By # Learning to Drown: What Jiu Jitsu Taught Me About Humility, Hierarchy, and Everything That Matters
**What You'll Learn:**
- Why the mat is the most honest place on earth—and what that honesty teaches you
- The concept of "learning to drown" and why being killed repeatedly is the fastest path to growth
- How the gym's pecking order mirrors the hierarchies of business and life
- The discipline of humility: why ego is not just unhelpful but actively dangerous
- How surviving on the mat prepares you for surviving everywhere else
***
There's a moment in every person's Jiu Jitsu journey—usually in the first week—when they realize something profound:
**They know nothing.**
Not "they have room to improve." Not "they're beginners who need practice." They know *nothing.* Their body, which they've inhabited for decades, is a stranger to them. Their strength, which they thought was adequate, is useless. Their instincts, which they trusted, are actively working against them.
A person half their size is choking them unconscious, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
**This is the first lesson of Jiu Jitsu: You are not who you thought you were.**
I trained full-time for years. I've been choked, arm-locked, leg-locked, and submitted in ways I didn't know were possible. I've tapped out thousands of times. I've been on the bottom, gasping for air, wondering how a human body could be this heavy, this inescapable, this utterly dominant.
And I've learned more about business, about life, about myself from those experiences than from any book, any course, any mentor.
**The mat doesn't lie.** And in a world full of comfortable illusions, that honesty is priceless.
## Learning to Drown
Sam Harris, the philosopher and neuroscientist who trains Jiu Jitsu, coined a phrase that perfectly captures the experience:
**"Learning to drown."**
When you grapple with someone significantly more skilled than you, you are drowning. Not metaphorically—the experience is viscerally similar to being held underwater. You make furious effort to stay afloat. You struggle with everything you have. And you fail completely.
The more skilled person can put you in positions where, if this were a real fight, you would be dead. A chokehold that would put you to sleep in seconds. An arm lock that would snap your elbow. A position so dominant that you could do nothing but wait for the end.
**And then they let you go.**
They release the submission. They explain what you did wrong. They show you how to escape. And then they do it again—putting you right back in that position so you can practice surviving it.
This is what Harris calls "chess where you die and get resurrected." You experience lethal vulnerability. You learn the knowledge that would have saved you. You're "killed" again. You apply the knowledge. Gradually, the positions that were inescapable become survivable. The drowning becomes swimming.
**The growth is unlike anything else.**
Because the stakes feel real. Because ignorance isn't theoretical—it's visceral. You know what it costs to not understand, because you just experienced it. The person's arm was around your neck, and you couldn't breathe, and you had no idea what to do.
Then you learn what to do. And you'll never forget it, because you know exactly what happens if you do.
## The Mat Doesn't Lie
Here's what's special about Jiu Jitsu compared to most activities in modern life:
**There is no faking it.**
In business, you can bullshit. You can use jargon, you can deflect, you can take credit for others' work, you can fail upward through politics and charm.
In relationships, you can hide. You can present a curated version of yourself, avoid vulnerability, maintain walls that protect you from being truly known.
In social settings, you can posture. Status games, one-upmanship, the endless dance of appearing more competent, more successful, more together than you actually are.
**On the mat, none of this works.**
You cannot talk your way out of a rear naked choke. You cannot network your way out of mount. You cannot fake competence when a skilled opponent is actively trying to submit you.
Either you know how to escape, or you tap.
Either you understand the position, or you get swept.
Either you've developed the skill, or you get submitted.
The mat reveals exactly where you are. No more, no less. A blue belt walks in thinking they're ready for purple, and the purple belts show them—not through words, not through judgment, just through rolling—exactly how much distance remains.
**This is the most honest feedback loop on earth.**
And once you get used to that level of honesty, you start to see the bullshit everywhere else. You recognize when people are posturing because you know what real competence feels like—it doesn't need to announce itself. You recognize when you're fooling yourself because you know what honest self-assessment feels like—it hurts.
**The mat trains you to see reality clearly.** And that clarity transfers to everything.
## The Pecking Order
Every Jiu Jitsu gym has a hierarchy. It's explicit in the belt system: white, blue, purple, brown, black. Each belt represents years of accumulated knowledge, tested under pressure, refined through repetition.
But there's also an implicit hierarchy: **time on the mat.**
A four-year white belt commands more respect than a one-year blue belt because time matters. Showing up matters. Surviving the attrition—the injuries, the plateaus, the days when you don't want to train—matters more than any promotion.
This pecking order isn't about ego. It's about **earned respect.**
The upper belts have been where you are. They've drowned in the same positions. They've felt the same frustration. They've wanted to quit and didn't. They earned their place through the only currency that matters: **time under pressure.**
And here's what's beautiful about it: **The hierarchy is enforced by physics, not politics.**
No one has to tell you to respect the purple belts. The purple belts demonstrate, every time you roll with them, exactly why they outrank you. They put you in positions you didn't see coming. They escape things you thought were locked in. They make you feel like a white belt again, even if you're a blue belt now.
**The hierarchy is earned, demonstrated, and maintained through action.** Not titles. Not credentials. Not who you know or how you present yourself.
This is what organizational hierarchy *should* look like. And training in an environment where it actually works that way teaches you to recognize—and reject—hierarchies that don't.
## The Discipline of Humility
Every gym has a saying: **"Leave your ego at the door."**
Most people hear this as a suggestion. A nice idea. Something to aspire to.
**In Jiu Jitsu, it's a survival requirement.**
If your ego prevents you from tapping when you're caught, you get injured. Not metaphorically—your arm breaks. Your shoulder dislocates. Your knee tears.
If your ego prevents you from admitting you don't understand, you don't learn. You keep getting submitted in the same positions because you're too proud to ask for help.
If your ego makes you avoid rolling with people better than you, you stagnate. Growth comes from being challenged, and challenge requires finding people who can beat you.
**Ego isn't just unhelpful in Jiu Jitsu. It's actively dangerous.**
This recalibrates your relationship with ego across your entire life.
In business, I've watched ego destroy companies. Leaders who couldn't admit they were wrong. Founders who couldn't accept feedback. Executives who surrounded themselves with yes-men because they couldn't handle challenge.
They never learned to tap. They never developed the humility to say "I don't know" or "I was wrong" or "Help me understand."
**Jiu Jitsu beats that out of you.** Not through lectures about humility—through experience. You tap or you break. You admit ignorance or you stay ignorant. You accept challenge or you stagnate.
The mat makes humility non-negotiable. And once humility becomes habit, you carry it everywhere.
## Problem-Solving Under Pressure
Here's what a roll actually is:
Two people are actively trying to submit each other. Both have extensive training. Both are thinking several moves ahead. Both are constantly adapting to what the other is doing.
**It's chess at high speed, with physical consequences for every mistake.**
When you're in a bad position—when someone is passing your guard, when you're stuck in side control, when they're setting up a submission—you don't have time for panic. You don't have time for analysis paralysis. You have seconds to assess the situation, identify the most critical threat, and execute a counter.
**This is problem-solving in its purest form.**
No time for ego. No time for blame. No time for wishing the situation were different. Just: What's happening? What's the threat? What can I do right now?
And you do this while exhausted. While someone's weight is crushing you. While your muscles are burning and your lungs are screaming for air.
**If you can problem-solve there, you can problem-solve anywhere.**
Business pressure feels different after you've trained. A difficult negotiation? You've been in worse positions. A crisis that requires rapid decision-making? You've made decisions with someone's arm around your neck. A situation where the stakes feel overwhelming? The stakes are always overwhelming when you're drowning.
**The mat teaches you that you can function under pressure.** That panic is optional. That there's always something you can try, even when the position seems hopeless.
And that confidence—earned through thousands of rounds where you found the escape, where you survived the position, where you turned disaster into opportunity—transfers directly to everything else.
## The Lessons That Transfer
Let me be specific about what years of Jiu Jitsu taught me that applies to business and life:
### 1. Comfort with Discomfort
The first month of Jiu Jitsu is brutal. You're constantly exhausted. You're constantly confused. You're constantly failing. Nothing about it is comfortable.
**And you keep showing up anyway.**
You learn that discomfort isn't a signal to stop. It's a signal that you're in the growth zone. The positions that are most uncomfortable are usually the positions you most need to practice.
In business, this translates directly. The conversations you're avoiding are usually the important ones. The tasks that feel overwhelming are usually the ones that matter. Comfort is not the goal—growth is.
### 2. Long Time Horizons
A black belt takes 8-10 years of consistent training. There are no shortcuts. There is no hacking the process. You either put in the time, or you don't get the skill.
**You learn to think in years, not weeks.**
This is invaluable for building anything meaningful. Companies, skills, relationships—all require time horizons that most people can't tolerate. Jiu Jitsu trains you to tolerate them, because you've experienced what a decade of dedicated practice produces.
### 3. Trusting the Process
When you start, the gap between you and the upper belts seems impossibly large. You can't imagine ever being that good.
**But you watch people progress.** You watch white belts become blue belts. You watch blue belts become purple belts. You watch the same process that seems impossible when you're in it produce results over time.
You learn to trust the process even when you can't see the progress. Because you've witnessed, over and over, that consistent effort compounds into capability.
### 4. Ego as Enemy
We covered this, but it bears repeating: **Jiu Jitsu proves that ego is an enemy, not an asset.**
Every position you refuse to practice because it's embarrassing. Every partner you avoid because they make you feel incompetent. Every tap you delay because you don't want to admit defeat.
All of it slows your progress. All of it increases your injury risk. All of it makes you worse, not better.
**You learn to separate self-worth from performance.** You can be submitted without being diminished. You can fail without being a failure. You can not know something without being stupid.
### 5. Respect Earned Through Action
The belt around someone's waist isn't given for showing up. It's given for demonstrated skill, tested repeatedly, refined under pressure.
**You learn that respect should be earned, not granted.**
This changes how you evaluate people. You stop being impressed by titles and start looking for demonstrated capability. You stop listening to what people claim and start watching what they can do.
## The Metaphor for Life
Jiu Jitsu is often called "physical chess" or "the gentle art." But the most accurate metaphor might be this:
**Jiu Jitsu is life, compressed and clarified.**
In life, you face situations where you're outmatched. Positions where escape seems impossible. Moments where all your strength and all your will aren't enough.
In life, there are hierarchies—some earned, some not. There are people who will challenge you and people who will fold under challenge.
In life, ego will either serve you or destroy you. Humility will either be forced upon you or chosen by you.
**Jiu Jitsu lets you practice all of this in a controlled environment.** You drown, but you're resurrected. You fail, but the failure is instructive. You get humbled, but the humbling makes you better.
And when you face the same dynamics outside the gym—in business, in relationships, in the endless challenges of building a life worth living—you've already been there.
**You've already learned to drown.**
## The Invitation
I trained full-time because I understood that the mat was teaching me things no other environment could. The honesty, the humility, the hierarchy, the problem-solving under pressure—all of it was preparation for everything else.
If you've never trained, I'm not here to tell you to start. That's your decision, and it's a serious commitment.
But I am here to tell you this: **There's immense value in putting yourself in environments where you can't fake it.**
Environments where the feedback is immediate and undeniable. Where ego is liability. Where you're forced to confront the gap between who you think you are and who you actually are.
Jiu Jitsu is one such environment. There are others.
**The point is not the specific discipline. The point is the discipline itself.**
Find something that humbles you. Find something that reveals your incompetence in real-time. Find something where you have no choice but to learn, to adapt, to tap when you're caught and come back to try again.
**That's where growth happens.** Not in comfort. Not in environments where you can hide. In the drowning. In the resurrection. In the slow, painful accumulation of capability that only honest feedback can produce.
I am who I am, in significant part, because the mat showed me who I was—and gave me the tools to become someone better.
**That's the gift of Jiu Jitsu. That's the discipline of humility.**
***
### The BJJ Belt Progression:
| Belt | Typical Time | Key Characteristics |
|------|-------------|---------------------|
| **White** | 0-2 years | Survival focus, learning to drown, basic escapes |
| **Blue** | 2-4 years | Offensive development, connecting techniques |
| **Purple** | 4-6 years | Personal style emerges, teaching juniors |
| **Brown** | 6-8 years | Refinement, deep technical understanding |
| **Black** | 8-10+ years | Mastery, innovation, leadership |
### Core Lessons from the Mat:
| Mat Lesson | Life Application |
|------------|------------------|
| **Learning to drown** | Comfort with failure as a learning mechanism |
| **The mat doesn't lie** | Honest self-assessment, rejecting comfortable illusions |
| **Pecking order** | Respect earned through demonstrated capability |
| **Ego as danger** | Humility as strategic advantage, not weakness |
| **Problem-solving under pressure** | Calm decision-making in crisis |
### What Jiu Jitsu Teaches About Business:
1. **You can't fake competence** — Eventually, you have to deliver
2. **Time under pressure builds capability** — There are no shortcuts
3. **Hierarchy should be earned** — Titles mean nothing without demonstrated skill
4. **Ego blinds you to reality** — Humility is a competitive advantage
5. **Discomfort signals growth** — Comfort is the enemy of progress
### The Drowning and Resurrection Cycle:
```
Enter position you can't escape
↓
Experience controlled "death" (submission)
↓
Learn the escape from a higher belt
↓
Enter same position again
↓
Apply the knowledge
↓
[Repeat until position becomes survivable]
```
### Sources:
* [Proscris: The Philosophy of Digital Sovereignty](https://proscris.com)
* [Sam Harris: The Pleasures of Drowning](https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-pleasures-of-drowning)
* [BJJ Philosophy and Humility](https://bjjfanatics.com/blogs/news/bjj-philosophy)
* [Stop Chasing, Start Becoming](https://proscris.com/blog)
* [The Only Currency That Matters: Time](https://proscris.com/blog)
---
**The mat teaches what nothing else can.**
If you're building something—a business, a life, a self—find environments that force you to confront reality. That strip away the comfortable lies. That make humility non-negotiable.
Proscris is built on lessons learned through years of being drowned and resurrected. The discipline transfers.
[The growth is in the drowning.](https://proscris.com/contact)
