The other night I was in a sparring with a guy who is a much more talented fighter than me and has an entirely different game than I do. He confuses opponents by distracting them with his hands drawing them in to strike and then countering the much anticipated strike with an unforeseen blow. Needless to say, I got my ass kicked. After a couple rounds, a training partner noticed that everything I was doing was trying to respond to my opponents attacks with delayed defenses. In other words, I was letting him dictate the fight. I had stepped into his game, and he was crushing me at it.

While even at my best this guy is a much better fighter than me but my friend on the sideline said something very simple that caused a profound paradigm shift for me. He said "Fight your fight!" By themselves, those words contain nothing spectacular. Of course I should fight my fight, I'm the one whose in it. But before he said that my belief that I was fighting someone else and not him me. It was his fight, not mine. I was on his terms, in his game, letting him lead. That is a recipe for defeat.

If you have ever done any kind of sparring or combat martial arts you know that when you spar with someone there are two different things you have to think about simultaneously ‘what is my opponent doing?’ And ‘What am I doing?’. There is a right answer and a wrong answer to each of these questions. Both opponents are trying to get the other to step into their game and the opponent who merely reacts to the other loses.

I do not believe that you can ever beat someone at their own game. To play someone else's game entirely would be to lose, because they will always understand it better and be able to execute it at a higher level than you can. Why, because it's their game. Not yours.

When I look back on my own life I can see similar flaws to my mma game. I have tried again and again to be all things to all people. I have tried to live other people’s stories. To take a job just to please someone. To go to school because it was what I was told I should do. And every single time I have fallen on my face. Why? Because that is not my story, and that is not my game

Have you ever taken the 5:38am subway from JFK to LGA? You go right through the heart of the city. No, not Times Square, not Brooklyn. But Queens, Jamaica, Forest hills, Jackson Heights. You know, those boroughs that don’t show up on your friends instagram post. Its dirty, crowded, and gritty as hell. Packed full of the hard working men and women of every ethnicity known to man. Half of them covered with dirt on their boots from the day before. No, dirt from the 5 years from the day before. Because that’s how long they’ve been wearing those boots. The rats are out in full force because it’s still cool in the summertime. But not the drunks. Because this isn’t where the party’s at. It’s best to take this right of passage train on a Friday morning before the sun comes up. Because those are the people who’ve worked all week and got up to do it again. Hard hats on loose, shirt untucked, lunch in the bag. You want to know the men and women who keep this city alive. It’s right here on the 5:38 train straight through the soul of the city that never sleeps.