You Don’t Have It… Oh Shit

What happens when an old lesson shows up in new geometry

I was rolling at open mat with Professor Joe, and he caught me the way I should have seen coming.

Joe is one of my favorite people to roll with, because we don’t just grapple—we talk.

He’s trained in BJJ, aikido, judo, and Muay Thai, and aikido was my first martial-art love, going all the way back to Hawaii, 1985 and ’86, before Hapkido and long before I ever touched jiu-jitsu.

So when we get together, the conversation drifts toward joint locks and O-Sensei and aiki, toward philosophy and method and the places where the arts blur into one another.

And here’s the thing I love most about rolling with Joe:

Sometimes, right in the middle of a BJJ round, he’ll slap an aikido-flavored joint lock on me.

Is it aikido?

BJJ?

Judo?

Jujutsu?

Who cares.

My wrist never once asked what we call it.

There’s also a running joke between us.

I tease Joe that he doesn’t really practice aikido yet—he practices aiki-jutsu.​

He’s still in his jutsu phase because he enjoys making the locks work too much.

I tell him he hasn’t developed enough “love” yet, hasn’t reached his full O-Sensei, golden-light, harmony-with-the-universe stage.

Me, I like to think I’m the one actually trying to embrace aiki.

Of course, thirty seconds later I’m usually trying to choke somebody, so neither of us should get too self-righteous about our spiritual development.

Anyway.

Joe attacked.

I defended.

And as soon as I felt like I’d shut it down, I opened my mouth.

The words weren’t even all the way out before Joe changed the attack, walked right through the opening my defense had just created, and had me.

Tap.

Now here’s the part I want to be honest about, because I’ve seen this idea get framed the wrong way before.

This wasn’t the first time I learned that every defense creates an opening.

I’ve known that since my Hapkido days.

It’s not a new discovery.

What was new was that I couldn’t feel it in time, because the ground wasn’t where I expect the ground to be.

My Home Base

In Hapkido, we had a concept I’ve always liked, and it has stuck with me for decades.

It’s not a secret.

It’s just a position—the one where I felt most protected while staying ready to attack and defend.

I see it as my home base.

Both hands in front of me, loose fists so I don’t get my fingers jammed or grabbed.

One hand right below my chin, the other in front of my sternum.

Feet shoulder-width apart, one normal step deep, knees slightly bent—not up on my toes, not rocked back on my heels.

What tai chi people call the triangle of the foot.

Hips at about forty-five degrees, shoulders slightly angled.

And my eyes on their eyes, because from GM Han, the eyes are the windows to the soul.

They’ll tell you a lot about what’s going on in a person’s head and heart.

But not so locked on that I go blind to the rest of the body.

Especially the feet.

The feet never lie.

That was home base.

The safest, readiest place I could stand.

And in Hapkido, I already understood the principle behind what happened with Joe.

The moment I did anything—stepped, blocked, struck, reached, kicked, turned, adjusted—I changed the geometry.

Solving one problem opened another.

I knew high, middle, low.

Forward, back, lateral.

Angles and flanks.

Standing martial arts are three-dimensional, and I lived inside them for decades.

So the principle was already in my body.

The problem is that BJJ isn’t asking me to understand it again.

It’s asking me something harder.

BJJ Doesn’t Just Change the Map

Before you think I'm a BJJ fanatic, let me be clear, I'm not.

Every style has it's strengths and weaknesses.

I would hate to go to the ground when I'm facing multiple opponents, soccer kicks to the head and a dog-pile is a game no one can win.

I train BJJ in case I get taken to the ground, it was the missing piece from my stand up hapkido training.

Standing up, I always knew where home was.

The ground stayed under me.

My opponent existed somewhere on a horizon I could read.

Front, back, flank, high, middle, low—all of it felt intuitive because I’d spent my entire life upright.

But BJJ throws all of that out.

It’s 3D in 360 degrees.

I’m on my back, on my side, under somebody, over somebody, facing the wrong way, tangled up, one leg fighting one arm, somebody’s head beside my hip while we both rotate.

Half the time there’s no obvious horizon at all.

Adults don’t roll around on the floor with another human being.

Kids do.

They wrestle and tumble and climb and fall and get back up until somewhere along the way they become vertical creatures like the rest of us.

So even with years of martial arts behind me, the ground is genuinely unfamiliar.

And here’s the distinction I keep circling, because it’s the whole point of the thing:

Hapkido taught me how to leave home and return to it.

BJJ is making me redraw the map of home itself.

Where’s home when I’m on my back?

On my side?

Underneath someone, framing, hiding my limbs, fighting for inside position, protecting my neck?

What does “balanced and ready” even feel like when my legs are doing a job my arms used to do and the entire world keeps rotating?

The principle was familiar.

The floor was not.

I’m not learning that movement creates openings.

I’ve known that for forty years.

I’m learning to find a new version of home base inside unfamiliar geometry.

And the funny thing is, that’s not really a story about jiu-jitsu.

You Have a Home Base Too

Let me turn this around, because this is where it actually gets useful.

You probably have a home stance in life.

Not a fighting stance.

A way you naturally show up to the world.

The place where you feel safest and most capable.

It’s how you lead.

• How you communicate.
• How you make decisions.
• How you handle conflict, solve problems, manage money, train, parent.
• How you respond under pressure.

The familiar role you slip into at work or in your relationships.

And that stance exists for a good reason.

It works.

It has kept you safe, or effective, or both.

You shouldn’t throw it away just because this article is about to poke at it.

Home stances are useful.

They only become dangerous when you forget that they’re positions—not permanent truths about who you are.

Did the Geometry Change?

Here’s the quiet lesson underneath the funny one.

When something stops working the way it used to, we usually ask the wrong first question.

We ask:

As if the failure has to live inside us—in our discipline, our effort, our ability.

Sometimes the better question is:

Because the principle can still be perfectly sound while the environment underneath it has shifted.

You know how to lead—

then you inherit a different team.

The people are different, the context is different, and the same authority that once landed as confidence now lands as something else.

You know how to parent—

then your kid becomes a teenager, and the move that worked on a child meets a whole different geometry.

You know how to talk to your spouse—

then aging, stress, money, health, or caregiving quietly reshapes the ground you’re standing on.

You know how to train—

then your body changes, and the intensity that built you starts to cost you.

You know how to run a business—

then the market or the customer moves out from under you.

None of that means everything you learned was wrong.

It means the situation you built that solution for no longer looks quite like the situation in front of you.

Sometimes you haven’t failed.

You’re just standing in new geometry, and home isn’t where it used to be.

Every Strength Creates a Weakness

This is the part I want to be precise about, because it’s easy to turn into something sour.

I’m not saying your strengths are secretly weaknesses.

They’re not.

And pretending they are just makes you distrust the things that make you good.

What I’m saying is that every strength changes the way you move, and every way you move leaves a gap somewhere else.

• The analytical person can think deeply—and overthink.
• The decisive person can move fast—and move before they understand.
• The compassionate person can care hard—and never build the boundary the situation needs.
• The disciplined person can build routines—and become rigid inside them.
• The experienced person can spot patterns instantly—and assume this problem is the same as the last one.
• The confident person can trust themselves—and stop hearing everyone else.

Strength isn’t the problem.

Unexamined strength is.

Joe didn’t beat my defense.

He used the space my defense created.

I don’t know whether he’d set the whole thing up in advance or just felt the opening and took it.

Honestly, in that moment, it made no difference.

My defense changed the geometry, and Joe moved through the gap it left behind.

That’s the whole trick.

And it’s available to everyone, in every domain, on both sides of every interaction.

Put It on the Mat

So let’s make it practical, the way these things should be.

Pick one area of your life where you’re already reasonably good.

Not your biggest disaster.

Pick the place where you feel most at home, because that’s exactly where the blind spot is likely to hide.

Then walk through four questions.

1. What’s my home base here?

What do I naturally rely on?

What feels safe and automatic?

2. What does it do well?

Name it and give it respect.

This isn’t a self-attack.

Your stance got you here for a reason.

3. What opening does that strength create?

Where could this same reliable behavior become a liability?

What might it keep me from seeing?

4. Did the geometry change?

Is this actually the same situation my old solution was built for?

Or am I applying a familiar answer in an environment that has quietly shifted?

And then, instead of rebuilding your whole life, run one small experiment.

One rep.

If you normally talk, listen one beat longer.

If you normally decide fast, ask one more question.

If you normally analyze everything, make one small reversible move.

If you normally rescue people, let them solve part of it themselves.

If you normally push, create some space.

If you normally avoid conflict, say the necessary thing cleanly.

If you normally go it alone, ask for help once.

If you cling to the plan, test one alternate route.

Then watch what happens.

That’s it.

No overhaul.

No new system.

Just one honest step out of home base to see what you find there.

Know Your Home, Then Find It Again

Here’s why I keep coming back to this.

Aikido was my first martial-art love.

It introduced me to blending—meeting force without automatically colliding with it.

Hapkido taught me that every movement creates an opening.

Construction taught me not to compete using somebody else’s body, and to adapt to the geometry I actually had instead of insisting the work bend to my preferences.

BJJ is making all those old lessons feel brand new because the world has literally turned sideways.

And Joe, whether he knows it or not, is part of the proof.

He doesn’t stay stuck inside one movement vocabulary when the geometry changes.

He flows between arts the way life asks the rest of us to flow between our roles.

The lessons repeat, but never identically.

They come back in new jobs.

New relationships.

New ages.

New bodies.

New markets.

New problems.

Same principle.

Unfamiliar geometry.

So here’s what I’m trying to remember on the mat, and everywhere else:

• Know your home.
• Use it.
• Move when you need to.
• Feel what changed.
• Notice the opening.
• Adjust.

And when the horizon disappears, don’t panic.

Start redrawing.

Find your balance again.

And every so often, when you’re sure you’ve got it handled, close your mouth for one extra second before you say anything.

“You don’t have it.”

“Oh shit.”

Tap.

Then learn something.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Courage-Rep Drill

Courage isn't something you either possess or lack.

Like most capabilities, it grows through reps.

Your drill:

• Identify one useful thing you're avoiding because it's uncomfortable.
• Shrink it until it feels challenging but manageable.
• Do that version today.
• Notice what actually happened versus what you predicted would happen.

You don't need to become fearless.

You need evidence that discomfort is survivable.

📚 Leader’s Library

​​​Turning Pro​ by Steven Pressfield​​​

Why?

Turning Pro is about the moment you stop waiting to feel ready and start treating the work that matters to you like a professional would—with consistency, commitment, and responsibility.

Turning pro doesn’t mean you suddenly become an expert.

It means you stop letting mood, fear, distraction, and Resistance decide whether you show up.

You may still be a beginner. You may still screw things up. You may still have a long way to go.

But once you decide the work matters enough to practice it seriously, you’ve already changed where you’re standing.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck