Welcome to Episode #98 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Tame Your Brain to Win the Game.”
Are you too smart for your own good? Does overthinking get in the way of performing at your best?
If you’re like me, the answer is YES! My mind is so busy judging, worrying, and arguing that it sometimes stops me from learning and growing. Sure, I’ve gotten better at training my brain to help me reach my goals, but the battle to maximize my mind seems to never end.
In this episode, I’m going to share my most recent mental battle, along with some tips on how to tame the brain so you can approach your flow state more often.
Is entering “the zone” or achieving “mushin” a random, unpredictable event or can you balance the powers of your mind, body, and spirit on demand? Let’s find out!
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Tame Your Brain to Win the Game
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TRANSCRIPT
Well, hello there. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #98 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
Welcome to the first episode being recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina. My wife and I moved out here to the East Coast, grabbed an apartment outside of town, and except for the incessant fan humming from our neighbor’s apartment next door, everything’s going great.
I have been a little quiet lately, but fear not, I have been very busy mapping out the future. I’ll have a bunch of new classes, videos, podcasts, and courses coming up, and I’m excited to see what you’ll think of all of that. But today, that’s not what we’re talking about.
Today, we’re talking about the brain and how to tame your brain. And we’ll do that by talking about how I tame my brain.
In the past, we’ve talked about kindness, how being nice can actually work against you in the martial arts, particularly in self-defense. Being kind can get in the way. Well, what about being smart?
Are you too smart for your own good?
Now, I’m not talking about intelligence necessarily. Something that you would measure with a test. How good are you at math or reading comprehension? I’m really just talking about thinking too much.
Are you in your head too much? Are you listening to the wrong voices in your head? Is your monkey brain out of control, filling your head with doubts and fears and insecurities?
Mine usually is. I’ll tell you right now. I am a mind-based guy. Let’s say we have these three powers in our bodies, in our lives. Mind, body, spirit, right? So you’re thinking and you’re feeling and you’re driving, okay?
All of us, I think, have a different prime motor. Some people live from their groin, live from their guts and their instincts, and that can get you into trouble if you don’t think a little bit. Some people lead with their heart, and that can leave them vulnerable. Maybe overly sensitive. And in the case of the brain, if you think too much and you’re not in touch with your drives and your feelings, then that can get you into trouble.
So I’ll tell you right up front, the big point of this show is going to be balance. How to balance your mind, your body, and your spirit, so that you’re always growing and learning and having the best shot at success in life.
But specific to this episode, I want to talk about what to do when the brain is out of balance. When the brain is just doing too much, or trying to do too much, and you’re not listening enough to your feelings or your drives. That’s the problem.
So some people, when you get into this zone of perfect balance between mind, body, and spirit, you might call that your flow state. You might call that getting into the zone. You might call that ultra instinct. In the Japanese arts, you’ll hear the term mushin or mushin no shin, mind without mind.
Well, how do you get into these states? How do you find this maximal balance of mind, body, and spirit? I’ll give you a couple tips on that. I’ll tell you about some of my struggles lately with it, and I’ll give you some tips that have been helping me. Okay?
Now, I’ll tell you, I knew early on from childhood that I lead with the brain too much. That I was a thinker. Because just playing around with your friends, you can tell some people can do cartwheels and some people can’t. I couldn’t. Some people were just so in touch with their center of gravity and their body, they could just move. And I was always kind of stuck in my head and worried and analyzing, and it would keep me from moving as naturally.
The one thing back then, I’m not saying you should do this now, but the one thing I found for relief back then was I would climb a hill, particularly in a wooded area, and I would just run down the hill as fast as I could. No path. It didn’t matter if the leaves were slippery or there were lots of branches, that would make it even better.
But the idea was, I didn’t know what I was doing on purpose, but I would find relief just throwing my body down hills or snow banks when the plows would pile up snow up in Buffalo, to just throw my body down these things and let it cascade.
Just tapping into that survival mechanism, trying to live more from my body and my– I don’t want to say groin necessarily, but you get the idea– my guts, of just trying to get down that hill and not die, turned off the brain. There was no time for harmful thinking, only helpful thinking. Grab this, look out for that, that’s fine. But I didn’t have time to worry, I didn’t have time to second guess my decisions or calculate my footing. You just had to go on instinct.
That’s why, eventually, I think, I fell in love with the martial arts. Because martial arts was another experience that can be overwhelming in a good way. Where you don’t have time to think too much.
If you’re sparring and rolling at an appropriate degree, you’re not going to have time to second guess yourself. You’re going to have to test your balance of powers. If you’re in your head too much, you’re just going to get beat up.
By the same token, if you go throwing yourself in, you’re just wild and out of control, you’ll also get beat up eventually. If you are just being overly sensitive and not applying the information that you’re getting through your senses, then you’ll also get beat up.
So again, it kept pointing me back to a balance of powers. However, when you’re learning martial arts, the brain can get in the way while you’re learning the drills and the exercises that you’re going to go then spar and roll with. And I’m telling you the most recent example of this has been right now here in my new home on the East Coast because as soon as I hit town, the first day I was here, I went and joined up with Sifu TW Smith’s group.
You may remember Sifu Tim. He’s been a friend of the podcast. We have a video together here on the channel. If you haven’t checked out his podcast, Kung Fu Podcasts, I’ll put a link below. But he has a really friendly group of people here. They lost their school, just like I had lost my school during the lockdown. But they’re training in the park and finding some space at local schools.
So I was very excited to go and train with this group. And everyone’s been very friendly and patient. And if you ask my mind, are you open? Are you open to learning? It would say yes. That’s why I showed up. That’s why I’m here on the first day possible.
But if you ask my ego, it would say no. No. What these people are doing is stupid. You don’t need this. What are they doing? They look ridiculous.
There’s a fight in my brain. I’m showing up to classes. We’re doing Tai Chi, Bagua, Xing Yi. They have a little Hop Gar and Choy Li Fut on the side. So it’s a complex curriculum.
There’s a lot going on, which means I don’t know what’s going on. These are new drills, new ideas, new terminology. And I’m taking advice from new people, all nice people, all skillful people. And I’m smiling. And I’m there because I have an open mind.
But even as I’m smiling and they are sharing information and they are being kind and patient, inside my head there are other voices.
No! This is stupid! What are you doing? Go home! Do what you know! You don’t need this.
These voices are there.
You look ridiculous. You can’t do this. This is too hard. You’re too old to do this.
Voices. The brain in the way. Overthinking. So I get it. Even though I thought I was kind of over these issues, right? Because I’ve trained in multiple arts. I’ve been the beginner before.
As a teacher, I see students wrestling with this issue. And I’ve coached them through it many, many times. And yet, here I am again. Stuck with the same brain. Attacking my progress.
Now, you, I’m sure, have these same experiences, right? And it doesn’t even have to be just from cross-training and trying something new and tying on a white belt. Within your own school, in your own style.
Have you ever sparred with someone who is a lower rank? Maybe even a beginner. And they give you a tip. How does that make you feel? You’re sparring, they’re new, newer than you, and they say, hey, you should keep your hands up, or hey, you should pivot more.
Now, it doesn’t matter if that information is true or not. Do you not have part of your brain that immediately chimes in like, What? Who are you? Shut up. Do you know who I am? Look at your rank. I’m higher than you.
I mean, I can’t be the only one, right? So it could be from another student. It could be from a peer. Maybe they’re the same rank. They give you a tip. They show you a different way of doing something. And again, your brain jumps in like, I don’t want to hear this. Not from you.
It could be from teachers. I certainly had this experience where you have one teacher who you respect show you one way to do something. Maybe a little movement in a form, a little tweak. But another teacher that you also respect shows you the opposite tweak. Something different. And your brain doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s just confused.
I don’t like this. I like that. I don’t want to do it that way. But he told me to do it this way.
The brain is confusing you.
You could see videos, whether that’s in your style or without your style. And it could be great information. And as you’re watching, you’re just judging so much that you don’t really learn anything. You’re just thinking, Oh, he looks stupid. Oh, that technique would never work. Oh, my style does that better.
These thoughts are not helpful. But they’re there. They’re in your head. At least mine.
Even your body can mess with your brain. You have a shoulder injury from years ago. And now your teacher comes over and says, Hey, when you do this move, you should rotate your shoulder more like this. And before your body even has a chance to try that, your brain jumps in and says, No, no, no, no, my shoulder can’t do that. That’s my bad shoulder. Nope.
Limitations. Closing up. You’re trying to keep that open mind to grow and gain. And instead, your brain is jumping in to stop that process from happening.
I even broke it down to four characters, if you like. Four characters that you’re going to run into at your martial arts school, or that you’re going to end up playing in your martial arts school.
One of those characters, one of these harmful brain characters, I would call the questioner.
I’m thinking of a guy right now. I’m not going to use his name, but I can see his face. Teacher starts showing a move: Okay, A, you’re starting to do this. Oh, hang on now, wait a minute. When you do that, but doesn’t that leave you open for…
Haven’t even finished showing the technique yet. And this guy is already closing his mind. Teacher goes on. Okay, so after A, now we go to B. Hold on, wait, but yes, but you said before the foot should be turned this way. Now you’re turning the foot that way.
Okay, maybe the teacher finishes showing the technique. A, B, C. Now you get partnered with this guy, the questioner. And you don’t even get to practice because immediately, he’s like, Yeah, now when he showed it, did he show it this way or did he show it that way? Why do you have to keep your hand this way? Did he say why?
Just shut up, man. This is an example of your brain not wanting to have a new experience. It doesn’t even want to try something new. It closes up to just stay in its own secure little cocoon where nothing new is going to get in. Brain closed. The questioner.
Another character. The objector.
I’m thinking of a person right now. I can see his face. High level person. Black belt. Skilled black belt. Another skilled black belt shows a technique, however. A, B, C. A legendary type of person shows a technique. Here’s the move, guys. A, B, C.
You get partnered with this guy though. The objector. And he’s going to say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, A, B, C. But here’s X, Y, Z. I like X, Y, Z a lot better. Let’s do X, Y, Z.
What’s that? What are you doing? Again, there’s this fear of the unknown. That brain doesn’t want them to look stupid as a higher ranked guy. Doesn’t want to learn something new. Doesn’t want to experience something different. Just wants to go through the patterns of what they already know. Close the brain. Again, close the mind.
Another character, the Joker.
I’m thinking of another person. I can see his face. And look, sometimes that face is mine. This is a person who is so afraid of looking silly, that they will make themselves look silly first on purpose under their own control.
Rather than try something new and fail, or look ignorant, or make mistakes, they make jokes. They talk about movies. They make snarky comments. They use some sarcasm. They change the subjects. Anything to distract them from actually trying the technique.
You never even get to ABC. It’s all just ha ha ha. And again, that can feel friendly at first, like, oh, this person’s got a great sense of humor. They’re fun to work with. But at some point you say, you’re wasting my time here, man. I want to work. I want to learn. I’m willing to make a mistake. That’s already hard enough for me to do that. And now you’re holding me up, because you don’t want to do that.
Again, closed mind. Closed it with a smile, but they closed it.
One more character. I see a face. And sometimes it’s mine. The competitor.
This is the guy who’s got to win, even when it’s not a contest. Every drill, every exercise, they gotta go fast, they gotta go hard. They gotta shape it to a way that makes sense to them. And that’s that. They win. As if there’s a pile of cash on the table. And if they can just do this drill faster and stronger than you, they’re going to take that money home.
Delirious. I mean, just craziness.
I remember this one particular fellow, who was a great wrestler. Super strong, super fast, great wrestler. And that’s what he did in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class. Yeah, there’s some crossover, but he wouldn’t do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He would just wrestle. And I remember a teacher watching him perform. And he just said, very casually, You know, he’d be great if he actually did what we were doing.
Great comment. He noticed that this guy’s got a closed mind. He’s great at what he’s doing, but his learning has stopped now because he won’t try something that he doesn’t know, that he’s not good at, that he can’t win with yet.
So, do you recognize these characters? Have you played these characters? And let me be clear– this isn’t about laziness here. A closed mind isn’t lazy. If anything, that brain is working overtime to create all of these characters and all of this noise for you.
That brain is working hard to stop your learning process.
And it takes many different masks. It wears different masks. That noise in your head can be ego, arrogance.
Sometimes it comes up as fear, or you feel it as confusion. Sometimes it’s anger, resentment. Sometimes it’s doubt or embarrassment, competitiveness, performance anxiety.
There are so many names for it. So many ways you can find it. But it all adds up to trouble. It all adds up to slowing you down.
Now even though that all sounds negative– and it does, right?– the mind is not your enemy. Again, this is about finding a balance. The brain can help you if you can tame it. If you don’t, it’s just going to keep stopping you from succeeding.
Here’s a parallel that I think makes sense. Have you ever tried to do a full split? If you’re a martial artist, I have no doubt you have tried to do a full split, or you’re trying to do one right now. What happens?
You start off tall, right? You start sliding your feet out. In the beginning, you’re like, yeah, no problem. I have this idea in my head. So you start going down, you go down. Then you start slowing down. And you start thinking like, okay, it’s getting a little tight here, but I’m tough. I can do it.
Your brain’s supplying some positive thoughts. Yeah, you got this. I’ve seen people do this. I can do this. But then your body starts working against you, right? No matter what you say in your head, you start getting tighter. You start worrying about tearing a muscle, popping out a bone, popping out your hip, tearing your pants, looking stupid, failing.
Then what happens? Your body at some point just, ding, locks. You get stopped. Somehow, your body and your brain have made a deal like, we’re not going to let you do that.
Now, biology was a long time ago for me, so I can’t remember if that’s a muscle reaction, a tendon reaction, or the Golgi reaction. But there’s something in the body, built in, senses, sensory mechanisms that stop you because it’s afraid you’re going to hurt yourself. Your body has not seen you do this before, and it’s not going to let you do it right now.
Right? So we recognize that mechanism in the body. But that mechanism, I believe, is in the brain as well. You start off with an open mind. Hey, I want to learn something. Then here comes the new information. Here come these new experiences where you have the room to make mistakes and fail and look stupid.
Now your ego jumps in to protect you, to protect your sense of confidence, to protect your sense of self, your identity. Your brain has done a good job of helping you succeed up to today. Right? You’re not a complete failure.
No matter who you are, you have had successes to get here today because of the way your brain is wired. So when your brain opens and lets in new information and suddenly starts feeling like it doesn’t know what it’s doing and doesn’t have a handle on it, it closes back up to protect you, to make sure you still feel confident and you still have those tools that got you this far.
It feels like you’re going to go backwards if you open up your brain and you lose all your tools. You lost your edge. That’s the problem.
So I just want to make sure you understand, as I try to understand it, the brain and the monkey brain and the fears and the doubts and the insecurities, they’re designed to help you. It’s a positive thing.
But there’s a right time and a right place and there’s a right proportion to all that kind of noise. And we just got to put it in the right measure. Balance it out with the body and the drives, the spirit, so that you are a fully functioning human being. You’re not getting stopped in your tracks. You’re not thinking too much.
Okay, so just to clarify a little bit before I’ve got three tips coming up here to help, I think, tame the brain to win the game. Before I do, I just want to make one quick little point. This idea of mushin, the mind without mind, this being in the zone– sometimes you hear it talked about as if you’re not thinking at all.
So people will talk about their training in a way that it makes it sound like, Yeah, the idea is to train so much that your body just does it all by itself. You don’t have to think. And I just want to be really careful about that thinking– the thinking about no thinking.
Even the term mushin, the mind without mind, mushin no shin, it doesn’t really mean “no thinking”. It means no harmful thinking, no restrictive thinking, no thinking that’s going to get in the way of you succeeding at what you’re doing. It’s getting rid of the monkey brain. It’s getting rid of all the noise that’s keeping you from hearing things and seeing things clearly.
Sometimes I hear it in martial arts said in different ways where they’ll, they talk about this idea of: I didn’t punch them with my fist. The fist punched all by itself.
And that always makes me shrug because I think it’s crazy. That’s, or at least it’s misunderstood. Imagine being in a self-defense situation and you take out three guys and now you end up in court. And when you’re on the stand, you testify–
Well, Your Honor, listen, you know, I train in the martial arts. And I really can’t be held responsible. I wasn’t thinking at the time. Yes, I see the surveillance video. I seem to have killed three people here. But to be honest, my hands and my feet did all of that on their own. I didn’t think about it at all.
That’s going to, you’re going to end up either on medication or locked up or both. The idea here is not to let your body do whatever it wants to, even if it’s well trained on its own, or let your body and spirit run wild because you’ve trained them so well. No, no, no, your mind should always be part of what you’re doing. There should be some strategizing, there should be some analysis, there should be some choosing going on.
That’s the balance of powers, just like in government in the United States– we have three branches of government, so that no one branch gets too powerful. You have another two to kind of check it out, the balance of powers. Checks and balances. Same thing in your body.
Mushin no shin, being in the zone, being in a flow state, does not mean, in my world, should not mean that you’re not thinking at all. It just means that you’ve gotten rid of the thoughts that are holding you back, that are holding you from performing at your best.
So there’s always room for thinking. Don’t let your fist act all by itself. That’s trouble.
All right, so how to tame the brain to win the game. Oh, I do love a good rhyme. Or a bad rhyme.
Here come three tips to tame your brain…
Okay, tip number one. Train in silence. Train with silence. Train to be silent.
I’ve talked about this one before, but it’s still important. When I was a teenager in Taekwondo, I had a lot of personality conflict with my teacher. And I shot my mouth off. I couldn’t be quiet. And that led to more trouble. And it was a huge growing experience for me to just learn to just shut up.
The questioner, the objector, the joker. That guy had no place in a studio, in a school, because I wasn’t there to learn anymore. I was there to protect my identity.
Of course, a good teacher recognizes that and helps you work through that. But I would challenge you as well. The next time that your brain objects or questions or jokes, don’t say anything. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good thought or you’re not right. But just the exercise of not voicing it, of not saying it out loud, gives your brain a different sense of control over what’s going on.
If everything that comes to your mind then comes out of your mouth, you just keep empowering your brain to say whatever it wants. I would like to put a little filter there just to control it, to tame the brain. To let it know, Hey, just because you gave me a thought here, brain, doesn’t mean I’m going to say it, doesn’t mean I’m going to share it, doesn’t mean I value it.
It’s just there. To me, I’m just going to say it’s noise.
Again, pick your battles. I’m not saying you have to walk around and take a vow of silence for months. But just find a few times in a day where, hey, your friend is saying something you don’t agree with, and you just smile. You just, you don’t say anything.
Now, that could be really hard. Believe me, I know. So, here’s one little crutch that I can give you. If it’s hard to just stay quiet, then give yourself something to sing, like hum, humming a song that you like. Or say the alphabet. Try this, and please let me know if it works for you.
When you’re sparring or you’re rolling next time, and you’re a type of person where your mind is in the way and you’re worried about things and you’re second guessing your choices and you’re hesitating a lot and you’re not really in the zone, start saying the alphabet to yourself. Or give yourself a mantra to say over and over again. Or hum Happy Birthday to yourself.
The idea here has worked for me is to just give your monkey brain– that part of your brain that’s looking for trouble, trying to protect you– give it something to do. And then that opens up the rest of your brain to just get what you need to do done.
It might sound nuts, but just give your brain something to do. Just start humming A, B, C, D, E, F, while you’re fighting and I do believe you’re going to feel different. And as a bonus, even if it doesn’t work for you, if you’re humming, it’ll annoy your partner. They’ll think, What? Why am I not scaring this guy? He’s humming? What is that?
Give that a try. Let me know.
Tip number two, to tame your brain. Train with pain.
I’m not talking about injuring yourself, but again, this is something we’ve talked about before. When I wake up in the morning, I’ll tell you, first thing I do as part of my morning workout is I drop into a five minute horse stance and a five minute plank. I usually wrap it all up with a cold shower.
I don’t enjoy any of those, but the idea is specifically to get out of my head as soon as I can. Rather than start my workout with a bunch of drills and exercises or forms where I can immediately start judging and having memories and doubts and criticisms, I immediately, because I’m a head heavy guy, I start my training by trying to drop my senses into my body.
When you drop into a deep squat and try to hold that or a plank, the first minute or two, your brain is still really active, like, Yeah, no problem. Okay, what am I worried about today? What’s going on in the world?
Your brain’s active, noisy. And then in that middle period, that three to four minutes, then your body starts demanding attention, saying, Okay, up there, brain– that’s enough of that noise, I need help down here.
And that fourth to fifth minute, I’m out of my head. All the monkey brain noise is gone. Other than going, Oh, my God, this is horrible, this is horrible, at some point, you break through. You know how you talk about getting a second wind where your lungs adjust and you end up in a more relaxed state again? You’re not panting.
Same thing with the mind, I believe. You get a second mind. You get through the monkey brain, you get through the criticism, you get through the drama, and it just clears out. Eventually your mind says, Okay, forget it, I’m not going to talk to you anymore. If you’re not going to listen, I’m not going to talk to you anymore. And you say, Oh, good.
Then in that silence, now you’ve got a balance again between your brain and your body. So, train a little pain. However, that makes sense to you. Hold a bowl of cereal over your head for an hour. I don’t care. But find something that makes you uncomfortable and just sit with it for a while until your brain shuts up.
Tip number three. Train to say, okay.
This is an example of replacing judgment with acceptance. Just accept it.
My grandfather was the greatest example of this. One of his little catch phrases, what I remember him saying, he would say, Okay for you.
He’s pouring himself a glass of port– Hey, want a glass of port? No, Grandpa, I don’t drink. Okay for you. That’s it. Wouldn’t try to persuade me to take a drink or call me names for not drinking or judge. No, just, Okay for you. Accepted that I didn’t want it.
Hey, Grandpa, where are you going? Going to church. Mass is at 10. Okay, I don’t feel like going. Okay for you. This was his answer for most things, as I remember. Just, Okay for you.
He made his choices. He followed his path. You’re welcome to join, but if not, Okay for you. I think that’s a really healthy thing.
When I’m being shown exercises that are new, my brain is saying, you don’t need this. This is silly. This is a waste of time. The alternative is just saying, okay, I’ll just do it. No, you don’t want to do it? Okay. I’ll give it a try.
It’s not that you’re not going to judge again. You’re going to judge. Your brain’s going to get active at some point. But I’m basically just putting it off for a second just by saying, Okay, let me have the experience first, and then let me judge it second.
This, I think, is a healthy way to train your brain. If you don’t walk in with that open mind, your brain starts saying, I don’t like this. There’s a problem. But if you say, Okay, let’s go with it a little bit. Then you have some experience and you might end up liking it.
If you don’t, well, here’s the good news, my beautiful friend: You can always go back to who you were before. For all of these tips, you give them a try. You try to open your mind for as long as you can, experience new things as much as you can, smile, throw yourself out there, make mistakes, fail, do all that. And if it doesn’t work, there’s no penalty. You just go back to who you were before.
Don’t forget that. That’s the last little point here. Don’t forget that whoever you are now, the tools that you had to make you this successful and this level of happy, you still have those. No one’s taking those away from you. I’m not. And if anything, your body and your brain are going to cling to them as hard as they can. That’s what all that noise is. You’re trying to hold on to who you are.
But if you want to go a little farther down the road of success, then this is where these tips come in. To try to turn off the monkey, clear away some of that noise, and open up that mind a little bit farther to create a little bit more space to gain something new. If you don’t like it, then spit it back out and walk away.
But you might find out, and I think more often than not you will, particularly because you’re around good teachers, good people, happy world, you’ll find things that deepen your wisdom and deepen your skills.
Okay, so this all makes sense, I hope. We’re talking again about taming the brain so you can win the game. And I’m talking about winning the game of life here.
The secret is to recognize that you are made up of three powers generally, mind, body, spirit. You are a thinking animal, you are a feeling animal, and you are a driving animal. You have instincts. The trick as a martial artist, as a student, as a human being, is to break them up sometimes and work on each one individually and then more importantly, bring them all together and teach them, train them, to work together as a team.
That is how you will be at your maximum level of power. That’s how you’ll make the most of whatever it is that you’ve got. Balance in your thinking, feeling, and driving, taming your brain, taming your heart, taming your guts. If you can do all of that, then you’ll have the best chance at winning this game of a happy life.
Okay, my friend, I hope you’ll give some of that a try, and then let me know how it goes.
Until I see you next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
