Month With Mike

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What’s going on everyone? Hope everyone is doing well. I just want to get on here for a minute and talk a little bit about Thanksgiving. It’s personally one of my favorite times of the year.

I just kind of shut the engines down for a couple days, spend time with family, eat some good food. It’s truly energizing. But I know for a lot of people, this time of year is not so pleasant.

And on top of that right now, obviously there’s a lot of people suffering, a lot of people stressed out, a lot of anxiety, just overall suffering because times are tough to varying degrees. And even for people that maybe it’s not a financial thing that struggling to put food on the table or pay the bills, people just also get super stressed out. And in fact, this week with the team, our leadership development stuff, we’re talking about stress and anxiety reduction.

And so I wanted to share some of that with all of you as well, in terms of just having awareness around it. And again, just like jujitsu, and I love jujitsu and bias, I know that, I get it. I think it’s one of the most amazing things in the world.

I know for people that don’t do jujitsu, they think we’re freaking crazy, but there’s so many parallels and there’s so many things that you learn from jujitsu that can help in the real world. But to me, some of the greatest things about jujitsu is connecting with other people, being in a room with other people. And also, it’s always just this development, this self-development mindset.

I’m always looking to improve and be my best. And that’s something that martial arts has always taught. And yes, it doesn’t have to be martial arts.

People talk about these concepts outside of martial arts. But it’s always, and it’s just a way and it’s the lens through which I think a lot of us look at the world and life now is like, not just sitting back, you have to go out and do and put your neck out there and be willing to fail and understanding that’s the path to success and things of that nature. But taking action, having intention around things.

And so with stress and anxiety reduction, we’re actually talking about it this week with the team. It’s actually broken up into two weeks. I’ve talked about this before.

We look at, actually next week is more about the baseline. What are the things in our lives and the different areas of our lives, our habits, the things that we do, the people around, the environments, and how does that contribute to the overall baseline of how much stress and anxiety we have every day in our lives, right? The goal is to keep it as low as possible. So we talk about that stuff next week.

This week, it’s more about the spikes, what to do when we have those spikes. So those more acute phases of stress and anxiety. And so for anyone that’s watching this, just simple education as well about we know that stress is good.

It’s an adaptive response. We have our autonomic nervous system. We have the parasympathetic and sympathetic states that gets triggered.

Sympathetic sounds like it’s good, but it’s actually bad. It’s that fight, flight, or freeze type of thing. It’s when it’s that heightened sense of awareness and survival and stress.

And the problem is when you, if you’re in it too much and there’s things that are happening, right? It’s almost become chronic. This gets really, really detrimental to us. So one of the things we’re talking about this week is just having awareness around, again, awareness and intention and practicing skill and technique, right? And that’s like a big part of this to really break it down is to say, to know that when we’re in the moment to have and practice the self-awareness and the mindfulness to know when we’re clearly in a moment of rumination, we can’t break out of it.

We’re just super stressed, right? Number one, recognize it. And then number two, utilize whatever strategies we know work for us to bring ourselves back closer to homeostasis. And so that’s what we’re talking about this week.

That’s what we’re working on is to practice some of those techniques, whether it’s like breathing techniques, whether it’s grounding, whether it’s like, you know, putting music on, going for a walk, you know, going into a different environment, going to train jujitsu, going to lift, going to do yoga, like running, like whatever the hell it is, right? Be active and mindful of it and go and do it. The other thing I think is always important, and I think this is like, and it’s cool because it’s pulled back to our DNA into like our primitive instincts or primal instincts, is you’re not alone, like knowing you’re not alone. In fact, research also shows like when people are doing hard things, challenging things, their stress levels are lower when they’re doing it with other people.

When they know they’re not alone in the struggle, they can actually like handle more of it. And again, I think that’s tied to like our, like whatever, whether it’s the DNA, that we thrive in packs. We’re meant to be in packs.

We’re meant to live in packs. And in doing so, it gives us some of these tools and resources that allow us to be able to continue on and handle these things and be able to accomplish whatever we’re trying to accomplish, right? Or whatever that is. So I’m trying to be quick with this video because I can talk forever, but I just want you to know you’re not alone.

You’re not alone. We’re all going through different things. Everyone’s going through things that we can’t see, but you’re not alone.

Even if you just hear that from me, right? Like I’m rooting for you. I love you. You’re like, Mike, you don’t even know me.

Trust me. I don’t care. I want everyone to thrive.

And I want people to know that you got at least one person that’s rooting for you. I’m here, man. And like, look, I’m no savior or nothing.

I’m not trying to claim to be one. I’ll take help from people too. Like I go through shit too, right? And that’s what it is.

This is what a well-functioning society, in my opinion, a well-functioning pack is. We take care of one another, right? We protect one another. We look out for one another.

We support one another. This is brotherhood and sisterhood. That’s one of the core values of Gracie Barra too that I love so much is that, man, like we’re here to support one another.

We’re here to grow and thrive together. We have our own individual goals, but we have collective goals too. I wish our country understood and remembered that at the end of the day, right? And I’m not getting into politics, trust me.

But at least here, like just know I’m rooting for you. And so I think that’s the two part of when we deal with these things is one is, man, I hear you. I know a lot of people are going through a lot of difficult times.

Some are okay, but some are not. And to know that you’re not alone, know that I’m rooting for you. I’m here for you if you want to connect.

And then the second part, this is the part that I love about it is let’s put some action behind what we’re feeling. Because the more we just sit back and feel like life is happening to us versus flipping that and saying, I have control over a lot of things that I can go out and do. I just need the energy.

I need the belief that I can do it, that it’s going to work or the support. And I’m trying to tell you that you can do it. You have support here.

You have somebody else you want to talk to, but we got to go do something. We got to go do something about it, that action plan. So I’m talking about the strategies, the other thing, like whatever that is, right? We can get more specific if we want to, but this is just a video that I’m just trying to share with people.

And that’s the twofold of all of this, right? Is A, knowing that you’re not alone in all of this. And there’s people out there who love you and want to see you win and thrive despite what social media might share. And two is got to take action.

That’s the only way some of this stuff starts to go away. Some of it is out of our control, but a lot of it is not. Got to take action, right? And putting out a plan and going and doing the thing, even if it’s that little tiny bit, right? BJ Fogg, tiny habits, atomic habits, like all these books showed the science is like, man, little steps.

Let’s go, right? So for everyone out there, I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week in whatever capacity that looks like. I hope you get to spend it with some people that you love or connected to, whatever that is. Hopefully you go train some jujitsu.

Open Thursday, like Thanksgiving open mats are one of my favorite open mats. I’ll be out there. You can kick my ass.

I look forward to it for sure. And be well. Love you all.