Video Transcript: Craig's Story

Parenting and anxiety

There's this concept in jujitsu where you leave your ego off the mat.

Stop. Breathe. How am I going to approach this? I was raised in a very traditional Australian family. We lived that ‘rough boys’ type lifestyle. You had to be good at fighting, sport, or girls. And I was never good in any of it.

It created this thing in your mind where, I call it ‘the impossible man’. Craig, you have to go out and work.

You're the guy who has to lead this family.

The standard really embedded itself in my head, and I started to feel the pressure. And then one day, I remember coming to the office and just I couldn't get out of the car. My heart started beating really, really fast. And then before I knew it, I just started crying and crying and crying. Parenting has been my lifesaver. A child is constantly a reflection of how you're going.

He's everything that you would want a child to be at home. And who's in charge of home? My wife and I.

She raised my beautiful boy. She supported me when I didn't feel worthy of being supported.

And she was there always telling me my worth, even though sometimes I took it for granted.

I was embarrassed to go to the GP. I’m a dude, what am I going to the GP, to talk about my feelings man?

When I first went into his office, I remember he just sat there and listened and he said “what's wrong?” I realised that I wasn't open to that question and everything, whether it made sense or not, just came out. It felt like a flush of water. I go to a psychologist and we talk about thinking your way through with a clear head.

And I take that directly to jujitsu and vice versa. It's not about strength. It's not about powering your way through. It's about being smart. In life where things didn't go my way. Things that were out of my control, things where I had to tap and sit back. I learned something from it.

The impossible man still talks to me.

It's a tree or a root that took 25 years of growing. So I'm not going to pull it all out completely. It's just that I don't have to feed it either. Sometimes I'm going to fail. Sometimes I'm going to go back to default. But that's okay. I'm human. I'm allowed to do this stuff as long as the next day. I just go, okay, cool. I tapped out, what did I learn? And that's where I move forward with it.