The Value of Living a Curious Life

We live in a world that glorifies being obsessed. 

I see it in the media all the time. I used to love it. Watching  this scene of Kobe Bryant’s Muse over and over. I loved to read  Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I loved the accounts of John Smith spending 8 hours a day in the OSU wrestling room practicing his low single.

All of these stories told the same story: the only way to be good at something was to single mindedly focus on it.

I have, over the past few years, come to really resent this idea.

Diversity of thought is underrated

I have two main points about why I think diversity is so good for becoming better at something, particularly wrestling.

1. Learn Interesting Lessons

If you only study wrestling, you will only learn from wrestlers who are only a small population of this world. There is so much to learn about wrestling, sport, and the world from other sources. If you keep your eyes open, you will get an edge on your competition by learning from places they aren’t looking at.

I’ve always had weird interests and they’ve always helped me as a wrestler and a coach.

Here are a few recent examples of things I’ve learned and fed into my wrestling program.

A. Basketball - How to fake

I know, we all dislike basketball players. But I popped my head into practice one day just to check out what they were doing and noticed that dang, these guys jab and fake so well. Even these D3 basketball players make us wrestlers, even the likes of Jordan Burroughs look unathletic. 

It of course makes sense, in no other sport are you faking quite as much. They do it in every situation with and without the ball.

I took time to ask the coaches and players about how they would go about teaching faking. Honestly, I assumed they would say that is was natural skill but they didn’t. Their answers were very insightful. 

They expressed ideas about really believing and mimicking where you would be going, making sure your movements aren’t superfluous, and moving your hips first. All of these lessons apply directly to wrestling. They were instituted into practice immediately.

B. This American Life Podcast - Storytelling

I’m a big podcast guy. I grew up listening to Chicago Public Radio WBEZ. Ira Glass’ voice instantly calms me. These days,  I listen to This American Life by default on my 30-minute commute. 

Though many of the things talked about have nothing to do with wrestling, all of them have taught me one thing. The importance and skill of storytelling. The way they produce their podcasts and take things that don’t seem to relate to each other but pull them together into a coherent story is incredible. Each segment is great but their ability to combine them into one podcast that makes each episode more than the sum of its parts is the real special part.

I talked about this in my last post at length. It’s one thing to show a single piece of technique well, but when it is next to another good piece, plus the whole week is coherent. The story being better helps athletes comprehend what you’re trying to teach.

C. Hell of Presidents History Podcast - US Grant

I’m not a huge history buff but my buddy got me into this fantastic podcast. Like the This American Life podcast, much of this doesn’t inform my wrestling... until I found this one nugget.

While learning about Ulysses S Grant, they spoke of him being wholly unsuccessful before the Civil War. Then once he was in the war, since he had no ego from losing so many ways in life, he was able to look at the war more objectively than his egomaniac colleagues in the war. 

Grant didn’t care about being inscribed in history, he fought with his brain, not his ego- this gave him the success to actually be the history maker he was. This lesson went right to my athletes.

D. The Motivation Game (Golf Book) - Mental Game

This book was recommended by my sports psychologist and friend Riley Fitzgerald. Honestly, I hate golf but I do know that because of the simplicity of the game, it is incredibly mental. 

Mike Grevlos’ insights are fantastic. He breaks down mentality in such a unique way. In a world where the mental game of sport on the internet seems to revolve exclusively around goal setting, visualization, and “chasing confidence,” Grevlos goes in a nuanced direction and it is much more effective and powerful. 

It has revolutionized the way I talk to my athletes about their mentality for training and competing. And I found it in a place where I have never thought to look. Meanwhile, all my competitors are still talking to the same 3 dudes on wrestling Twitter who have the same lame way of looking at building up the mentality of athletes.

2. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

If all you do, think about, and care about is wrestling, what happens when you inevitably have a bad day? What happens when you practice or compete poorly? 

Having a singular passion makes any failure in this area resonate much further than is good for you.

If all I do is wrestle, if I wrestle poorly one day, my life can unfold. I can panic.

Even worse than just a bad practice, what about a career-ending injury? If you have nothing other than wrestling, your life will simply unravel.

And really, none of us will wrestle exclusively for the rest of our life. Even if you’re an olympian, at one point, you have to leave your shoes at the center of the mat and move on. If training and competing is all you know and all you care about, having a traditional job of any sort will be incredibly challenging if all you know is double legs and airdyne bikes. Diversity of passions and ideas allows you to be more flexible when your life changes. And we all know that day will come sooner or later.

So this is the idea, having diverse thoughts prevents you from the anxiety of being all or nothing in the sport of wrestling. It means you have skills, ideas, talents, and passions outside the sport. This means that even if something goes wrong in the sport, you still have confidence and hope in your life. This will reduce stress and increase performance because the results of this sport are not as important to your own self-worth.

Then, of course, there are lots to learn outside of the sport, and the idea of reducing your field of vision to just wrestling is foolish. Open your eyes and build your mind. The world is your oyster.