more opportunities are found in the pocket

"Most of the time we focus on other people's resistance. Learning the armlock is easy enough in drilling, but you don't really start to problem-solve until someone comes along to challenge your efforts. It's their resistance which reveals how effective or ineffective you are. The process of discovering how to overcome that resistance, then reassert your own control, develops new skills and feeds the autonomy and proactivity we look for in the training process."

"Your own internal resistance is the same. Instead of someone ELSE pushing you to improve your guard retention by trying over and over again to pass your guard, you meet your OWN resistance in the form of frustration, procrastination and distraction. Your internal resistance is just your mind avoiding what is hard, uncomfortable or overwhelming. Dodging this discomfort is the natural state for most people, which is why it takes your conscious effort to move into it rather than away from it. Next time you're up against something you want to avoid - failure, frustration, boredom - don't let yourself turn away so easily. Stay with it to see what's happening. Like passing the guard, you can relax, remain active and patiently work to move past your own defenses."

~ Brian Glick

Like many meditative concepts, Brian asks us to turn into our fears and the feelings we don't want to face. At the very least, we will understand them better, and in the future, will help us move past our own defenses. Stay in the pocket. Everything good happens in the pocket.

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