The Laws of the Ring (2 page)

Introduction: What's Your Passion?

I
t's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I should know—I've asked it many, many times while speaking to groups and giving motivational speeches. I have come to expect a lot of blank faces, upraised arms, and embarrassed chuckles.

There's one reason a lot of otherwise successful people can't identify their passion: They haven't been conditioned to discover it. Sounds odd, but it's true. Most people go through their lives according to the guidelines set by society. You get an education and you get a job. You work hard at that job in order to make enough money and attain enough status to live comfortably. The particulars of the job are often mundane and unfulfilling. The forty hours a week spent working at that job are tolerated in order to reach an end point—a weekend at the lake, or a two-week vacation with the family—where you relax by doing something that takes your mind off your occupation.

Passion usually has no place in the equation. At best, it is compartmentalized, separated from “Work” and placed to the side, under “Pleasure.”

First, a definition: Passion is what you would do if
you
got to choose. It's what you think about doing in the privacy of your own mind, without fear of dismissal or mockery. It might be something that makes you rich and happy, or something that simply makes you happy without financial reward.

But think about this: What if your choice—what you do when you are free of obligation—could be incorporated into your everyday life? What if your job and your passion merged? How much better would life be if you could make your forty-hour workweek as enjoyable as your weekends?

Right about now you might be asking yourself a question of your own: Why should I take life advice from a guy who beats people up—and occasionally gets beaten up—for a living? It's a valid question, and one I will answer plainly and directly: You should take advice from me because I have found a way to incorporate my passions into my life and work. I identified my passion early and did everything in my power to make sure I found ways to include my passion in every aspect of my life.

Part of my passion is to study people and their lifestyles. I was delivered by midwives in a Christian commune near Santa Barbara, where I spent the first five years of my life. My family moved to Sacramento, where my parents got divorced and I spent some time as a child model and small-time actor. From there, I moved to a nearby rural community called Lincoln, where I was a high-school football and wrestling star. The combination of a quirky background and my degree in human development from UC Davis, where I hold the record for most wins in the wrestling program's history, have made me intensely curious about lifestyles—and why people live the way they do.

My job makes it imperative for me to study both myself and my opponents. When you make your livelihood standing in a small, enclosed cage, fighting with another man whose stated goal is to separate your limbs from your body or your mind from its senses, introspection is a job requirement. It makes no sense for me to pretend I'm something I'm not; the reckoning will come in the cage, and it won't be pretty. Because of that, I have to be brutally honest when it comes to assessing my strengths and weaknesses. I have to do the same for my opponents.

You would be surprised what you can learn about yourself and other people when you engage in something as primal and basic as professional mixed martial arts. You probably know me as a fighter, but I'd like you to read this book with an open mind. My hope is that you picked up this book because you instinctively see why a fighter is qualified to offer insight into human nature, but that you pass it along to your friends and family because you find something compelling and inspiring within its pages. This book is a result of me, ruminating on my experiences through thirty-some-odd years, asking myself a series of questions. Why has life gone this way for me? Why have so many good—and some bad—things happened? How did I become who I am today? How can I help others experience the good and avoid the bad? The lessons have not always been learned sequentially. Some have come about retrospectively. Their chronology unfolds as I unfolded.

When I first started jotting down ideas for a book, I always thought it would be called
Passion Runs the World.
It's my experience that the people who get the most out of life and have the most success are those who have found a way to incorporate their passion into every aspect of their existence. As I got deeper into the process, I came to the realization that community is the necessary by-product of passion. In my life, as you will see, community is primary. When it was proposed that we title the book
Laws of the
Cage
in order to more accurately reflect my sport, I disagreed. The ring, with its symbolic inclusiveness, seemed the perfect embodiment of the community my passion has created. There are certain qualities that all successful, positive people share.
Passion
is the umbrella under which they all reside, and
community
is the collection of people who share the space, and the passion, under that umbrella. The umbrella is the perfect metaphor; it protects you, your passion, and your community from outside elements of negativity, distrust, and jealousy. As you read, think about yourself standing under the umbrella, inviting in more and more members of your community in order to protect your collective passion from the “elements.”

Which gets us back to the original dilemma: What is your passion? I've asked this question and received the answer “I don't know” more often than I can count.

And that's okay. I have a response to that. I say, “Fine, here's what we're going to do, then. We're going to assign you a passion.”

Sounds crazy, right? You ought to see the looks I get after I say that. Who do I think I am? How can I dictate someone's passion? How can I take someone I don't know and give him something to be passionate about?

Easy: The passion I assign is the same every time.

The passion is
you
.

I tell them this: For the time being, you are your own passion. You are going to invest in yourself. You are going to make it a point to work harder at whatever it is you're doing. You're going to celebrate your victories, no matter how small. If you do something well, you're going to compliment yourself for it. You're going to set goals. You're going to verbalize—and share—your plans. You're going to hold yourself accountable to those goals and plans. You're going to separate yourself from negative people who suck energy from you. You're going to surround yourself with people who are positive and have your best interests in mind. You're going to be healthier.

In short, you're going to start
consciously
doing things that will create a greater feeling of self-worth. You will be conscious of the choices you are making instead of simply autopiloting your way through your days, months, and years. Through this exercise, you will find something you like. By making yourself your passion, you will find a passion outside of yourself to follow on your way to a better life.

After all, we all start alone under our umbrella. From there, we seek out others who share our passion to join us and help us make it grow. However, there are many times when we need to stand on our own and make big decisions that can dictate the course of our passion. I relate it to a big fight: I enter the cage with the people from my corner—trainers and coaches—but when the bell rings I'm left alone to make decisions based on the teachings of the community. I am alone, but the community is with me in spirit and guidance. And then, when the battle is over, the cage opens up and I am reunited with my community to either rejoice or console in the aftermath of the fight.

It takes introspection to identify passion. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are no shortcuts. You have to think about yourself, your beliefs and desires. You may come to some uncomfortable truths about yourself, and that's okay. We live in a quick-hit, short-attention-span world, and introspection can often be in short supply. We want things, we want them now, and we are willing to compromise our lives in order to get them.

We don't have enough quiet moments to really look inside ourselves and conduct an honest assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. We roll through life in fast motion, feeling guilty if we aren't keeping as busy as possible, and amid the hustle and bustle it's easy to lose sight of purpose and passion. This book, with its Laws of Power, is intended to be a caution sign on the lifestyle highway.

Slow down. Assess yourself. Define your passion. Make a plan. Execute it.

By first making yourself your passion, you are going to look inward and come to realistic conclusions about your strengths and weaknesses. You're going to learn how to stand under your umbrella and reach out to others who might need the protection and direction provided by a similar passion. More practically, you're going to develop a strategy to incorporate your passion into your life, depending on your available time, financial needs, and emotional burden.

You're going to take the first steps toward controlling your life rather than having it control you. In this book you will read examples of people who have gone through these same stages and come away with a changed outlook on life.

You'll read my story, about how I went against convention to pursue a career in fighting after deciding it was something for which I had both passion and talent. You'll read about the people who have combined talents in order to work together with me on business ventures outside the cage. You'll read about the courage shown by my older brother, Ryan, whose fourteen-year battle with mental illness has been a source of worry and inspiration. You'll read about top contender Joseph Benavidez, who showed up at my gym with nothing but a passion for fighting and a trunk full of the most basic worldly possessions.

The process isn't easy, though. I won't lie about that. It takes a unique person to ignore the pressures and expectations of society in order to chase a dream. It takes a strong person to stand alone under the umbrella and remain steadfast in the pursuit. Unknowns get in the way and cloud our thinking. Fear intrudes and we get stuck in stagnancy. We wait for something to happen instead of making it happen. We fear failure, so we don't take the kind of risks that could produce success.

You will learn that it takes more effort to wait than to act. Procrastination is tiring and soul-sapping. Waiting for the perfect opportunity is stifling and confining. You can wait for an opportunity, or you can
create
an opportunity.

Conventional society discourages risk taking. Oh, we pretend to embrace it, but this officially sanctioned risk taking occurs in a controlled environment. Risk, by this definition, is putting a hundred bucks on a fifty-to-one long shot, or buying a thousand dollars in penny stocks. Or it's reality-show risk taking, which is kind of like risk taking without the risk.

The kind of risk I'm suggesting in this book has nothing to do with bungee-jumping, or eating a cricket, or jumping in a frozen lake. I'm talking about life-changing risk, the kind that makes you take a deep breath, question everything you ever thought about your life, and still—even after acknowledging that standing pat would be easier and safer—putting your head down and charging forward into the unknown.

It's the kind of risk that turns your life from a poorly focused, passion-free existence into something happier, more positive, and far more fulfilling. By following the Laws of Power described in this book, you will feel more comfortable and confident about taking the kind of risk that will change your life. You will have the tools and the clear-eyed knowledge to take the smart risk that will pay big dividends.

My passion is risky. It's clearly not for everyone, and the style I employ while practicing it is high energy and exciting. Because of this, I've often been confused with someone who would be willing to take the contrived risk. I've heard, “Urijah, let's go bungee-jumping,” or “Urijah, doesn't skydiving sound like fun?”

No, it doesn't. I tell people, “Dude, my life is too good for me to take that kind of risk. I might screw up and miss out on the life I'm leading.”

So here's my goal: If you live your life by the Laws of Power outlined in these pages, your life will be so good you won't want or need to take contrived risks. Metaphorically speaking, you will jump out of an airplane, but it will be a permanent, life-changing experience and not a cheap thrill. You, like me, will choose to embrace the real rather than chase the artificial.

Prologue: Know What You're Fighting For

I
t wasn't easy. My path to the cage at the Colusa Casino—and everything that followed—would not have happened if I hadn't been consumed with a sense of purpose.

The first task to complete on your way to a better, more passion-based life is this: Know what you're fighting for.

You're fighting for a lifestyle that allows you to incorporate your passion throughout your personal and professional lives. You're fighting to control your life instead of having it control you. In short, you're fighting for a life without compromise. It doesn't just happen organically. You can't wish it into being. You must push forward at all costs.

My pursuit began when my friend Tyrone Glover sold me a ticket to watch him compete in a new kind of professional fighting: MMA. He was fighting in Colusa—one of the few places in California staging fights—and from the moment the fight began, I knew I would do everything in my power to get inside that cage.

I got a queasy feeling the second Tyrone's fight started. It wasn't nerves, it was excitement. I wanted to jump into the cage right then and there. I didn't care that the sport was considered all but dead, pushed to the margins by Arizona senator John McCain's attempt to make it illegal in 2000. After watching tapes of the first UFC events, run under the motto “There Are No Rules,” McCain called the sport “human cockfighting.” He was right; the sport was badly in need of reform. It was primal. It was vicious. And it was incredibly exciting. I had watched early UFC fights when I was in high school, but seeing one in person was completely different. I couldn't imagine anything that would test a man's mettle to this degree. I was convinced I would be good at it; it seemed to be invented with me in mind. I immediately became consumed with the idea of pursuing it.

The butterflies in my stomach turned into bumblebees as I sat on a metal folding chair and watched Tyrone fight. This was my future, and I was ready for it to begin.