Learning Jiu Jitsu By Reverse-Engineering Your Opponents

tl:dr - You can learn bjj by beating your training partners by figuring out their games.

Jiu jitsu is a hella fun, intellectually engaging art because it's stupidly complex. Infinite depth; infinite breadth. Further, there are limitless ways to "learn" how to do the art. Most people tend to fall into one of two camps - learn techniques or learn concepts. Both are effective; both have pros and cons. But what about other methods to learn jiu jitsu?

Qualifier - There is no one way to learn jiu jitsu. The technique people also learn a hell of a lot of concepts. And the conceptual folks learn a hell of a lot of technical detail. There are many roads to Rome, and all of us take multiple routes. The real key to long-term success is to find a way that keeps you going o class day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. After all, a two stripe white belt is just a no stripe white belt who never quit.

Anyway, years ago, I realized I MY preferred method to learn jiu jitsu was to reverse-engineer my training partners' games. It's probably important to note I'm an experimental psychology geek. It was a college major, I taught it for a couple decades, and it's the foundation of pretty much all the writing I do (including the sex and gender shit that populates the earlier posts in this blog.) At some point around mid-blue, I realized every roll was kind of like a puzzle to be solved. An experiment, if you will. Shortly after, I started seeing my training partners as a puzzle to be solved. Learning new stuff in class became less about "mastering the art" and more about "adding new tools to use to help solve the puzzles that are my training partners."

 

Same deal with rolls. The goal was never to win, per se. The goal was to learn. If someone was much better than I was, I learned how to defend their positional dominance and submissions. If they were close to my level, I learned how to play a complete game to beat their game. If I was much better than them, they basically became my sandbox to test out weird shit that I thought might work. 

In my last post about failing as a gym owner, I mentioned I don't necessarily like watching instructionals. Or drilling. While I play it off as being dumb and lazy, respectively, it's really an issue of discovery. Instructionals, to me, feel a bit like reading Nintendo Power. That comprehensive walk-through of Metroid kinda ruined the game. But I've always cared more about playing the game than winning the game. 

And drilling? This one's a little more difficult to explain. Back when I was a decidedly sub-par high school wrestler, I realized I could win more often than I lost if I drilled three or four techniques, then got really good at putting myself in a position to use those techniques to win. I was weak, under-sized, uncoordinated, and I was pretty bad at most aspects of wrestling. But I was reasonably smart and had a very narrow game, if executed properly, could beat slightly above average wrestlers. Of course I got destroyed by legitimately good wrestlers, but I wasn't usually a liability to the team most of the time. That was good enough. But it wasn't especially fulfilling. So my aversion to drilling is probably just an unconscious attempt to avoid being a shitty bjj version of the shitty one trick pony wrestler I was a couple decades ago.

So What Exactly Do I Assess?

When I'm rolling with someone, what exactly am I analyzing? These are the questions I try to answer, which lead to understanding their game:

• What are their physical attributes? How strong are they? How flexible? How's their cardio? What are their relative strengths and weaknesses along these dimensions? The goal here is to attack their weaknesses while avoiding their strengths. If they're big and strong, I want to get into a war of attrition. If they're super-flexible, I want to play a tight, methodical smashing game. If they're cardio machines, I want to attack fast and hard. And so on.
• How wide is their technical skill? Can they apply a lot of different techniques effectively? Or do they only rely on a few specific techniques? The latter is easy to deal with; you just avoid positions where they're at their strongest. If someone has a crushing top side control game, don't let them on top. If they're a phenomenal spider guard player, don't give them your sleeves. And so on. If they're good at a lot of stuff, that's a much more difficult (and satisfying) puzzle, which might require the next item...
• How deep is their technical skill? Or, phrased differently, how good is their technique? The general goal is to avoid situations where they can utilize depth of skill. If someone has a wicked triangle game, stay out of their guard. 
• Where are they most comfortable? Where are they least comfortable? Avoid the former. Try to get to the latter as much as possible. As you transition through the hierarchy of positions, note their response. Are they calm, or do they tense up? What's their rate of breathing? Do you sense desperation or panic when you end up in a particular position? The better someone is, the more subtle these signals will appear. But they're always there. 
• What motivates them? This one's much more psychological, which for me means "more fun." Some people roll to win. Others roll to try new stuff. Others roll just because they love to roll. Whatever.  The real benefit of identifying motivations is figuring out...
  
• What "breaks" them? We all have a point where we psychologically throw in the towel and accept that we're beaten. All of us. And finding my opponents' breaking point is THE single most satisfying puzzle to solve. You can always identify the people who have never actually tested themselves because they're deluded into believing they can't be broken. And they say stupid shit like "I'll never give up!", "I don't stop when I'm tired, I stop when I'm done!", or other dumb quotes people put on posters and memes. Why is this so satisfying? Because that's the area that, once identified, can lead to real, life-changing self-improvement. Every time you break, you develop strategies to push a little farther next time. This is how we build resiliency. And real resiliency is the hidden path to living a better life.
  

Sidebar - if you're one of these people who believe you can't be broken, I'd be more than happy to give you an impossible physical challenge that will break you. Sport psychology + sadism = happy Jason.

HOW do I Assess This Stuff?

I use a super-secret, patented strategy I call "technique-spamming." Basically, I throw out a lot of random techniques in weird, unorthodox combinations. Most of it conforms to jiu jitsu best-practices, but doesn't make a lot of logical sense. While this strategy can be used at any level, the better your jiu jitsu game is, the better it works. Not only do you get better at the actual techniques you're spamming, but you get better at interpreting your opponents' responses. Which is an important part of learning using this strategy. 

The theory is pretty simple - jiu jitsu is normally a well-choreographed dance. One person does X and the other person responds with Y. Technique-spamming means when one person does X, you do 32. When faced with the unexpected, we have one of two responses - react automatically or pause to think. Either response gives me a great deal of insight to all of those elements I discussed above. The goal is to get people to pause and think. That's the limits of your opponent's game. That's how you "win." That's how you solve the puzzle.

The "reacting automatically" response is a little complex. The less technically-sound bjj players may not respond with good, fundamentally-sound techniques. They may react with what we universally call "spazziness", which is really just a combination of strength and explosiveness with little or no rational application. It's a panic response. This is common with white belts.

Slightly more skilled bjj players may respond to technique spamming with a fundamentally-sound response. In the dance that is jiu jitsu, this would normally elicit a counter-response, which would then elicit a response to the counter-response, and so on. It's what we call "chaining." In my methodology, I respond to their response with another spammy technique, which disrupts that choreographed dance. THAT usually results in a spazzy response. This is common with newer blue belts.

The more technically skilled a bjj player is, the more they respond to technique-spamming chains with fundamentally-sound technique. Purple belts might require four or five exchanges before I find the "end" of their technical knowledge. Usually by purple, people stop responding with spazziness and will just stop and think. Either way, I still find the outer limits of their jiu jitsu game.

It's worth noting a universal phenomenon. The closer you get to "beating" your opponent, the more they will rely on their best "A" game. This is the reason you don't see weird, fancy shit in black belt competitions. Further, people who have been training for a few years will always have a desperation technique they will use when everything else fails. It might be some kind of escape, or maybe a submission. But once I find their desperation move, I know I've found the outer limit of their game. 

Some people take a really, really long time to "solve." Their technical knowledge is both deep and wide. They can deal with spam chains eight, nine, even ten moves deep and are really good at attacking the weaknesses of your spamming techniques. These people are incredibly fun to roll with because they represent a really, really difficult puzzle. These puzzles can be solved, but it might take many, many rolls. What usually makes these puzzles even more difficult is they're usually really proficient at learning MY game.

Then of course, there are the opponents who are simply unsolvable. These are the opponents who have so much depth and breadth to their games, you can't find the end of their technique chains with spamming because they'll always submit you along the way. Nick Oliver, one of my coaches from Fight Club in San Diego, is one such person. After probably hundreds of rolls, I've never found the end of his ability to respond to by spam chains. There's always more depth and breadth. There's probably quite a few people I roll with who also fit this category, but I don't roll with them enough to really make that determination.

So What are the Pros and Cons to Technique Spamming and Reverse Engineering?

There are some serious pros and cons to this strategy for learning bjj. 

• The biggest "pro" for me is it's fun as hell! Experimentation and discovery is deeply intrinsically motivating for me, thus I find this way of doing jiu jitsu endlessly motivating. I don't do this to win medals, earn belts, get external validation from friends, family, or strangers, or to make money. I do this because I love the experimental process. Anyone who's been at this sport for any real length of time will say the key to improvement is simply showing up. For me, this is what has kept me showing up. And will continue as long as I can physically do the art.
• It really helps understand scrambling and the "gray" area between techniques. Technique-spamming involves a whole lotta unorthodox positions and techniques, which really helps when it comes to scrambling. I'm old and slow, yet I can usually hold my own in scrambles with much younger, faster kids simply because so many of my rolls involve what amount to controlled scrambles.  
• It naturally leads to innovation. Spamming techniques, unconsciously, leads to discovering and refining weird stuff that works, but isn't normally taught. 
• It's weird. For those who are fiercely independent, creative types who love the unorthodox, you'll love this strategy. It's basically all improv.
  

There are some important "cons" which will likely be deal-breakers for many. Principally, if you have any kind of ego, you will hate this strategy. Specifically...

• It does require an actual foundation of real skills. This is probably the deal-breaker for most, but if you try this too early in your jiu jitsu progression, you'll develop a lot of really bad habits. And it likely won't be very effective. I didn't start experimenting with this method effectively until early purp, an only after a whole lotta mat time with really, really good coaches.  
• You suck against new, skilled opponents. The majority of legitimately good black belts rag doll me for the first dozen rolls. Competition black belts rag doll me indefinitely. Even if I ignore this strategy and go right to my "A" game, I don't spend enough time honing it to really do halfway decent against those who are legitimately good.
  
• You get complacent with catch and release. I don't generally submit opponents unless a) they're preparing for competition, or b) they have annoying egos. I do A LOT of catch and release because I don't care about winning so much as I care about experiencing. That means advancing and maintaining positions over finishing submissions. When I actually HAVE to finish submissions, it takes conscious effort.
  
• Newer people often assume you're not very good. For this strategy to work, you have to let people work. I pretty much always roll at about 10% above the skill level of my opponents. People with a few months under their belt who I haven't smashed usually assume I kinda suck because they sweep me, escape my submissions, and even submit me. Normally this isn't a huge issue because it usually does only take one good "A" game smashing to correct the record, so to speak. But I have had two or three white belts who actually started bragging about dominating me, which resulted in the aforementioned smashing, which caused them to quit the gym.
  
• Focusing on this strategy makes you a shitty teacher. How jiu jitsu occurs in my head is way more tactile and proprioceptive than it is intellectual. Techniques or even concepts are really just formless blobs of feelings in my brain. Or "schemas", as we call them in psychology. When I teach, I either have to try to recall the steps I was taught in the past, or I need to try to interpret the those blobs into intellectualized steps. Either way, it's not smooth. Or entirely clear. I can talk about the details of jiu jitsu technique from an intellectual standpoint, but I can't really teach it. I am very good at answering questions, however. Questions put clear boundaries within those mental "blob" schemas in my head, which makes it much easier to describe. 
• This is terrible for tournament performance. I'm 0-9 in competitive matches. If you're a medal-chaser and your ego is tied to a need to winning or any other kind of external validation, this isn't the strategy for you. It's worth noting, though, that this strategy actually works well for mma training, probably because it forces you to get comfortable with chaos.
  

Nap time in a tournament

 

So there you have it. Reverse-engineering using technique-spamming. That's how I do jiu jitsu.I'm kind of curious if anyone else ever uses anything like this. If anything here sounds familiar, leave a comment! I'd love to connect.

~Jason

***

 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Jiu Jitsu Gym Ownership and How It Changed My Life: A Rambling Tale

 

tl:dr - I own a jiu jitsu gym. The gym closed. It was a humbling experience that taught me many lessons. If you don't care to read about the back story, scroll down to the "Realities of Ownership" section.

The Back Story

Welp, my wife Shelly and I officially closed the doors of our jiu jitsu gym. We opened our doors, so to speak, almost exactly two years ago. And it's been a hell of a ride. Lots of lessons learned. This post will shed some light on those lessons, and hopefully be useful to others considering opening a jiu jitsu gym.

First, a brief history on our jiu jitsu backgrounds. Shelly and I started jiu jitsu around nine years ago. Shelly started before I did. We had spent the previous six years heavily invested in the long-distance running scene (ultrarunning, for those who are familiar.) We had been traveling around the county teaching people to run barefoot and living the life of hobo mountain running hippies. We temporarily (so we thought) settled east of San Diego. 

Bored of running, Shelly decided to try something new - boxing. She had passed an mma gym (San Diego Fight Club, what we would later learn was the oldest mma gym in San Diego) on her way to Target one day, and decided to stop in an investigate. That's where she met Charlie Kohler, the guy responsible for getting us into this crazy sport. Long story short, Charlie convinced Shelly to try jiu jitsu, and Shelly convinced me. Our temporary stay turned into seven years. Eventually we grew tired of the traffic, crowds, and goofy politics of California, and decided to move to Colorado's Western Slope. Prior to leaving SoCal, I shadowed Charlie for about a year to learn the ins and outs of gym ownership in the event Shelly and I decided to open a gym of our own some day. 

Our Fight Club MMA Team, circa 2016

 

When we first arrived in Western Colorado,  we were busy settling in. I went back to full-time teaching high school psychology and world geography (I had worked as a substitute teacher and security guard in schools while in SoCal.) We had bought a house. Our kids were starting new schools. Shelly started a new job, too. Basically, we were busy AF all the time. We started training with a group in our small town, but could only make it to weekend open mats. After a few months, they changed their schedule and eliminated the open mat, so we tried a new gym that had opened a few months prior. We were pleasantly surprised to find this gym's culture was almost exacly like our gym culture at Fight Club... basically we dicked around a lot and tortured each other. 

After a few weeks at the new gym, the owner pulled Shelly and I aside after a night class and dropped a hell of a bombshell - he had a family emergency that would require him to move out of town at the end of summer (it was currently January), and asked if we were interested in buying the business. Despite having had some conversations about opening a gym some day, we were totally unprepared. We spend weeks discussing the issue. Weighing pros and cons. running financials. Making projections. And so on. The only guiding principle? Before leaving San Diego, I promised Charlie if we opened a jiu jitsu gym, we'd do it the Fight Club way.

Like most other opportunities that have fallen in our laps, we eventually decided to just take the plunge. We agreed. For the next seven months or so, we worked on making the transition of ownership. At the beginning of September 2019, we officially took over and opened El Diablo Combatives. If you get the joke, yeah, that was intentional. Anyway, things were going fairly well for the first six months. Stressful as Hell, but we were turning a VERY modest profit, expanding our membership, and developing strategic relationships with important groups around our community.

The Original EDC Location, Formerly Gracie Fighter

 

The COVID hit in march of 2020. We were forced to close for three months. We lost 75% of our membership. Then our building got sold and we were forced to move to a tiny 400 square foot room in a decrepit building. Another 25% of our members quit because this building's manager required everyone to wear masks as they entered the building. Then THAT building got sold and we were forced to move again. 

The Second Location: Our 400 Square Foot "Gym"

 

At this point, I was at a serious crossroads. We were losing money, but not much. The group of hard-working, fun people we had remaining was a really great group, and we had a phenomenal coach (Mike Gorski, who I would best describe as John Danaher, except with a personality.) We needed a place to train. Unfortunately, we didn't have many options. Or ANY options, really. Then, with two weeks left before we had to move out of our tiny room, we found a great 3,200 square foot space that reasonably-priced. But still more than we could afford with our current membership. I couldn't bring myself to close our doors at that point, so I threw the hail mary and signed a one year lease. 

That's probably the worst decision I've made in the last twenty years. A few months into the new lease, it became apparent COVID wasn't going away. We were bleeding cash and the gym was turning into an ever-growing time suck. With the help of our uber-talented members, I tried a few desperation moves to diversify our student base, which I documented in the "tribalism" posts that preceded this one. But ultimately, the overhead of the business proved to be too crippling. So here we are - closing the doors of our public gym.

Our Third and Final Location

The Realities of Ownership

If I were to sum up the experience of owning a jiu jitsu gym, I'd say it fundamentally changes your relationship to the art. The one universal I've heard from other gym owners is that jiu jitsu played a particular role in their life before owning their own gym. Afterward, that role died. Always. the MAJORITY of the people I've met who own gyms regretted their decision, but a minority actually loved how ownership changed their relationship to the art. The following discussion might help you figure out which group you're in.

The Good

• Owning a gym helps you get new people interested in the sport. You get to decide on the marketing and target audiences, which allows you to focus on particular groups who would benefit from this awesome sport. This is one of the most fulfilling aspects of gym ownership.
  
• You help people improve. Not only their jiu jitsu games, but their life in general. This sport can be life-changing, and when that happens, it's awesome to see. This is also an incredibly fulfilling aspect of gym ownership.
  
• You can make you community safer. The more people who can protect themselves, the more the sheepdogs of the community can focus on those who can't protect themselves. Martial arts in general and jiu jitsu in particular are great for self-defense mostly because it teaches you just how vulnerable you can be. Live rolling destroys that "I can handle my shit if I need to" delusion prevalent in the general population, which makes people make smarter situational decisions. Owning a gym places you in a position to make that happen.
• It gives you a sandbox to experiment with new innovations. This is MY favorite part of gym ownership. Have a goofy, out-there idea? YOU CAN TRY IT! My love of experimentation is probably a major reason I'm kind of a shitty gym owner... I hate the status quo and the constant tweaking hurts continuity, and a lot of people need consistency and predictability.
  
• You get to talk about the business aspect of BJJ. I love this aspect, too. The psychology involved in the history of martial arts businesses, the marketing, the issue of motivation, etc... that's my jam. Mike Gorski and I used to talk about the business of jiu jitsu for hours and hours.
  
• You meet amazing people. We started with some phenomenal people, and we added more over time. Just genuinely great human beings. And you get to help those people find a positive, productive role on the team. I loved this part of gym ownership.
  
• You get to do jiu jitsu all the time! From the time I started running the gym until COVID closed us down, I rolled for 169 straight days in either morning classes, evening classes, or open mats. That works out to around 650-700 live rolls.
  

The Bad

• Have to do jiu jitsu all the time. Those 650-700 live rolls over six-plus months took a hell of a toll, both physically and mentally. Because we didn't have many higher belts, I often had to assume all kinds of roles. Sometimes I had to be the practice dummy for lower belts to practice basics. Sometimes I had to people the training partner who fed our blue belts the right defenses so they could work on chaining techniques. Sometimes I had to be the enforcer who smashed the young kid who was too spazzy (it's worth noting I'm 45.) Regardless, you often don't have the option to sit on the sidelines, especially if you don't have many higher belts.
  
• It hurts your bjj game. My own personal progress in jiu jitsu slowed to a crawl over the last two years. While I roll all the time, I never really have a chance to work on *my* game because I'm always helping others work on *their* game. The worst part of this, for me, has been the development of bad habits that only become apparent when rolling with people significantly better than me. 
• It can hurt your bank account. Obviously a financially-successful gym isn't going to have this problem, but far too many jiu jitsu businesses operate in the red. Or fail to turn enough profit to make a living. Gym ownership is a really tough business model, and those who are successful are rare. For me, this was humbling because my other business operates on an extremely high profit margin.
  
• You get pretty cynical about people claiming they want to learn jiu jitsu. If I had a dollar for every people who expressed interest in training, and even seemed excited to start, then never showed up, I'd have enough cash to keep the gym open.
  
• You become a full-time janitor. Sweeping, dusting, cleaning windows, toilets, and mats... it's shit you need to do ALL. THE. TIME. I used to clean the mats at Fight Club occasionally. I thought I was prepared forA this aspect. I was not. I had no idea ho quickly gyms get *really* dirty and gross. In two years, I'm pretty sure I could knit a dozen sweaters from short curly hairs swept off the mats.
  
• You get flooded with solicitations. Every channel you set up to allow potential new students to contact you will be flooded with solicitations from a bazillion people and businesses trying to sell you their shit. Some are legit. Some are scammers. All are annoying. Just be ready for that.
  
• You will be contacted by con artists. Shelly used to work in a property crimes division of a major police department in SoCal. As such, she's well-versed in common scams. That was useful because, especially in the beginning, we were contacted by A LOT of con artists who were inquiring about membership. Almost every one followed a similar pattern - they would claim to be interested in signing someone else up for classes, then would offer to send a check or other form of payment. They send too much, then request a refund. The initial payment, of course, was not legitimate. Be ready for this con and others.
  
• It's difficult to stay healthy because you roll all the time against everyone. Luckily I've been doing this long enough to be able to have the skill to protect myself from serious injury, but the bumps, bruises, and tweaks add up. At the end of those 169 consecutive days of rolling, I couldn't wash my hair. I couldn't throw a baseball. My left arm was numb about 50% of the time. I couldn't touch my toes or really walk down stairs. I had to shrimp out of bed in the morning. I didn't really realize any of this until I had those three months off when we had to shut down for COVID.
  

The Ugly

• You might be unwittingly making criminals more dangerous. Jiu jitsu is great for self-defense because it teaches you to control another person's body. Unfortunately, that skill set can also be used to harm others. Especially rapists. While we've always gone to great lengths to cull anyone who appears to have sociopathic tendencies, sometimes it takes a minute for those traits to come out.
  
• It forces you to either sell out or go bankrupt. The McDojo phenomenon happens for a reason - it makes money. The shittier the jiu jitsu you teach, the more you'll appeal to a greater population. Out of principle, I simply cannot do the "jiu jitsu for everyone" thing. This art ISN'T for everyone. Had I taken that approach, I would have been way more successful financially. But peddling a shit product ain't the Fight Club way.
  
• Collecting money is a HUGE, frustrating pain in the ass. No matter what systems we put in place, a percentage of the members simply wouldn't pay. Initially, our breakdown was basically this: A third of our students paid on time every time without any issue. Another third had to be reminded often, but not all the time. The final third never paid, had to be hounded every month, and would do anything and everything to avoid paying. Over time, we eliminated the entire last third, and eventually that middle third. The problem, of course, is that initial third wasn't enough to pay the bills.
  
• You have to deal with shitty human beings. Jiu jitsu (and mma) attracts some genuinely terrible human beings. Per the point above, we did a pretty good job of culling the worst of the worst immediately, but some people put up good facades and slip through the cracks. Eventually you have to deal with those people. And it's never pleasant.
  
• It's hard to avoid the drama of the sport. Like any other endeavor, there are drama queens in this sport. This sport has a decent amount of adults, usually male, who act like middle schoolers. And they bring the exact same sort of drama. And they're a huge pain in the ass.
  
• It hurts your family and social life. Running a gym takes A LOT of time. Time you'd normally spend with friends and family. This is even more significant if you also work a day job. For me personally, this was one of the worst parts of gym ownership. 
  
• It can kill everything you love about the art. Like I said in the beginning, owning a gym will change your relationship with jiu jitsu. Per the "good" section, there are things I loved about gym ownership. But there were also a lot of things I really did not like. But fundamentally, gym ownership reframed jiu jitsu from something I did an an escape to something that I needed to escape from. That's always a bad place to be.

The Qualifier

 It's important to understand this list isn't universal; it merely represents MY experience with gym ownership. I've met a few people who absolutely LOVE running a jiu jitsu gym. Their personality is well-suited to deal with the social aspect, and they have just the right business acumen to attract and retain the right students. 

My advice? If you want to open a jiu jitsu gym because you think it'll just be more of what you get as a student, you're going to be disappointed. And probably overwhelmed. And the experience might ruin jiu jitsu for you.

But if you understand that a jiu jitsu gym is a completely different, unique experience with a lot of novel challenges, and those challenges excite you, odds are good you're going to love gym ownership.

What I've Learned About Myself

Owning a gym has also taught me a great deal about myself. And how jiu jitsu fits into my life. Here are a few of those lessons:

• I get too much joy out of antagonizing the people who make jiu jitsu their identity. Which includes making fun of the Brazilian/ Gracie family worship. For those who know me well, they know I have an antagonistic, trollish aspect to my personality. In this sport, I get an irrational amount of joy poking fun at the culture of the sport for the people who are ***really*** into jiu jitsu. Especially the people who worship all things Brazil and/or all things Gracie. I don't wear my gi jacket casually. I don't bow to pictures of old, dead men. I don't eat acai bowls. I don't say "oss". And I tend to make fun of the people who do. <shrug>
• I don't like teaching classes. For me, this was a... disappointing... revelation. I've been a teacher for two decades. Burnout aside, I'm pretty good at it. But I've discovered I really don't like teaching jiu jitsu classes. I'd much rather be a student in this setting. This probably has something to do with jiu jitsu being my escape, and probably part of the reason I really didn't enjoy the gym ownership experience as much as I thought I would.
  
• I love working with individuals. Even though I really don't like teaching classes, I love working one-on-one or with small groups. Especially in Q&A sessions. This'll probably lead me to teaching private lessons at some point in the future.
  
• I love *talking* about jiu jitsu. Philosophy, strategy, tactics, history, business, concepts versus techniques... I love talking about all of it! I love talking about jiu jitsu as much as I love doing jiu jitsu.
  
• I don't really care to follow competitive jiu jitsu. This isn't a surprise; I've played a lot of sports I don't really follow. I don't know many of the top competitors. I don't know the results of the latest IBJJF World Championships or ADCC tournament. But I also don't know who won the last Superbowl or who won whatever the hell they call the winner of the NBA championship.
  
• I really hate drilling. Yes, drilling makes you better. A LOT better. But I still hate it. It feels too much like eating salad without copious amounts of cheese, dressing, and bacon.
  
• I don't like watching instructionals. Mike Gorski had a superhuman ability to watch, break down, and apply information from A LOT of instructionals in a disturbingly short period of time. I tried his strategies. And I just couldn't get into it. While I find the breadth of the sport interesting, I'm just not very motivated to learn a lot of different techniques from a lot of different sources. It took a while for me to figure out why, but eventually I concluded...
  
• ... I don't care about improvement as much as I should. Of all the things I've discussed in this post, this might be the idea that sounds the most ridiculous. At some point in the past, somewhere around the early purp days, I realized improvement in jiu jitsu occurs as a function of time on mat. Of course, every black belt with their salt says the secret to improvement is to just keep training, so this shouldn't have been much of a revelation. But it forced me to realize something else - the key to "keep training" is to really understand what motivates you to train in the first place. And I learned discovery is a HUGE motivator for me. I love viewing jiu jitsu as a problem, and I love solving that problem. And the pace at which I solve that problem doesn't matter. I'm motivated by the process of the problem-solving, not the end results. I don't give a shit if I beat someone. I don't give a shit about winning tournaments. I don't give a shit about getting that next stripe or belt. All that stuff will happen as a natural byproduct of what really motivates me - solving problems.
  
• But I'm competitive AF. I ***love*** hard, intense rolls. I love bringing out the best in my training partners. I have a competitiveness that relentlessly drives me... though the goal isn't to win, per se. The goal is to make my training partners the best they can be. Or just to make them work harder than they thought they could. I love making people suffer to beat me, then celebrate when they successfully overcome that suffering. In that sense, I'm competitive AF.
• My preferred method of improvement is solving the puzzle of training partners. I've known this for a long time, but running a gym has really highlighted just how important this is to my intrinsic motivation to keep doing jiu jitsu. Back in the Fight Club days, I always had at least a few training partners who could kick my ass. Or the training partners closer to my level would go to different classes. There was always something new about my training partners' games. As a gym owner, you're responsible for all of your students' progress. As such, you know what improvements they're making. So there's no real mystery to their game as they develop, which means there's never much of a puzzle to solve. I loved it when my students would watch Youtube vids and implement something new and different in their games; it gave me a new puzzle to solve. 
• I really miss our San Diego Fight Club team. A year after moving to Colorado, Shelly and I went back to San Diego for a week and got in A LOT of rolls with our old training partners. Then, a few months back, Nick Oliver, one of Fight Club's black belts and a long-time friend and training partner, came to Colorado to hold a seminar. Shelly and I spent hours talking jiu jitsu and learning technique. It was a powerful reminder of the kind of jiu jitsu we did at Fight Club (grinding, technically sound), how we learned it, and how we rolled (hard, technically-sound, and a playfully sadistic.)
• My real motivation to keep doing jiu jitsu is a love of actually doing jiu jitsu. In terms of jiu jitsu, what would it take to continue to make this art fulfilling? I've concluded if I did nothing but open mats, I'd be happy. While I like learning and I like teaching, it's the actual live rolling that I truly love. 

Nick Oliver, Charlie Kohler, myself, and Dave Hisquerdo: My Three Mentors

 

The Future

El Diablo Combatives the public gym is closed, probably permanently. But I'm keeping the business entity alive. As I move forward, there's two realms I plan on exploring:

Private lessons for law enforcement. I've recently entered the law enforcement profession, and I'm absolutely loving it! I kinda wish I would have gotten into this field years ago. Better late than never, though. One of the most valuable assets I bring to our local agencies is an expertise of jiu jitsu in general and experience with the practical application of jiu jitsu in a security setting in particular. Basically, I plan on teaching bjj to cops in a way that supplements their current arrest and control procedures. 

This will be done in a private law enforcement-only setting to alleviate some of the issues that prevent many cops from training at a public gym. The two greatest concerns I've encountered is a) fear of injury, and b) fear of training with people they may encounter while on duty, or people they may have arrested in the past.

Writing. Back in the day, blogging was one of my favorite pass times. Since moving to Colorado and running the gym, I haven't had the time or mental energy to write anything more than the occasional blog post. Specifically, I want to write much more about jiu jitsu. I've been doing this for close to a decade now, and I've learned a great deal from people significantly smarter than myself. Their wisdom needs to be shared with the world. I'm a bit rusty, though, as evident by this post. :-)

Like pretty much anything I've experienced in life, this has been a great learning experience. Yes, I ultimately failed. But I'm okay with that. When I'm lying on my death bed, I will be able to take comfort in the fact that I wasn't afraid to give this gym ownership thing a shot. And I gave that shot everything I had for two years. It just wasn't my thing and I wasn't especially good at it. And that's okay. I'm coming out of it with some great friends, a shit-ton of cool and interesting experiences, and a newfound understanding and appreciation for what jiu jitsu means to me.

OSS!

Just kidding. Fuck that shit.

~Jason

***

 

 

Getting Your Needs Met: How Do You FInd the Right People, and are Tribes the Answer?

In my last post, I outlined why it's important to learn to ask for what you need, and how to go about doing it. I didn't address an important point in that post, though:

How do you get your needs met if you're surrounded by people who, for whatever reason, can't or won't meet your needs?

Not everyone possesses the emotional maturity to engage in healthy relationships where each member of the relationship feels safe and secure enough to voice their needs openly and honestly. Or worse, not everyone cares about our best interests. That's usually why the problem starts in the first place. It certainly did for me.

My Early Life Experiences

I grew up in a pretty weird environment. Both sides of my family had some significant dysfunction that went back at least a generation or two, yet nobody ever talked about it. Appearing "normal" was important. I think this was intentional; it was their attempt at killing the cycle of generational shittiness in order to give my generation of offspring a chance at a life better than they experienced. For the most part, they succeeded. Except in the realm of expressing needs. 

I learned from a very young age that expressing my needs came at a steep price - it indebted me to the people I asked. It was kinda like asking a favor from the mob. They'd grant it, but then you owed them. When they came to collect on the debt, it would be fine if I could fulfill their request. But if not? 

That's where things routinely turned pretty dark. People, especially the women in my family, would start negatively gossiping to other family members or friends of the family. The goal seemed to be both getting me to comply with the request and/or punishing me for not fulfilling the request. I was made out to be a bad person in the eyes of my family, and it hurt. A lot. I'm kinda prone to depression, especially seasonal affective disorder. If this kind of thing happened when I was experiencing a bout of depression, my mind went to very, very dark places. Which was made infinitely worse because I couldn't express that to anyone.

Needless to say, it was a cycle I needed to break for self-preservation. I naively tried actually fixing the dysfunction years ago, but that turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. The only workable solution was to severely limit interactions, which is lonely and royally sucks, but it's better than the alternative.

To the point, though, it taught me to avoid asking people to meet my needs. Instead, I developed a lot of shitty passive-aggressive strategies to try to get my needs met without actually asking for them. If I didn't verbalize them, they couldn't be used against me. That's the "Nice Guy" problem I mentioned in the last post.

Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to fix this issue. It WAS incredibly difficult to take the first step; I still vividly remember the first few times I directly asked Shelly to meet some of my needs without resorting to my old subversive tactics. But experiencing her joyfully acting to fulfill those needs was powerful. It was a "Holy shit, I can't believe this actually works like this" moment. Almost immediately, the problem mostly disappeared.

Why mostly?

Because I had to learn another important lesson - how do you determine WHO you can trust to share your needs with and who do you need to avoid? Learning that lesson was a little more tricky.

Authenticity is the Key

Shortly after discovering that "Nice Guy" pattern, I started analyzing the relationships in my life. I quickly realized some people fell into the "safe to share my needs" category and others fell in the "unsafe to share my needs" category. The difference between these two? The former were all people Shelly and I met and befriended AFTER we started trying to live as authentically as possible. And by "authentically", I mean letting our inside selves shine by not erecting a facade of, well, "normal."

Like attracts like. And the "likes" we attracted were the kinds of people who could and would meet whatever needs we expressed without some ulterior motive. They were emotionally safe, and this safety created wonderful, lasting friendships. 

Once I kinda discovered that there were people out there who could and would willingly meet whatever needs I had, all those "unsafe" relationships started to feel really, really toxic. SO I started gravitating towards the safe people and away from the unsafe people. And every aspect of my life improved remarkably. 

The Tribe

At some point in this process, I realized there was incredible mutually-beneficial value in curating a group of people who all cared about each other unconditionally. That realization slowly grew from an abstract idea to the "Tribe" plans I've been planning and developing, which I'm documenting on one of my other blogs. 

The basic idea - We have a lot of needs, many of which are social in nature. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors got these needs met by their tribe. That's why we're hard-wired to have these social needs today. But we don't have tribes today. We have a lot of individuals living individualistic lives. We get our "tribe" needs met by rooting for sports teams, identifying with political parties, or maybe joining a church. And the loneliness of these topical connections causes a whole lotta needs to go unmet. It's no surprise so many of us are riddled with depression and anxiety.

So I set out to create a Tribe. Or as close to a "tribe" as we can get without sacrificing the benefits of modern society. Brandon, one of our Tribe Members and co-founder of this project, provided us with some excellent criteria to decide who we wanted in the Tribe, which I describe in detail in this post.

Our Tribe is a little bit unique in that it is formed around that authenticity idea in the last section. Our current and future Tribe Members come from our jiu jitsu gym Shelly and I own. When we're at the gym, both of us are our authentic selves. And people either love us or hate us. There's not a lot of middle ground. So we attract people who tend to be like-minded, which creates an awesome foundation for the Tribe.

Specific to the point of getting your needs met - the kind of people we want for the Tribe are the precise kind of people who either already understand the reciprocal nature of healthy relationships or, in some cases, have the capacity but need to learn how to ask for help. Like I was back in the "Nice Guy" days. 

Reciprocal Rings

A researcher by the name of Wayne Baker developed a concept known as a "Reciprocal Ring", which is a tool groups can use to develop equitable reciprocity within a group. It basically teaches people how to use the group to get their needs met. And it's a tool I plan on utilizing for our Tribe. It works like this.

You gather the group together. One person expresses one need they have to the group. I can be a physical need, social need, emotional need, spiritual need, financial need... whatever. The group then brainstorms how they can, collectively, get that need met. Then they actually do it or make a plan to do it. This continues around the group until everyone has expressed a need. 

Done repeatedly, this quickly evolves into what amounts to a group "Pay It Forward" virtuous cycle where group members quickly build trust in each other that allows them to rely on the group. In short, the collective group becomes a powerful resource to get any and all needs met for each individual within the group.

But What If You Don't Have a Tribe?

I'm fortunate in that I've had an incredibly supportive wife who I could rely on to openly express my needs, which has given me the opportunity to be able to curate a Tribe of reliable, emotionally healthy friends. Not everyone has that resource available to them. In that case, it's important to learn to recognize emotionally-healthy people. 

For people trapped in some cycle of emotional fuck-upedness, that can be really difficult. If all you've known are emotionally-troubled people, you don't know what healthy looks like. Worse, we tend to be drawn to the people who make us comfortable. And if all we've ever known is emotionally-damaged people, those are the people we'll be drawn to. 

There are a lot of guides out there that will explain what an emotionally-healthy person looks like. Lifehacker, one of my all-time favorite websites, produced a nice article explaining 15 good traits to look for. As much as I like their list, I also have some criteria I use personally, usually by asking questions. These questions determine if they're:

• Honest
• Competent
• Reliable
• Kind
• Able to persevere after setbacks
  
• Willing and able to accept blame when they're at fault
• Compassionate
• Modest and humble
•  Have the ability to control their emotions

So what are the questions? What behaviors help me determine if an individual "fits" this ideal?

1. How do they treat service workers, especially retail workers, receptionists, and restaurant servers? Do they tip well?
2. How do they treat animals?
3. How do they treat children and the elderly?
4. How do they treat people who have poor social skills?
5. Do they get angry frequently?
6. Do they do random acts of kindness, especially when nobody appears to be looking?
7. Do they brag excessively?
8. How do they handle failure?
9. Are they excessively gullible and fall for conspiracies, multi-level marketing schemes, etc.?
10. Do they try to control others?
11. Are they prone to excessive jealousy or envy?
12. Do they have a victim mentality?
13. Do they intentionally hurt people, physically, emotionally, or mentally?
14. Do they blame others for their lack of success?
15. Are they passive-aggressive?
16. Do they engage in revenge fantasies?
17. Do they routinely make other people uncomfortable?
18. Do they have confident body language?
19. Do they talk on the phone in public or in the presence of others without trying to excuse themselves.

 

And, of course, there's the gold standard hack for evaluating others - simply pick a particular trait, then ask someone how often they see that trait in others. It's based on the idea of psychological projection - we frame the motives behind other people's behaviors within our own motivational framework. A happy person will see happiness in others. A manipulative person will assume everyone is trying to manipulate them. A compulsive liar will assume everyone is lying. A genuinely kind person will see kindness in others. And so on. 

Taken together, these strategies can be super useful when it comes to identifying the kinds of people who can and will gladly help fulfill your needs versus the toxic people who will not. Surround yourself with the former and life gets a whole lot better. Surround yourself with the latter and life ain't so good.

Conclusion

 

We all deserve healthy relationships where we can feel safe expressing our thoughts, feelings, and needs. We all deserve healthy relationships where we will have those thoughts, feelings, and needs heard and acknowledged. Surround yourself with those kind of people, and follow my advice from the first post on getting your needs met. 

You deserve it.

~Jason

***

How To Ask For What You Need

 

Recently, I was having a discussion with an old friend who has trouble asking for what they need from others, especially in relationships. This has always been a topic close to my heart because, for the vast majority of my life, I had this exact problem.

And it sucked. 

In my own experience, it basically turned me into a "Nice Guy", which caused me to habitually hurt the very people I cared about the most. The gist of the behavior - I'd do shit for people in the hopes they would reciprocate in some way, thus meeting my unspoken needs. Unsurprisingly, this led to a lot of problems. I'd create a feedback loop where I'd feel a need, obsess on figuring out how I could get that need met without pissing anyone off, then would engage in passive, indirect behaviors that never worked, then get resentful and angry towards those people for not meeting my unspoken needs, which caused those initial needs to get even stronger. It royally sucked for me, and it royally sucked for those around me.

My own experiences with this issue stemmed from behavior patterns learned in childhood and accidentally reinforced into adulthood, and it took years to correct. Mostly because it took years to actually identify the problem. In my past writings on this topic, I largely helped people solve this issue by fixing the underlying problem, but the aforementioned conversation with my old friend led me to explicitly addressing the issue head-on.

So Why Does It Matter?

Without exception, EVERY person I've ever met who had trouble expressing their needs to those around them have had a "giving" personality. They genuinely enjoy helping others... even the men who, like I used to do, engage in "Nice Guy" behaviors. The problem, though, is our ability to help others is entirely dependent on our own health and well-being.

My all-time favorite analogy for are - oxygen masks. 

If you've ever flown on a commercial airline and paid attention to the emergency procedures flight attendants go through when the plane's still on the tarmac, you know what I'm talking about. In the event of "cabin depressurization" (i.e. - the plane is falling apart), oxygen masks drop down from the overhead compartment. We're supposed to put OUR mask on before we help other people put THEIR mask on.

Why?

Well, if we pass out because of a lack of oxygen (which thanks to jiu jitsu, I can confirm does not take long), we can't help others. Then we all die.The lesson?

LIFE RULE #1: WE NEED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN HEALTH AND WELL-BEING BEFORE WE CAN TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR OTHER PEOPLE'S HEALTH AND WELL-BEING.

We have a right and a responsibility to ask for what we need in a relationship, and we're in the best position to determine exactly what it is we really need. After all, we are the experts on ourselves.

If we don't take care of our needs, we run ourselves into the ground physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And we run the risk of falling into the martyr complex. We're actively damaging our self-worth and our value.

In addition, if we're not getting our needs met, we're unconsciously sabotaging all our close relationships. 

LIFE RULE #2: VOICING OUR NEEDS IS AN ABSOLUTE PREREQUISITE TO HAVING HAPPY, HEALTHY, MUTUALLY-FULFILLING RELATIONSHIPS.

Learning to ASK to have your needs met can be an incredibly difficult thing for many of us. I know it was for me. It was really terrifying and just felt so... wrong. 

Damn that early life conditioning!

Anyway, before we get to HOW to ask to get your needs met, let's talk about the needs themselves.

What Do We Really Need?

We all have needs that require other people. We are, after all, social animals. Some of those needs include:

• We need support. We need someone who has our backs.
  
• We need affection.
• We need to feel intimate physical contact. Think cuddling.
  
• We need companionship. 
  
• We need to feel physically and emotionally safe.
• We need to feel like we're a priority.
• We need to feel heard and understood. 
• We need to feel financially secure.
• We need to hear positive affirmations from those we care about.
• We need to feel valued and appreciated.
• We need to feel connected to others.
• We need to be nurtured sometimes. 
• We need sex and the resulting physical connection.
• ... and so on.

If we're missing any of these, we tend to feel what could best be described as "emotional hunger." And that emotional hunger gnaws at us whether we recognize it or not. 

How Do We Know if Our Needs Aren't Being Met?

One of the weirdest parts of habitually not getting your needs met is you don't always recognize your needs aren't being met... usually because they've never really been met in a healthy way. So the needs manifest in other, strange ways, including:

• We resent others because they're not "reading our minds" and fulfilling the needs we expect them to fulfill.
• We get stressed out, feel anxiety, and feel depression because our needs aren't being met.
• We feel contempt for the people who aren't meeting our needs.
• We get angry at others for not meeting our needs.
• We feel neglected and rejected by those we love.
  
• We feel unimportant because we're not being heard or seen. 
• We feel unloved because our partners don't seem to be willing to put in the same level of effort we're putting in the relationship.
• We find ourselves minimizing our own needs to make them seem less of a priority compared to other people's needs.
• We withdraw from those we love. 
• We start picking silly fights. 
• We start "testing" those we love to determine if they really love us.
• We start "keeping score."
• We start fantasizing about greener pastures... a lot.
• We start seeking attention elsewhere.
  

 Why Don't We Ask for What We Need?

There could be all kinds of reasons we don't ask for what we really need. In my past, I did so because I was terrified I would make people angry by expressing my needs, and they'd ultimately abandon me. In retrospect, it was a pretty fucked up train of thought that wasn't grounded in reality. Or even logic. But it's how I felt.

We may have all kinds of reasons for not asking for what we need, including:

• We think asking for what you need will cause conflict (which may have happened in the past.)
• We don't want to trouble or inconvenience others.
• We may not know exactly what it is we need.'
• We feel what we need, but we have trouble articulating the need to others.
• We were punished in the past for asking others for what we need.
• We don't want to feel needy because we see ourselves as being strong, independent, and resilient.
• We're afraid of making people angry.
• We may not want to admit we're dissatisfied.
• We don't like feeling vulnerable.
• We're afraid of being judged negatively.
• We grew up in an environment where a parent or both parents somehow used our needs against us.
• We never learned how to express our needs in a healthy way.
• The voind of not having our needs met, while feeling bad, also feels comfortable. And comfortable is less risky than asking for what we need.
  
• ... and so on.

Usually part of this problem stems from some sort of emotional abandonment we experienced in childhood or in our early dating life. This causes us to initiate relationships with people who avoid the intimacy required to create an environment where both partners can and do freely share their needs. The crappy relationship satisfies some of our needs for a connection to others, but the emotional distance feels safe. Even if that relationship is defined by constant fighting, addictions, infidelity, and other forms of shitty abuse. 

What if I Don't Deserve to Feel Good?

 I intentionally left this one off the list above because it deserves its own treatment. Thinking you don't deserve something is a big fucking cowardly cop-out. Harsh, yes, but true. To see how absurd this is, do this thought experiment. Think of your all-time favorite ice cream flavor. Now think of your all-time least-favorite ice cream flavor.

For example, my favorite is fudge brownie in mint ice cream. Whatever that's called. My least favorite? Coffee-flavored. A little ironic given I love black coffee. Anyway.

Now imagine you just entered an ice cream shop and you're deciding which flavor to get. Would you choose your absolute favorite flavor of ice cream? Or would you settle for that least-favorite shitty flavor because you felt you "didn't deserve" your favorite? Settling seems pretty damn absurd here, doesn't it?

I know I'm choosing the brownie mint stuff, not the gross-ass coffee ice cream. And you would, too.

So why should your needs be any different? 

Still not convinced? Do this thought experiment. Think of your kids. If you don't have kids, imagine a future when you do. If you don't want kids, think of a beloved pet. Part of parenting is wanting what's best for your kids. We want them to have a life that will make them happy. We want them to have the life they deserve.

As their parent, you're their most influential role model. If they see you ignoring YOUR needs because you feel you don't deserve to have your needs met, they will grow up and ignore THEIR needs because they will feel like they don't deserve to have them met. It doesn't matter what we say. It matters what we DO.

So How Do We Fix the Problem?

When people can't ask to get their needs met, they typically use a few strategies that are guaranteed to fail almost every time. Maybe we try using guilt or shame on others. Maybe we use our unmet needs as weapons. Maybe we buy them gifts or do them favors (even the sexual kind!) Maybe we use passive-aggressive tactics like withdrawing or throwing tantrums. Maybe we try dropping subtle hints. Whatever tactics we use, they always result in the same shitty outcomes - we're left emotionally starved.

But the solution is pretty simple! And there's only TWO steps!

 There's really two steps to this process. The First Step is figuring out exactly what it is you're missing, which can be really difficult. Let's call this step "Naming the Need." 

I know when I started this process, I had never even really consciously considered my own needs, even though I was constantly trying to get them met. And being a god damned psychology teacher.

Yeah, kinda embarrassing.

For me, it helped to see a list of needs people actually, well, need. Scroll back up to that "What Do We Really Need" list above. Start there. Whether we consciously feel it or not, all of us share all of those needs; they're universally human. So note which needs are currently being met and which ones are not.

In addition to this, we can do a thought experiment. Ask yourself "If I could have anything I wanted in a relationship, with NO limits, what would it be?" What would that relationship look like? What would that relationship feel like? Don't hold back here; be selfish! This is YOUR fantasy; have fun with it!

Once we do that, the second part of step one is important - taking personal responsibility for our own emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Tell yourself "I am personally responsible for getting these missing needs met." Repeat that ten times. 

That second part of this first step is important because, even though we disguise it with a lot of different rationalizations, our inability to ask to have our needs met is really a shifting of responsibility from ourselves to other people. We need to change that. Taking personal responsibility means we have to be willing to ask for what we need. 

Now on to the Second Step - actually asking for what we need. Pick one need at a time, and figure out who in your life is best able to meet that need. It's probably going to be a significant other, but it can also be a friend, a family member, or even a coworker. WHO isn't critically important.  

The first thing we need to do is make sure you and the other person are calm and relaxed. Don't do this is you're stressed, angry, or in a hurry. Now describe the situation. You want to describe the situation in a way that doesn't blame them, so stick to factual terms. You want to encourage connection, not conflict. For example, let's say our partner doesn't hug us as much as we need. We could say:

"We don't hug as much as I need us to hug."

Simple and to the point with no blame or judgment.

The second thing we need to do is explain how we feel, preferably by using "I" statements. Again, it's important not to blame the other person here. You're simply expressing how the behavior in the last part makes you feel. For example:

"Our lack of hugging makes me feel unloved."

The third thing we need to do is request the desired behavior in clear, actionable terms. What can they do to meet the need? We need to make it easy for the other person to meet the need we just expressed. 

"I need to start hugging each other when we both get home from work."

In this last step, it's important to only request behaviors. Don't ask the other person to change their values, attitudes, desires, motivations, or feelings. Behaviors only. And limit each request to ONE or, at the most, TWO specific behaviors. 

It's also important to TELL your partner what you need. Don't ask. Don't say "will you please start hugging me when we both get home from work?" Directness establishes boundaries; it tells other people how you expect to be treated. Being direct prevents people from walking all over you because being direct tells them where to step. And people LIKE that. We LIKE boundaries. It makes life much, much easier.

That's it. That's all we need to do. It's really simple. HARD, but simple. 

Luckily, this is a process that gets wayyyyy easier with practice. So start small, maybe with the needs that are easier to fulfill or require less action on other people's part. 

The cool thing about this process is the feedback is usually pretty immediate. In healthy relationships, we'll quickly find our partners (romantic or platonic) are happy to meet our needs, not angry we're expressing them. Humans are, after all, hard-wired to help each other. We wouldn't have survived as a species if we weren't designed this way.

It doesn't take long to start to realize we're worthy of having our needs met, and we deserve to feel wonderfully fulfilled in our relationships. We deserve to to feel safe expressing our thoughts, feelings, and needs, and having those thoughts, feelings, and needs heard and acknowledged. 

So How Did This Work Out for Me?

It's been around a decade since I learned to start asking for what I needed from any relationship. And damn, has it been liberating. All my relationships are far more authentic; I no longer feel I need to act a certain way in the hopes of getting my needs met. 

Importantly, I also don't have unmet needs. Asking for exactly what I need from any given relationship has become so second-nature, it's not even a conscious thought process. I no longer ruminate about how to get needs met without upsetting people. I just do it. And it's awesome!

The real payoff, though, is my relationship with Shelly. I've been writing this article for three days. During that time, I've been plumbing the depths of my psyche to find any needs I have that she can provide that I'm not getting. I can't think of a single one. We've been together for quite a long time... somewhere in the ballpark of seventeen years. Since discovering how to ask her for what I need, our relationship has truly blossomed. 

12,000 feet. Literally on top of the world.

Long gone is the feedback loop where my unmet needs caused all kinds of personal angst. Long gone is the feedback loop that led to anger and resentment of others. I can finally engage in relationships and enjoy them for what they are. That authenticity has enriched my life in ways that are difficult to explain in writing. That's doubly true of my relationship with Shelly.

So yeah... it's well worth the effort of learning how to identify and ask for what you need from others. NOT doing this really kinda limits the quality of your life, negatively affects those you love, and limits your ability to make a real, sustained difference in the world. 

If you don't currently have people in your life that you can rely on to meet your needs, I'll give you some pointers in the next post.

Hopefully that old friend internalized these ideas and will start working on learning how to ask for what they need. Because like all of us, they deserve nothing less.

 

~Jason

 

***

Ladies, Don't Fall for Nice Guys. There's a Better Option

 

 

Earlier today, I stumbled upon this article in Psychology Today about women who don't feel "chemistry" with nice guys. This article came at a fortuitous time; I was just discussing this issue with one of my fellow Tribe members who is part of my new project. Specifically, she was asking about my book I wrote years ago, No Bone Zone. The gist of the discussion - my book kinda sucks for the same reason this Psychology Today article sucks.

Basically, women can't "trick" themselves into developing chemistry with nice guys. 

I don't recommend my book to couples for a pretty simple reason - it's essentially a guide to rekindling chemistry in relationships where the chemistry has disappeared. For examples of the kinds of relationships the book was meant to help, check out this incredibly sad, depressing Subreddit. The advice I give in the book closely resembles the advice the author of the Psychology Today article recommends.

And it ultimately fails. Every. Single. Time.

Before I explore this issue in detail, I need to operationally-define "nice guys." We're not talking about the emotionally-manipulative guys who act like women in a misguided attempt to get laid. We're talking about genuinely kind men who lack any sort of edge. They're soft and gentle and caring and emotionally-available and loyal and willing to do anything for you. They make you feel loved and appreciated. They're caring and attentive parents. They willingly help out around the house, always buy you presents on Sweetest Day, and do everything they can to make you feel special.Nice guys make love. Sweet, tender, romantic love.

What they don't do, though, is make your panties wet. 

They don't slap your ass or pull your hair. They don't tease you until you lose your mind; they don't fuck you so hard, you lose a filling. They don't call you "my dirty little whore" as they cum all over your tits. Their mere presence doesn't cause your heart to start beating out of your chest. They don't possess you. 

It's simply not in their DNA. It doesn't matter if you show up late for a date to fool yourself into believing the nice guy is something he's not. None of the "tips" shared in that Psych Today article will change what is unchangeable. Your brain is not fooled. Which is why I don't recommend No Bone Zone. It's filled with bandaids that, ultimately, will fail. Chemistry can't be faked. In the event you DO fall for a nice guy and commit to them, your relationship will follow a painfully predictable path.

The answer, though, isn't to fall for the bad boys who CAN and DO drench those panties. If you're looking for anything more than an occasional hookup, they're a piss-poor choice because they don't have the requisite skills to navigate a relationship. Per Ladder Theory, a high value woman might be able to "tame" this kind of bad boy, but in the process, will make him almost as undesirable as the nice guy. 

So What's the Answer?

The answer is deceptively simple - find a man who is genuinely kind, but also has no hesitation in using you as a fuck toy when the time comes. I know, ladies, you already know this. And you also know these men are the unicorns of our gender. The Law of Supply and Demand being what it is, these men don't last long on the open market. But worry not, Jason's here to help!

You have two realistic options if you have trouble attracting unicorn men. Either settle for one night stands with bad boys and relationships with lame-ass nice guys, OR improve yourself. 

First, read that Ladder Theory post above. It explains how the dynamics of relationships *really* work. 

Second, read this post. It explains why you can land the hot, dominant, confident kind man for a one night stand, but can't get him to commit. 

Third, read this post. It was originally written for some specific nearing middle-aged female friends of mine who had serious trouble competing with younger females for high quality men, but the advice is universal. 

Conclusion

For many women, it's comforting to follow the advice in the PT article. Or my crappy book. Somehow reframing the boring nice guy in a way that makes him seem desirable gives us a shred of optimism. But the reality is what it is - these men simply aren't going to cut it. They're great roommates. They're great companions. But no Jedi mind trick is going to allow them to make you feel like a woman. 

So don't waste your time trying. Shoot for a better man. Shoot for the kind of man you deserve. And importantly, be willing to put in the work to make that happen.

~Jason

***

Bullying: Why We Do It and How To Really Fix the Problem

Bullying has always been a topic that interests me. As a kid, I spent a few years being a bully, then a few more years being bullied. As a high school teacher, I witnessed countless incidents of bullying. As a person with a psychology background and a deep fascination of human behavior, I've always been curious about the exact motivations behind the behaviors.

Aside from my own personal interest, bullying exacts a huge social cost in human life. Approximately every 30 minutes, another person commits suicide due to being bullied. That alone should motivate us to take this problem seriously. Hopefully this post will serve as a spark to ignite a wider debate on bullying and maybe, just maybe, lead us to a future where so many people aren't dying.

A few months ago, I asked my Facebook friends why they thought bullies, well, bully. Their responses were about what I expected, and mostly attributed bully to either negative personality characteristics, insecurities and/or an inferiority complex, fear, hatred, unhappiness, mental disorders, emotional immaturity, or they're just perpetuating a bullying cycle (they were bullied, thus they become bullies.)

While I don't discount any of these explanations, none of them really seem to adequately explain the actual bully dynamics. That shouldn't come as a surprise, because science doesn't really understand bullying behavior. Or at least the published research seems to be missing the actual underlying causes of bullying. All of these explanations are based on logical or emotional inferences, not actual empirical data. When we DO look at the empirical data, we realize we, as a society, have no clue about bullying. 

Evidence: This study that shows anti-bullying programs actually INCREASE bullying. The authors hypothesize these programs don't stop bullying; they teach bullies to get better at not getting caught. It's the equivalent of showing bank robbers the blueprints for the bank's security systems. 

For some of you who may be familiar with anti-bullying programs, you're probably thinking "But wait! I know of programs that work! My school (or my kid's school or whatever) implemented it and it really works!"

Maybe, but odds are good it's a lot like Finland's "successful" program. This program effectively teaches bystanders to overcome the bystander effect and intervene on behalf of the victim. That's actually really effective... at eliminating bully behavior in school-related situations and pushing it to other off-site situations.

It's sort of like how we treat the homeless in California. They're a nuisance, so municipalities enact programs to force them to move to a neighboring municipality, then those municipalities do the same. It does nothing to solve the problem, it just pushes it around. But it makes people feel good that they "fixed" homelessness because they no longer see them begging on the street corner. Likewise, schools can feel good because they "solved" the bullying program by pushing the problem elsewhere.

I call bullshit. If I'm going to address a problem, I want to actually FIX it. If I'm in a sinking boat, I don't want to devise a better method of shoveling water out of the boat. I want to find the damn holes and plug them. That's the goal with bullying.

My Hypothesis

Currently, there are a slew of evolutionary psychologists that believe bullying behavior occurs as a function of... big surprise, evolution. They contend bullying behavior is really a social domination issue. In our evolutionary past, bullies would get more resources like food and shelter. Those who were the best at bullying would have access to the greatest quantity of resources, thus most likely to survive long enough to pass their genes to the next generation. As a result, bullying behavior is "hard-wired" into our genes. In the modern world where we really don't have to fight over resources, kids who grow up in a chaotic home environment may not learn the social skills to inhibit this "natural" tendency, so they engage in bullying behavior. 

That's problematic on several levels. Bullying occurs regardless of the stability of the home environment and is better predicted by the perceived safety of the environment. For example, bullying behaviors are positively correlated with violence. The more dangerous the environment, the more bullying we see. Interestingly, that only pertains to males (that's a big hint.) Furthermore, males tend to bully other males they don't know very well but also aren’t complete strangers (another hint.)

What about female bullying? This offers a tantalizing clue, too. Females engage in far different bullying behaviors than men. Men are direct. They physically and verbally bully each other face-to-face. Women? Not so much. They engage in relational bullying, or, as we like to say, they're catty bitches. They corrupt the relationships of their victims by spreading rumors, leaking secrets, back-stabbing, and using "excluding" behaviors. More significantly, bullying behavior increases as a function of social standing. The popular girls are most likely to bully. Weirdly (to me anyway), this fundamental difference in bullying methodology between the genders is often written off as a minor detail when it should be considered a major hint regarding the real cause of bullying.

So what is the real cause of bullying?

Gender roles and sexual selection. 

Ever watch later elementary and middle school-aged children flirt with each other? It's rough. They have the basics down, but the behaviors are WAYYYY over-exaggerated. They just haven't fine-tuned the skill set, and they'll slowly improve throughout high school and into college, with some never really improving on their early fumbling attempts. This flirting behavior serves a useful evolutionary purpose; it's the mechanism we use to attract and secure a mate and eventually pass our genes on to the next generation. All of us come from a long line of countless ancestors who successfully flirted… at least once. 

Bullying plays by that same rule. Bullying in children is rough around the edges. It never really stops over the course of our lifetime (yes, there are retirement community bullies.) And, like flirting, bullying serves an evolutionary purpose. Bullying differs in that males and females engage in bullying for very different reasons. 

Intermission: If you haven't read it, take a look at my Gender Role Protection Theory and the accompanying "why homophobia exists" post. They'll be referenced in the "male bullying" discussion. Also take a look at the Women, Explained article. It'll help explain female bullying.

Why Men Bully

When men bully, they're testing each other to test their ability to "protect the perimeter." In evolutionary terms, men, due to our larger physical size and greater upper body strength, are tasked with protecting the tribe. Part of that task relies on interdependent cooperation. Guys need to know the other guys protecting the perimeter with them are capable of protecting their back, both literally and figuratively. This is why men bully men they don't know well. This is also why standing up to male bullies is the only effective way to stop bullying. This is also why "telling the teacher" or "bystander intervention" just causes the bully to modify their bullying behaviors. This is also why men bully effeminate males (gay males, transgender folks, etc.) so often (read the homophobia post if you skipped it.) 

As I mentioned, if the victim fights back, even unsuccessfully, the bullying immediately stops. If they do not fight back, the bullying continues until they do. Sadly, our society has fallen into a trap of being rather militant on teaching boys NOT to fight back. That results in continual bullying until the victim simply snaps (hello, school shooters!) 

We can solve that problem by simply teaching boys to stand up to bullies. 

That’s it. That’s all we have to do. 

Before we move to women, there's one other interesting angle to this. I've had a hard time finding primary sources (unfortunately I was a history major in addition to psych), but there have been some cultures in human history that had a special rule of sorts for biological/genetic men that did not want to "protect the perimeter." They basically got a free pass to opt out of this male fitness testing. Instead of protecting the perimeter, they would do other tasks within the tribe/community. In other words, they weren't bullied because there was no reason to bully them. I have no idea how we could implement this in our modern American society, but it would be a great solution to those men that do not want to conform to the masculine gender role. In essence, if we can find that solution, we end homophobia.

Why Women Bully

This is a much more difficult problem to solve. Women essentially bully to maintain their status as the highest-valued females. Their motive is simple - the highest value females get access to the highest value males. Female bullying disqualifies other potential rival females for access to males. They begin these behaviors before they actually hit puberty for the same reason they start rudimentary flirting behaviors before puberty... complex social skills are hard to learn. 

These behaviors are fairly predictable, and include several behaviors that many feminists somehow manage to blame on men (or the "Patriarchy.) A few examples include:

• Slut-shaming
• Fat-shaming
• Style-shaming ("You're wearing THAT dress?")
• Public humiliation
• Excluding women from social circles or not inviting women to events
• Back-handed compliments
• The aforementioned leaking of secrets and spreading rumors

Honestly, I have no idea how to fix this problem because, at the most basic level, female bullying is one of the engines of evolution. It assures the best genes from the human gene pool are matched up, thus assuring our survival as a species. Short-circuiting that mechanism would doom us genetically. If we were Hell-bent on making it happen, we'd basically have to resort to radical social engineering where women would be forced to reproduce with completely random men. I have a hard time believing anyone (me included) would support that idea. 

A victim of female bullying could feasibly take the male approach and stand up to the bullies, but they'd probably have to resort to a scary level of violence to make the bullying stop. Unlike male bullying, female bullying isn't a test. It's the real deal. The females doing the bullying have no incentive to back down until the victim is effectively disqualified from attaining the high value males. To make it worse, female bullying occurs in packs against individuals, so the lone victim would essentially have to kick the asses of an entire group.

There may be some value in education, though. If a female victim of bullying understands exactly why she is being bullied, maybe she wouldn't take it as personally. That subtle shift in understanding might make the difference between her contemplating suicide and having the strength to persevere. Even if it saved a single life, it would be worthwhile.

 

Tribes deserve special attention here, though. In a tribal social organizational model, bullying between females can be greatly reduced or even eliminated if the higher ranking females in the Tribe militantly police bullying behaviors among the lower ranking females. A small coalition of the most powerful, influential females can effectively set the tone for the rest of the females in the Tribe, and focus that "catty bitchedness" to females outside the tribe.

Conclusion

Bullying is a serious behavior that harms countless people. Hell, it KILLS a lot of people. As a society, our previous and current attempts to curtail the behaviors have been fruitless. The best we can do now is suppress bullying in a specific environment. To me, that's completely unacceptable because bullying is still occurring. Is my hypothesis correct? Maybe. Maybe not. But what the Hell do we have to lose?

This post is kind of important. Even if you disagree, we need to start thinking outside the box on this issue. Please share this post far and wide. If you're a parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle, this issue probably affects the kids you love. If you're a teacher or any other professional that works with children, this issue affects the children you care for so dearly. Hopefully it'll start a new, better dialogue. Post it on Facebook, Twitter, and even Google+. Email it to your coworkers and family members, or print it out and post it in the break room or on the fridge at home. If we spread the word, together we might be able to save some lives.