
fight back and have the referee
come in and stop the fight to save me
the coward elliot showed up on that day
it’s not the first time he’s shown up in
my life
six months later i’m in a hotel room
a couple hours before what would be my
last ufc fight
and the last fight of my professional
career
i’m nervous i’m real nervous
crying scared
to the point where i’m not gonna go to
the arena
it’s not the fight that i’m scared of
it’s this coward that showed up in the
last fight
i’m scared he’s gonna show up again
i don’t know why he showed up in that
fight i got no reason to believe he
won’t show up in this one
my wife looks at me and says elliott
you’re here you’ve done the work
if you just get in that cage you’re
gonna get thirty thousand dollars
so just go in get hit with the first
punch fall down and
be done
we both knew what this was this is
career suicide
there’s no coming back from this i’d be
an embarrassment to myself
and the entire martial arts community
but i was so scared
i was so nervous that this became my
plan
i walk into that cage and sure enough
first punch
i get hit i don’t fall down though
i just stumble backwards a little bit
so it i thought let’s fight
after two rounds the fight was close my
coach sits me down in the corner
says this is it fire marshall knowing
that if i lose this fight my career is
over
what have you got can you go out there
and give me
every ounce of your soul in this last
round elliot
i went out and i destroyed my opponent
in that round
i beat him so badly he couldn’t fight
for 11 months
and he had to have two surgeries
afterwards
there’s no cinderella story to my fight
career though
somehow the judges said i lost that
fight
so an hour later there i was again with
my wife
crying again but this time because my
career was over
i looked at her and i said man babe
i’m never going to be as good as i am
today
this moment this fight it ended up being
so important in my life
it was the first time that i ever pushed
past some anxiety
to find some power
power’s such a funny thing it comes upon
us at the strangest times in our life
little did i know i was going to have to
find mine again dig even deeper
but this time in a much different arena
fighting for me was no hobby i was on
the chase
of being a world champion and that chase
began
when i was six years old i was born to
an african-american father
who grew up during civil rights and a
jewish mother
whose parents survived the holocaust
to my grandparents they were convinced
hitler would come again
my dad every single time i left the
house he would say to
me elliot you need to watch your back
to them from their perspectives how
could they not prepare me
for the world and the things that
actually happened in their life
but for me a little kid man
this caused some serious anxieties the
worst was
always coming
high school wasn’t great but college got
better
i became physically fit i lost some of
that baby fat
i started uh brazilian jiu jitsu it’s a
grappling heart
so i learned how to fight this grew my
confidence
i made some friends my ego grew
the fear and anxiety and anxiety inside
of me
no one could see
but i knew it was still there
after winning now all the grappling
tournaments you can win
and conquering the regional mma fight
scene
i got signed to the ufc the nfl
fighting the ultimate test of strength
and power
where two gladiators walk into a cage
one leaves victorious
there’s a secret amongst us fighters
though
we are all afraid to make that walk
to the cage
some mask that fear
with aggression and bravado others
the best the top ten in the world they
are
able to make the past and the future
cease to exist so that they
only find and exist in the moment
and their real power
and greatest skills shine
after hundreds of fights i could never
consistently make this happen
sometimes yes sometimes no
my fear and anxiety would prevent
me from shining
what if i lose i would think
what are other people going to think
about me
so there i was on that saturday night
after i lost my last fight
my career over my identity gone
how was i gonna hide this demon that’s
inside of me
what was i going to do
i focused my attention on teaching and
two days after that fight
i looked at the building that we would
later move our brazilian jiu jitsu
school into
we were going to blow up the scene in
colorado so we opened a second a third a
fourth
life was pretty good successful
businesses
two amazing kids couldn’t ask for a
better wife
life got not good real fast
as it often does with anxiety
four nights in a row no sleep up all
night
panicking during this time
i could take two prescription sleeping
pills and a milligram of xanax
and i could stay awake my mind would
race
oh my god if i don’t sleep i’m going to
go crazy
if i go crazy my wife’s going to leave
me she’s going to take the kids
she’s going to get a judge to say that
i’m crazy
and then man i’m not going to be able to
see my kids i’m going to kill myself
this is the thought that went through my
head
all day every day for three months
after my fifth night of no sleep i
realized i needed some help
i called my friend he’s a doctor he
immediately started taking care of me
like i said some sleeping pills and
xanax for those really intense moments
but he said to me elliot you’ve been
suffering with this demon of anxiety
long enough
we need to take some real steps
he prescribed lexapro for me
an anti-anxiety medication i still take
that today
i got a therapist i see her every week
but most importantly i had my family
and i had a group of friends they would
have done anything for me some nights
they would stay up with me
all night as i panicked
one night my friend mike called me i
wasn’t doing well
i started to cry he started to cry
and he said elliott there’s a lot of
people in this world i would die for
but i would kill someone for you
at that moment at that point
i thought man maybe the way out of this
is to just go in like all the way in
let people see this demon this fear this
anxiety that
exists inside of me don’t hide them
anymore
so one night after teaching
i called my class in not just my class
the whole school
over a hundred people don’t worry it was
before coronavirus
i told them that i was struggling
that i was going to be okay but for me
right now
life was really hard
but this is what martial arts teaches us
it teaches us how to deal with the
difficult moments
so that we can survive
no one is immune to these moments
not me not the guy that you used to see
fighting on television
not the guy that some of you younger
fighters are now looking at because
i won all of the things that you’re now
trying to win
this guy he struggles too
you might be struggling and that’s okay
after about nine months i began to shake
the demon loose
i began to look at my fear and anxiety
in the face so that i could start to
find some power
like i said not the power that you look
at me and see
not this 250 pound guy strong
muscle fighter successful businesses
that is not my power
my powers that i can survive
i can survive like my grandparents
survived the holocaust
like how my dad survives being a black
man in america
like how my parents chose to marry
someone of the opposite race
and religion during a time when that was
greatly frowned upon
yes i can fight
i step on the mats every day
sometimes someone gets their arm around
my neck
and i’ve learned how to stay calm in
that moment so that i give myself a
chance
to survive
i’m getting older now i’m 40.
i get on the mats with 20 year olds
they’re coming to beat me
i get on the mats with those 20 year
olds and i teach them
to be more skillful so that they will
beat me this is what i call the gospel
of fire
stepping into your insecurities and
vulnerabilities
facing your fears and looking at your
flaws
dead in the eye letting other people see
them
knowing that some of them will try to
use those flaws
against you but
it won’t matter you will have a higher
purpose
you will be able to keep charging
you will need to keep entering the arena
i don’t know what your arena looks like
it doesn’t have to be my arena
it is not necessary for you to get in a
cage
and fight another man
it does however need to be hard it needs
to be difficult
you will cry sometimes
that arena needs to be putting pressure
on you
so that you are always searching out the
most
skillful way
so that you can start to find your power
this power of mine that i talk about
please don’t think that it has made
that demon go away he’s still here
he’s with me every single day of my life
he’s no longer a demon though
he’s my friend and he points me in the
direction
that i need to walk
pablo picasso once said the meaning of
life
is to find your gift i call that your
power
the purpose of life is to give it away
so go find your power my ninjas
and then go give it to the world
thank you
[Music]
you