The Work Is Easier When You Are Stronger
When my niece Stella was younger and traveling to her first jiu jitsu tournaments, she had meltdowns matside for a solid year. Just before her matches began, she was hit with panic attacks, full of tears.
My sister Kisa had a hell of a time figuring out was what wrong. She questioned Stella about whether she wanted to compete at all, but Stella insisted that she wanted to compete but didn’t know why she was so upset.
Several years and dozens of tournaments later, Stella and my sister understand that the meltdowns were caused by the pressure that Stella puts on herself. She’s a Type A, high performer, and she doesn’t settle for anything less than her best. The anxiety she feels before a tournament never went away, but Stella simply grew stronger.
Recently, I interviewed her about her first tournament with the USA Judo Team in Marrakech, Morocco. In the first match of her first competition with the USA Judo Team, Stella was submitted in only 20 seconds.
After the match, she felt a swell of emotions, and it was in that moment that those meltdowns as a child gave her the maturity and wisdom to process it all. She found a place where she said she could “feel the feels”, made space for them, pulled herself together, and went back out there to support her teammates.
