Brendan Schaub on experience, perspective & the highs & lows of fighting
The Fighter and The Kid podcast co-host Brendan Schaub got a call from his friend Matt Mitrione last Saturday as the UFC heavyweight sat in his locker room after a tough submission loss to Ben Rothwell. The two talked tactics, and the future, but most importantly, Schaub talked to his buddy about perspective.
"I was just trying to make it a little less, but I told him before I went into this rant, nothing I can say is going to take this pain away," Schaub conceded, before trying to encourage his friend.
"Believe me, I've been there. It seems like it's the end of the world. It's really not, in the grand scheme of things."
Fighting provides unique opportunities for exhilaration as well as deep, depression-inducing disappointment. Schaub said it took him years to learn how to have proper perspective with regards to the highs and lows of life.
"Experience is priceless, man. So, when you're young you're thinking, 'Oh my God, this is the best. I can't lose. This is never going away.' Wrong, youngster, wrong. Because you're in the UFC - something bad is going to happen," he explained.
"In fighting, it's very black and white. It's like, lost this fight, alright, give me another fight. In eight weeks I can totally redeem myself and cure the sadness that I have if I beat this guy. So, you have eight weeks. There's an exact date when you can change that feeling."
Overall life doesn't provide the same chances at date-specific redemption that sport fighting does. So, allowing one's emotions to ebb and flow with the tide of athletic achievement or failure, isn't the path to health and happiness. In life, you have to ride things out a bit more, without a guaranteed chance at making things right on a specific date, as fighters feel they do when they compete.
"In life, it's a process," Schaub said.
"There's no specific bookmark where you can say alright, on this date, I'm going to fully redeem myself. Not really. It's a process. That's why you can't get too low or too high.
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