1 Family Photo:
Meet Your Heroes
I met Adam Wardziński last week. Wardziński is the reigning IBJJF Heavyweight World Champion. From Poland, he's the first ever European to win the world championship in that weight class, and the first non-Brazilian to do it in the last 20-years. He has reinvented the butterfly guard and built a style of jiu jitsu, successful at the highest levels, that doesn't require copious amounts of muscles or athleticism. This is good for me, as someone who doesn't have a lot of either to spare. He gave a seminar nearby last week that I was grateful to attend.
It was exciting. He is my favorite active professional jiu jitsu competitor. I imagine I am on his list of his top ten favorite IT/Data consulting professionals.
Look at our faces—we were clearly equally excited to meet each other.
It's good to meet your heroes, at any age, but probably also good to keep your heroes in context.
Adam seems like an all-around good guy. His wife and kid have been traveling with him as he's given his seminars. They seemed happy together sitting beside the mat and waiting for the seminar to wrap up. I don't know though. I don't know him beyond his YouTube and Instagram videos.
Just because someone's good at a sport, doesn't mean their whole lives are worth emulating. Plenty of athletes have pretty awful personal lives. That's true for non-athletes as well.
People can be excellent in some domains, and imperfect in others. Worth keeping in mind when thinking about heroes and what parts of their lives
1 Dad Joke:
Born a Hero
"Character isn't a choice...I assume I'll be a hero in person, but I don't know."
- Lachlan Patterson
Highlights: In Search of Heroes
Perhaps the most important part of this topic is gaining better insight into who we should look up to, particularly who we want to be and who we want to emulate.
Naval once wrote:
The part of the person that we envy doesn’t exist without the rest of that person … One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.
Either you want someone else’s life or you don’t. Either is equally powerful. Just know which is which when finding role models.
How David Perell Uses ChatGPT to Write for Millions
One of the dangers of heroes is that you try to emulate the things that they do, and then you end up doing something that's not quite right for you because you're following their path and not yours. And usually there's a thing about heroes that you like that does resonate with you, and that thing is true and real. But if you just wholesale take their whole life and try to do it, it doesn't work.
Do you know the story of the bed of Procrustes? Okay, so this myth is amazing. It's an old Greek fable, and there's a hotel owner named Procrustes, and he's sort of this tyrannical hotel owner. And what he does is his entire hotel only has one size of bed, and he wants people to fit in the bed perfectly. So if somebody is too short, he stretches them out. And if somebody is too tall, he chops off their arms and legs so that they can fit in the bed. Right. And I think that a lot of people take a procrusting approach to their career where they say, I need to be this person. I need to fit into that bed.
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen
We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom. We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community.
12 truths I learned from life and writing by Anne Lamott
You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and chapstick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to.
iamJoshKnox Highlights:
O Captain | Walt Whitman
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