The Only Constant Is Change

The Rumor That Was True

About a month ago, the rumors started at Meraki.

​Gutemberg Pereira, the main instructor, the guy everyone calls Berg, was leaving.

Going back home to Brazil. He would be around his family again, opening his own school, starting a new chapter after more than a decade of competing at the highest level.

Rumors in a gym are like rumors anywhere. Sometimes they are true. Sometimes they are wishful thinking dressed up as inside information. This time they were true.

A month later, we were at a pub in Santa Monica for his bon voyage party.

It was the same day he took Silver in the Ultra-Heavy Division at the Worlds in Long Beach.

Some people at that party will tell you he was robbed of the gold. I was not there to see the match, but I have trained under Berg long enough to know the man's skill. I would not be surprised.

The pub was half a block from my old hapkido dojang.

I had not been back to that street in years.

Now I was sitting there with my new BJJ friends, telling them stories about my old hapkido buddies, pointing down the block at the building where I spent years of my life learning a different art under a different teacher in a different era.

Change, announcing itself again.

The Second Punch

Earlier that same week, Jason Hunt sat us down after the Monday noon class. Jason is the co-owner and chief instructor of Meraki. He wanted to talk about some of the changes coming.

For the next two years, Jason will be coaching the French and Brazilian Olympic Judo teams. He did it from 2022 to 2024. Now they asked him back. He will be traveling a lot. He will not be as present at the school as we have been used to.

So in the span of a few days, Meraki was losing two of its heavy hitters. The two senior instructors who had been teaching class since I walked through the door nearly three years ago. Berg, gone to Brazil. Jason, gone to the Olympics. A one-two punch.

Some people were distraught. Not dramatically. This is a jiu jitsu gym, not a soap opera. But you could feel it. The uncertainty. The low hum of people recalibrating. Others asked me if I was going to train somewhere else.

I understood the question. When the instructors you know leave, it feels like the gym itself has changed.

And it has. That is the whole point. The gym is changing. The question is what you do about it.

Same Job, Different People

My answer surprised them. I was not going anywhere.

Not because I am loyal to a building. Not because I am stubborn, though I am. Because this is not the first time I have watched a crew change.

I spent decades in construction. I worked on multi-million and billion-dollar projects.

I rose through the ranks from apprentice to foreman. And on every single job, the crew changed.

People came and went. Foremen rotated.

General contractors swapped out. Subs finished their scope and moved on to the next site. The faces were different but the job was the same.

Show up. Do the work. Get it done right.

The gym is no different. Berg is an excellent instructor. Jason is an excellent instructor.

They are also people with their own goals, their own families, their own chapters to write.

They are not leaving because something is wrong with Meraki. They are leaving because their lives are pulling them somewhere new.

The gym is not the instructors. The gym is the mat.

The mat stays. The art stays. The people who show up to train stay.

And the people who show up to train will include new instructors, new training partners, new personalities. Same job. Different people. Show up and do the work.

The Luddite Trap

There is a word for people who spend their energy fighting change that has already happened. Luddites.​

The original Luddites were textile workers in the early 1800s who smashed the machines they believed were taking their jobs.

They did not stop the Industrial Revolution. They just broke some equipment and got themselves hanged or deported. History does not remember them fondly.

Lamenting the past puts you in the same category. Berg is gone. Jason will be less present. Those are facts.

You can spend your energy wishing things were different, or you can spend your energy adapting to the way things are.

One of those options moves you forward. The other keeps you exactly where you are, complaining about a machine that already replaced you.

Change happens whether you want it to or not. The only thing you control is your response to it.

I am not immune to the feeling. I liked training under Berg. I liked his style. I liked the way he taught. I will miss having him in the room.

But missing someone and resisting the reality of their absence are two different things.

One is human. The other is useless.

When Stagnation Demands Change

There is another side to this. Sometimes change does not happen to you. Sometimes you have to create it.

• A job can stagnate
• A gym can stagnate
• A relationship can stagnate

The same routines, the same patterns, the same conversations.

Nothing is wrong, exactly. Nothing is right either.

Things are just staying the same. And staying the same, when you feel the pull to grow, is its own kind of death.

In those moments, change is not the enemy.

Change is the medicine.

You leave the gym that is not challenging you.

You leave the job that stopped teaching you things five years ago.

You start the business you have been talking about since before anyone remembers.

You become the change instead of waiting for it to happen to you.

Berg did that. He could have stayed.

He was the main instructor at a respected gym in Los Angeles.

He had students who loved him. He could have kept that role for years.

Instead, he is going home to open his own school. Starting a new chapter.

Building something from the ground up.

That is not a loss for Berg. That is Berg adapting to his own life.

Riding the Waves

I grew up in Hawaii. I spent a lot of time in the ocean as a kid, surfing, swimming, getting tossed around by waves that did not care whether I was ready for them.

When you are out in the water, you learn pretty quickly that you cannot control the ocean.

You cannot stop a wave from coming.

You cannot make the sets arrive on your schedule.

You cannot flatten the surface so the ride is easier.

What you can do is read the water. Feel the crests and troughs. Navigate the currents. Set your direction and adjust as you go.

Sometimes you paddle straight toward your destination.

Sometimes the current pulls you sideways and you have to tack, making progress at an angle instead of a straight line.

You are still moving toward where you want to go. You are just taking a smarter route to get there.

That is how I think about change now.

On the mat.

In business.

In life.

Change is the ocean. It is always moving.

It will not stop moving because you wish it would.

Your job is to keep your heading.

Do not get distracted by the waves.

Do not panic when the current shifts.

Keep your eyes on where you are going and adjust your angle as needed.

The goal is not to control the water. The goal is to ride it.

Berg is in Brazil now, starting his school.

Jason is preparing for the Olympics.

Meraki will have new instructors, new faces, new energy.

Some people will leave. New people will join.

The room will feel different because it is different.

And I will be there on Monday at noon, same as always. Showing up. Doing the work. Riding the waves.

The only constant is change.

Success is not about avoiding it. Success is about adapting to it.

Keeping your heading while the water moves beneath you.

Tacking when you have to.

Making progress no matter what.

Surf the wave you are on, not the one you wish was coming.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Stoic Drill

Ask yourself:

Focus only on those things.

📚 Leader’s Library

Book I recommend this week:

​Discipline Equals Freedom — Jocko Willink​

​Why?​

Because it's an opportunity to learn from a guy who has seen the worst and was still able to keep his humanity, personal leadership and being a good human being.

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