Setting Intentions

The time now is 4.57am. UFC London finished a few hours ago and after hanging out downstairs, talking shop for the past couple of hours, its time to refocus. In about twelve hours I fly to Peru for a two-week hideaway, to find my balance again and clear the way forward. It’s important when embarking upon a vision-quest such as this, to prepare your mind for what its about to go through. Setting intentions before it begins, is a good way of guiding your thoughts towards the subjects which need most attention.

My state of mind heading into the last journey was hugely different. Life has moved on, as it does, and I find myself in a rather different place. The balance that I felt close to achieving was suddenly disrupted when I was pulled from my last fight. Almost three years to the day since I was sitting in my truck outside the hospital in Vegas, knowing that I wouldn’t be cleared and wondering what comes next. I have been taken by the current of opportunity and dove head first into my new job, but the balance elsewhere in my life is no longer there and I have to address it.

What I hope to achieve by writing this, is to lay out for everyone to read, what I feel I need to look at within myself. Intentions are always more powerful when written down, and even more so when shared. The first one is to explore my feelings towards this supposed anomaly, and how its arrival into my life has altered things. I need to meditate on a return to fighting, a question I get asked constantly (and I thank you all for the love). I have so many voices around me and so many opinions that its sometimes hard to distinguish which one is my own. 

I suppose they are pretty obvious ones, the next one probably not so much. Since stepping away from competition I have been forced to learn about myself as the person, without fighting in my life. Which, for many years had been everything, and the very thing upon which I define myself. Being an athlete puts every other aspect of your life out of balance. It becomes all consuming, unless you are very good at managing your time, and detaching when you aren’t ‘at work’. I think fighters tend to be obsessive, and I know I was.

The day fighting was removed as my primary focus, it made room for a lot of other things. Experiences and challenges that have forced me to take a deeper look at the person I am, and how I interact with my surroundings, without the excuse or distraction of training camp. When I say excuse, I mean for being a miserable bastard most of the time. I would spend my days alone, simply because I didn’t have the energy or patience for anyone else. My poor family remember before I moved out, how little I would interact when I got home from training, and how hostile it must have seemed.

It appears that after three years of getting to know myself, I’m quite an extreme introvert. I know, I wasn’t expecting it either, but its becoming more and more apparent the more I read about it. As a child I spent a lot of time on my own, purely by choice. I have quite a creative imagination and could sit and build Lego or draw pictures for hours. I am happy in complete silence, and find people and public places difficult. I seem to be good for about four hours in a day, but after that I really prefer to be in a quiet space on my own. 

I work obsessively when researching fights or writing, spending most of the early hours at my laptop, rambling on about nothing and deleting it a few hours later. My mind is calm when I am alone and if I don’t get space for a few days consecutively, I become very agitated and short-tempered. This is why the boat race was going to be such a challenge for me, and I am proud of myself for managing so well. It was still difficult, and I really got to know myself, and how important that personal space it for me to recharge.

After a few days on the boat I found ways to escape for a few minutes, but that first time stepping into a hotel room in Rio, I closed the door behind me and sat against it so nobody could get in. I sat there for over an hour, until my asscheek fell asleep and I moved to a flat, stationary bed, that I didn’t need tying into for my own safety. The relief was incredible. I found it hard to leave the room for a few days, and would only talk myself into going out to see my crew or one of the sights in Rio.

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to. Thats not the point. I have identified this characteristic and am enjoying the process of learning about it. I have some good literature on related subjects that are worth the weight in my adventure bag, and I intend on spending the next two weeks really getting to know myself again. The rest of this year is already filling up, and if I am to achieve half of what i expect of myself, I need to get my game face on. So my friends, thank you once again for reading. I will update you in two weeks, when I arrive back in the real world. I hope to have some insights to share with you all.

Into the light once more.