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]