Joe Rogan - Martial Arts Helped Me with Insecurity

I'm interested in where, again, with your own... Do you feel connected to the person you were as an adolescent? Do you notice it in your own parenting? Do you notice it in the type of choices you make? Because the image I have of you from the outside is like that you have literally built something for yourself, you operate within it and you are quite protected and you are independent and not forced to deal with too many negative outside influences. But in unavoidable dynamics, the unnecessary dynamics, like as a father and dealing with colleagues and stuff like that, do you experience a lot of tension, anxiety? What has happened to that guy? Do you feel that you have transcended that? Because I do in my own life feel like, yeah, I'm not the adolescent boy I was. I've learned from that and I still, in a very sort of cod psychological way, when I'm doing a hibiro, that's the BJJ classes I'm doing over here with Professor Ricardo Will. He's an amazing guy. When I'm doing those classes, I have a sense of fathering my child's self. Because I weren't doing those kind of things when I was a kid, I'm like, it's all right Russell, we're just in a BJJ class, just relax. Don't need to panic, don't need to impress anybody, just do it. If you don't know, just ask. I've got a voice in myself. Because I chat to Tony Robbins, he's like another high achieving guy who I admire and respect a great deal. And when he talks, he does these cold plunges and he says, before I get in that plunge, I go, you're getting in that fucking plunge. Like he talks, my God, I don't talk to myself. Like, oh, like, right, Russell, we're going to get in the cold plunge. We're going to relax. Like I have to talk to myself generally. What are you doing with that aspect of yourself? Do you still have a relationship with it? How is it like when you're doing all these psychedelic cosmonautic explorations of the psyche, are you not encountering aspects of yourself that are undeveloped, unaddressed? There's always going to be unaddressed and undeveloped aspects of yourself, but I'm very, very, very different to who I was when I was a young boy. I mean, I'm not 100% self-actualized. I don't think anybody is, but I'm just a totally different human being. I remember it, but I remember it with humor. Like I remember it and I laugh. I'm like, wow, so silly. I was so weird back then. And, you know, with life experience and developing confidence and understanding of who you are and why you had those feelings and why you were insecure and why you had so much self-doubt, martial arts helped me with that tremendously because it was the first thing that I ever did where I didn't feel like a loser. It's like the first thing that I ever did where people like respected me and they liked me for it. You know, I'm like, wow, this is like something that was a feeling that I was completely unused to in the 14 previous years of my life. All of a sudden, there was this feeling that I was unusual. I was unique. I was special. Wow. Yeah. I was appreciated. You were good at it quick. Yeah. I was, I had a natural inclination towards it and I was obsessed with it. So I was obsessed with it. So I was training every day, all day long. And then my instructor recognized it really early on. So he allowed me to train there for free and just, I would teach classes and teaching classes helped me a lot as well because when you're teaching, you're breaking down techniques and you're, you know, you, when you're showing someone how to do it, you're really cementing those pathways in your own mind. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. That must be an important step on the road to mastery. I see that clip where Eddie Bravo gave you your black belt and you were very moved by that. Like, so for me, that like moments like that, it must connect you to the beginning of the journey. Yeah, that does. Yeah, for sure. And it's still, you know, the journey of jujitsu is a fascinating one because unless you're someone who's, you know, a Salo Hebero or a John Jack Machado, or just a true master who's dedicated their entire life to it, the journey is so long. It's so long. It's like if you're a guy who runs, you like to run, I like to run a mile three or four days a week, no big deal. But then, you know, your next door neighbor is an ultra marathon runner is preparing for the, the Moab 240 where he's going to run 240 miles. You're just, you're never going to catch up the same amount of times. And you should always defer to that person when you have questions about running. And that's how it is with jujitsu. Like is, you know, yeah, I'm a black belt, but I'm not a black belt. Like John Jack Machado is a black belt is there's levels to even to that. So I always have questions. So the journey is never over. It's always long. There's always a better way to get out of an arm bar or a better way to set up a triangle or whatever it is. There's the one of the beautiful things about jujitsu is that it's so complex. There's so many variables. There's so many situations and interactions and exchanges and entries and defenses and, and way to chain moves together and the correct way to set something up two, three steps ahead to know that if you grab the lapel this way, the guy's going to try to shake it off that way. And that exposes this, which exposes that. And then the next defense will expose this. And then you keep going and going and going and going until you get them. It's so beautiful to watch that because it's like, as if there's a pre-existing net or grid of interrelated signs that will work together. And like as a white belt, I got three stripes now. I was like, thanks. I was really hoping that by the time I came back on here, I'd have a blue belt and I'd be at it. You're closing in on it? I'm really happy to train. I'm training three times a week, private and I'm attending two classes. And what I've done is thanks a lot. And what's a significant step for me is like now in the classes when I'm inspiring people, I don't try just in the handshake to manipulate them into going easy. God, you look so lovely today. Oh, Ralph, we go then. How do you do? Will you try to manipulate people? Yeah, like just a subtle gesture or something like that. Right, right, right. Just try to take it easy on me. Come on, don't hurt me. Come on, look at me. Do you avoid big people? Yeah, sometimes I try and stay down that white belt into the room. But now the more I do it, the more they coax me up there. Great big giant men. There's a guy that goes, the soft ones up out, the hard end of purple belt and above. Dave, Paul Busby. And there's people like their hands and their feet look different to my hands and feet. As different, their hands and feet are as different from mine as mine are to my daughter's. How am I supposed to ever do anything with these people like hard water, like drowning in hard water, the way they move and fold around me? And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? My breathing goes. But the thing is with other white belts is that what I feel is like there is my ego comes back in. Because there's I feel like, no, I should be getting something. The first time I got choked out by another white belt, I felt like I went into a room I'd not been in since I was 16, getting my head kicked in in bus stops, you know, and stuff like that. I felt like I was quiet for 24 hours just sitting and reflecting on, oh, shit. And I had to speak to people like, this is a combat sport. This happens. You're going to experience, right, right. So it doesn't mean I'm a bad person. That I failed. No, you're going to have to get used to that. Yeah, you get used to humiliation. You get used to defeat, but it's that humbling is very good for you. You know, I mean, I don't know how many times I've been tapped out in my life, but it's probably more than a thousand. Probably probably thousands, you know? Yeah. And there are you sit there while I tell you about jujitsu. And the other and the other thing that's been good about it is like when it is the other way, like I remember like a guy that was a big guy on top of me and like I was he he was in mount, right? And like he weren't actually applying a submission, but they're just the sheer discomfort of having someone there. Their body, their sweat, their hair, their abdomen, their reproductive organs, their digestive system, feces in their bow on top of me. I just nearly tapped out at that. But then he went to move to get an arm bar and I thought, hang on a second. There's a moment and I managed to escape from that. And like the amount of energy that that really is like, fuck you. Justice. Now I win. Justice. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah. It's a well-being man. Very satisfying feeling. It's also very satisfying to defend against something that someone used to catch you with. Like say if someone's really good at taking your back, you choked you a couple of times and then one time they take your back, but you defend and you get out. You're like, I got out. Yes. Like, oh, there's an escape. I can make this. I'm getting better. I love being in the cave, that mental space, because what my technique was, oh, I'm not good at that. Never bother trying. I'm not good at that kind of stuff. Never bother trying. So for me at this stage in my life to go and do something that I'm not good at, this with other men that's competitive, that involves so much vulnerability failure and learning. I'm thinking, well, you're growing. You've got to be growing. So you're doing stuff that you never would have done before, even turning up at a new place like I'm doing here in LA and making those new relationships and doing that. You know, it's amazing for me. Another thing I enter into is the integrity of it, right? But it was Chris Clear, a black belt under Hoxha Gracie, right in the UK, my teacher, like if he gave me a blue belt, that would look good, man. It would be videoed. I would tweet. It would be everywhere. Oh, Russell Brand got a blue belt. This shit must work. But no, he doesn't do it out of integrity and respect for that. You know, it means more to him evidently. The act of kindness. You know, so like what is nice to belong to something that has protected and valuable systems. He did say to me, you keep going by the end of the year, blue belt, I think. But like, you know, it's not dished out. Like it's nice to know that there's some kind of order, an area where celebrity, manipulation, charm, human, none of those things, all redundant, all redundant. No, in jujitsu, it's very protected. Anyone that gives out a bad belt, it's very bad for their integrity. It's the school would lose face so badly in the community. And you meet someone who's a Hicks and Gracie brown belt. That motherfucker is a Hicks and Gracie brown belt. He's as legit as they get. They don't get any more legit. Like if you got to that point of Hicks and Gracie gives you a brown belt, it's irrefutable. And that's how it should be. And it's a beautiful thing about the art form is that it has this self-correcting sort of aspect to it that when you roll, when you spar with each other, your ability or lack of is exposed and there's no other way around it. Yeah, that's good to not avoid that. Yeah. It's good not to avoid that reality, but you'll be better. You know, you're, you're a fit guy. You're a healthy guy. If you just keep going and get off that vegan diet and keep going. Yeah.