Octagon: The fight, the belief, and the myth

This year, I have been using an Intuitive Writing deck that my friend, Three, gifted me. Each card has a word or shape on it, and you use that word or shape to prompt a piece of creative writing. I'm going to post a series of entries from my Intuitive Writing practice here, just for fun. 

[OCTAGON]

This reminds me of the UFC, which reminds me of MMA, which reminds me of competing at jiujitsu competitions. 

Fighting in the cage. Your mind goes blank. It doesn’t matter who it is or what time it is. Just go. Turn off your brain. Your mind is no longer helpful. Your body already knows what to do. 

Your body already knows from the hours of training. From practice. The information is already there. Every thought you’ve ever had? It can be manifested in that moment. Just be present. Everything you need to be or have is already inside of you.

The important thing is to not think. Never think. Just go. Turn off your brain. Just go. Believe. 

Believe in yourself. Believe that you can fly. That’s all you can do. Just believe in yourself. It doesn’t matter what the outcome is, but in that moment, you need that belief. Believe in the myth that you can do it, that you can succeed, that you can win, that you can fly, that you can fight. 

You’re exhausted and just fighting to stay alive. You consider giving up. THAT IS YOUR EDGE. You consider saying, "I can’t do this." 

Why would you say that? Of course, you can. You got this. You just go. There is no alternative. You just have faith in yourself that you can do it. And you do. You keep going and you’re really not that tired in the end. 

Same with writing. Just believe that you can do it. I have hit my edge. I really questioned giving up. I’m not going to though. Even if it means writing a new book, finding a new publisher, whatever it takes. This book is going to get written. I believe that my book will somehow find its way into the world and one day it will move and touch at least one reader. That’s all I want. 

Life isn't a never-ending fight. Or, at least, it's not supposed to be. Life is about practicing for the fight. Most of the time, you are drilling and training. It's boring sometimes and tiring other times. It's not always exciting. But you show up anyway. You show up to practice unless you're sick. If you're sick, you have to rest. But otherwise, you show up and do the moves. Even if you don't want to. So the next time there's a fight, and you want to give up, you turn your brain off and you let your body take over. And you already know what to do because you've done it so many times before. 

Because it’s so easy to fall out of practice and just coast on auto-pilot, not really paying attention, doing the bare minimum. But showing up to practice, and then doing the practice is what matters. Not getting the gold medal. Not winning the competition. But drilling. Going through the motions, but with attention to mistakes so that you can learn, rinse, repeat, iterate, grow, and evolve. 

Evolution and the nature of evolution is a kind of higher power. We’re always changing. We are free to evolve into the highest version of ourselves.