"Quit Being A Scrub"

There was a particular conversation several years ago that had a tremendous impact on the trajectory of my life. This is a very personal story to share, as it's a telling of the lowest point of my life, and one that I was in because of the choices that I had made leading up to being in it. I've tried writing about it multiple times in the past, but there's a certain amount of backstory required to explain the value of that conversation. I found myself running down backstory rabbit holes and it quickly becoming an autobiography, as opposed to having the brevity of a blog post. I am currently reading Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life and one of the rules re-inspired me to take a stab at this one again. So, I think that in order to accomplish what I want to do here, what I'll do is share the conversation, share the backstory, and then add in a couple of other similar conversations that held similar value.  

"Quit being such a fucking scrub Steve." My good friend Tony said to me several years ago at one of our frequent post-training lunches at a local Panera Bread. Now Tony doesn't normally swear, so my memory might have added that for dramatic effect. He went on to say something like "You have so much talent and gifts and I'm sick of watching you waste them and living life like a scrub." The words really hurt to hear at the time, but he was right. I had quit my full-time job to train every class of JiuJitsu on the schedule, and while it started out as a great thing, I had held onto it for too long. I had gone through all of my savings at this point and was barely eating anything because I couldn't afford it. Every day I was going further into debt, and had started training less and less because my situation was making me resentful of the very thing that had previously brought me so much happiness in life. It's also hard to train when all that you've eaten for the day is half a dozen eggs, and I definitely wasn't attending tournaments like I wanted to be because I couldn't afford them. In fact, Tony was buying lunch that day because I couldn't.

I was overall in a rather miserable state of affairs. My knee had been injured in an Army training event and I was extremely bitter that my unit hadn't fixed it. That injury meant that a long time goal of special forces had evaporated, which was a crushing blow. I had gotten out of a relationship that was extremely negative for me and had contributed to rapidly burning through my savings. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to even work a normal job or get hired I had been away from the workplace for so long. I was bumming rides to class and secretly surviving on the people that shared food with me. It's rather appalling to look back and see the overall miserable state that I had sunk into, that for some reason I was clinging so hard to.

"Quit being a scrub." Those words really struck me. "Quit being a scrub" ended up on loop in my head at that time and I repeated it over and over again as I became increasingly more aware of where I had been, and the state that I found myself in. My friend was right, I WAS being a scrub. I was attempting to hold on to long to a good thing and it was souring the longer I refused to let it go. "Quit being a scrub" the hit No Scrubs by TLC played in my mind. Over the next couple of weeks as I mulled it over, I became increasingly more determined in my resolve to change my situation. This led to accepting a job that was on the opposite side of the country, and I was fairly certain at the time wasn't real, and I'd end up stranded in California. While I had been afraid of being able to return to work because of my absence, I actually doubled my salary from my previous position. This led to training at CSG 360 in Oceanside, CA, and was the reason why Professor Charlie's words and his team had such a big impact on me. This led to traveling to 22 different schools, doing Pan Ams, and a host of other tournaments. So many great things happened shortly after that conversation, and many of the things that I am proud of recently accomplishing happened because my friend was courageous enough to bluntly look me in the eyes and tell me to quit being a scrub. 

This direct and honest type of communication was not what I grew up receiving. I grew up with a wonderfully caring and kind mother that instilled the knowledge of how painful words could be. A soft, caring, and emotional person at heart myself, I understood this as I deeply feel the words of others be they positive or negative. So I grew up adopting the mantra from the Disney movie Robin Hood "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say nothing at all." I definitely didn't grow up receiving this style of feedback from my friends, and I definitely didn't communicate it. In fact, I think I actively avoided people that did communicate in such a manner. It probably wasn't until I joined the Army that I was surrounded by such communication. 

Drill Sergeants are renowned for their often comical, blunt style of communication, and for every reason, they should be. Weakness in any form can result in the failure of a mission or the loss of life. Weakness, therefore, needs to be revealed to its owner and eradicated from existence. This culture extends beyond just basic training though and is prevalent amongst the everyday operations of the Army. It was here that I saw the benefit of this method of honest communication. Now, as a leader within that organization, my challenge has been to utilize it in situations that require it. The recent deployment was definitely a time of growth for me in this area, and I have seen the value that it can provide. 

At some point several years ago I started reading self-development books, and sort of just dived into them by devouring book after book. Most of them were challenging, but some of them rather broke me while reading. They brought self-awareness by holding up a mirror to me and revealing all of the many flaws that I have that I was previously unaware of. Many of those books talked about communication, and I realized that as a gregarious individual, I was great at talking but rather awful at actually communicating. These books made me desire for more awareness though, and I began to even seek out and greatly appreciated the friends that were honest with me, even if at the moment they said things that were rather painful to hear. I really like Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, although I'm still but halfway through it. I thought the quote from it that really applied to this story was "If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself and others and punish you carefully when you do not." My friend Tony was unwilling to tolerate my cynicism and indulgence in self-destructive behavior and his willingness to confront me on it had a significant impact on changing the trajectory of my life as a result. 

Of course there's something to be said about tempering our truths in love. Another great piece by Peterson is on the Jocko Willink episode 112 podcast where he relates such communications as "black truths" which are like "white lies." I have found though that because of my personality and nature, the loving part of communication comes much easier than the honesty part. So personally, honesty is the portion that I focus on improving on. In fact, my biggest regret in JiuJistu came from not honestly communicating with my instructor. It's something that I still carry a lot of regret about at perhaps will write/talk about one day. I think it would be interesting to add here that I really enjoy listening to Chewy's content both on the Chewjitsu YouTube channel and on his podcast. If you listen enough though, you will notice that many of the questions that he answers are solved or could be solved by having honest conversations. We as a society are bad at it though, and then this gets compounded by the instructor/student dynamics, so I think that it's a personal challenge as well as a widespread one. 

There are three other similar conversations in the past that had similar, although less dramatic impacts on me. The first one was from my private lesson with Chad Hardy where Chad complimented me on my gi game but asked me "how are you going to black belt one day when you suck so bad at no-gi." He was very much right about that as I really only trained in gi and the one no-gi class a week that Cornerstone had I'd normally use as a date night as an excuse to skip. That conversation was three years ago, and since then I've devoted myself to developing a long-neglected no-gi grappling. It was an initially rather frustrating undertaking as I went from being a good grappler to a poor one without my gi, but over time it is something that I've come to greatly enjoy and I think objectively I've gotten rather good at it since then. In fact, I think my no-gi game has possibly surpassed my gi game I've spent so much time in it. I'm grateful for that honest feedback as it led to a lot of improvement and given me a great deal of enjoyment. It's rather fun to be confident in training or competing regardless of the ruleset or clothing worn.

"Your cardio sucks and when are you going to stop making excuses and fix it." This one came from my good friend Jules a couple of years ago. I was rather aghast at this comment at the time because I had just won gold in three out of four brackets at a tournament. In one of the brackets though, I completely gassed out and lost a match that I think otherwise I should have handily won. Jules here was also right though. I had used my injured knee as an excuse for skipping warmups and doing cardio training outside of the school while joking about purple belts skipping warmups. This excuse was just that though, an excuse. While there definitely were some warmup exercises and cardio training that I couldn't do, I had sold myself on the injury excuse for showing up and making modifications that would allow my conditioning to improve. I'll be honest, my knee is still injured and I still struggle with this excuse, but I since have shown up to the entirety of every class and tried to push myself to improve here.

Lastly, while not a particular conversation, but continuous blunt feedback throughout the duration of the deployment, MSG Fuller pushed me to continue to ask more of myself. I think my personal favorite of his was "Quit being such a fucking pussy" or perhaps "I don't know how you can have any type of pride when you let someone twenty years older than you beat you in PT." Some would consider such expressions a negative thing, but I saw them for what they were, a challenge to be better and realize a fuller potential that existed within me. I made a great deal of progress as a result of that continuous feedback that I talked about in more detail here.  

There have been many others that I greatly appreciate their honest feedback, just those mentioned above are the ones that stick out the most within my memory. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't still bristle at the feedback that reveals my flaws and my ego would attempt to reject. After several days of mulling the words over though I find that I usually accept their perspective and attempt to take steps to remedy these flaws. Realizing the benefit that this feedback has created for me, I now not only try to seek it out but also attempt to adopt it because how could I be a good friend, leader, or mentor by hiding the truth beneath pleasantries within my expressions. This honest communication is currently amongst my greatest personal challenges and is something that I will continuously have to strive for. In conclusion, I'd like to thank those around me that exude the example of friendship through honest communication.  

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He trains out of Evolution MMA in Raleigh, NC. He is an Army Master Combatives Instructor, and active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combatives tournaments.