Becoming the Black Belt: One Man's Journey in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (The Warrior's Way Book 2) by Roy Dean

Author:Roy Dean [Dean, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: RDA
Published: 2016-01-31T16:00:00+00:00

Yosemite

The writing was on the wall at Four Square. I was being paid, but the business was opening lines of credit, and it needed some serious new clients to come on board quickly.

The new creative director, John Munoa, actually took a pay cut and reduction in hours to keep me there because he considered me such an essential part of the process, and I thank him for that.

I did some soul searching. My job was good, but not entirely creative. Not like David Helping, Four Square’s favorite composer who was actually writing music and getting paid well. That was a dream job. Or was it?

I had been forced to sit, in a very nice chair, but a chair nonetheless, more than forty hours a week for the last four and a half years. The studio space was cool and high tech with the monitors, gear, patch bays and machines, but it didn’t have a single window.

It wasn’t natural and, after several years of this, I was beginning to feel the effects. I felt out of touch from nature and needed to reconnect in a big way.

I planned a trip to Yosemite National Park with my girlfriend Julie. If you haven’t been to Yosemite before, I recommend it.

It is a place of inspiring scale, power and beauty. We stayed in a cabin for a few days and I was able to quiet the other voices, the other minds, the other energies that affect you when you’re always surrounded by people.

That trip to Yosemite was a turning point for me. I needed a change. Not just another thing on the schedule. Real change. I needed to quit my job and do something different. Someplace different. I was thirty-one years old. Now was the time.

Did I still want to do audio? What else was there? Well, BJJ seemed like an obvious choice to me. I saw that people from all over the world were flying into see Mr. Harris, many of them running successful academies, and each had escaped the nine to five grind I was deeply embedded in.

Brad and I were like adopted sons to Mr. Harris, and we had received brilliant direct instruction from him over many years, leaving us well qualified to launch a venture of our own.

I could also see that my part time teaching experiment was working. The grappling class at an Aikido studio I led on Sundays was attracting a steady stream of students, from a cool cross section of academies. Whatever mojo I had for attracting people at that point was growing. I couldn’t explain it, but I could feel it, and I knew I would be successful if I launched an academy of my own vision.

Where to do it then? I had the opportunity to become partners in Gracie Barra Alaska, or start my own thing. I liked the idea of starting my own thing, and one place I was checking out was Bend, Oregon.

Jimmy is the man who introduced me to Bend. He trained

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