FIND THE WIN IN EVERY LOSS
Losing is my enemy. I hate it with a passion and I hate it more than anything. And yet there will always be losses. Even the greatest athletes in the world suffer losses. But buried in every single loss is a kernel of a lesson that can somehow change your game or take you to the next level. My two losses were some of my greatest performances, and they were ultimately what got me on the radar of many people. You can’t let your losses define you; on the contrary, you must use them to catapult you forward. Learning to embrace loss is almost like reaching the enlightenment level of an athlete, this mystical place one has to experience to become a better fighter and human being. Sure, I still feel down about a loss sometimes, but instead of lingering in that fog, I watch it like an episode of something, let it run its course and turn it off.
CHOOSE YOUR CORNERS WISELY
Your “corners” refers to the crew of people you assemble to support and coach you through a fight. You pick your corners mostly based on who is available, but also on the kind of energy that you want to create for yourself in the cage. After all, these are the folks who will hype you up, wipe you down, keep you hydrated and keep you focused; they’ll serve as both your medics and your cheerleaders.
Today I choose my squad and loved ones like I choose my corners. I am selective about who I bring into my inner sanctum. It’s not that I don’t trust people—I just want to surround myself with the best. I ask myself: Who will do whatever it takes to save my life and have my back? Who will stay loyal? Who is with me until the bitter end? I seek individuals who chase things like dignity and righteousness—and I walk away from everyone else. As my collaborators, confidants, and companions, I choose people who are willing to invest in the value of a true human connection. As Ken Shamrock says, “Lions work together as a group—as a pride—to hunt their pray, to overcome, to prevail.”
And also with respect to corners, God is always in mine.
MAKE DISCIPLINE YOUR BEST FRIEND
As a fighter, you have to be catlike in your use of force, but monk-like in your approach to discipline. You have to be willing to drop into the intensity of a daily physical regimen not unlike that of the most well-built ancient Greeks. It is the consistency that comes with a steady discipline that fosters growth, that generates change. To master discipline, you must cultivate a deep respect for your schedule; you have to squash idleness and inertia and see every hour as sacred. Embracing discipline means showing up every day, especially on the days when you don’t want to.
KEEP THE FOCUS ON YOURSELF
When I’m standing in front of someone whose intention it is to break me in half, I can’t help but wonder: What if she’s stronger than me? What if I can’t get out of one of her clinches? What if her long legs lock me in on the ground? What if she has more experience than I do? But here’s something crucial I have learned: there will always be someone with more experience and longer legs. So what? There will always be people out there, opponents and otherwise, who will seem to have the upper hand, who will appear to be better poised to get ahead of you. The real task is not to assess all that, but instead to keep the focus on yourself—to shut down the voice that tries to tell you, you are not enough.
BE UNPREDICTABLE
I can’t go into the cage and do the same thing every single time, because that would give my opponents the ability to know what to expect from me. To keep winning, I have to show up with new tricks each time. I have to evolve. I have to show my opponent that I have more than one dimension, that I am not just one thing. Life is the same: There’s nothing exciting or worthwhile about the status quo. The trick is to keep growing. To surprise even yourself.
CRUSH DOUBT
There are moments when I have trained so hard, done ridiculous amounts of sit-ups and held infinite planks, ran countless miles, swung God knows how many kettlebells, and thrown so many punches onto a bag that I felt my fingers turn blue—moments when it felt like I literally could not take another step. It’s at that delicate threshold that I press on. I crush doubt and pull up from a place of possibility. I tell myself that I can. Likewise in the cage. Even when I feel my most insecure, when I am down, when I am pinned, when I am bloody, I say those two words to myself—crush doubt—and I move through whatever is happening fueled only with positivity.
MASTER RESILIENCE
One of the things you’ll hear almost every commentator say during my fights is, “That Paige is tough.” But it’s kind of a given to call a fighter tough—we are tough, it’s our nature. What I think they actually mean is resilient. Since I am still early in my career, and still trying to amass experience and develop technique, to stay relevant I have no choice but to rely on my sense of resilience. I have to grit my teeth and handle the pressure. I have to withstand incredible amounts of pain. I have to stay alive. And every time, inside and outside the cage, it is the force of my resilience that keeps me rooted. A gripping, obstinate, unflinching sense of personal stamina. This force tells me, I will not be stopped.
ALWAYS LEARN
Every gym, every training session, every sparring partner, every fighter’s history, every fight—everything has a lesson woven into it, which means that my trajectory as a fighter, and as a person, builds on itself, each moment facilitating the next one. Losing fights teaches me to crack open the case, figure out what I did wrong, and integrate the learning for the next opportunity. By arming myself this way, the next opportunity eclipses the pain of the loss.
LEAD WITH YOUR HEART
When I first started to train, I didn’t even watch fights or know anything about the fight world. I had no idea who the players were or what their stories were. I did it because I loved it, for the sake of itself and nothing more. That was my heart driving. I love the life I lead because I do the things I love. Period. Right now, one of the things I love doing the most is making a roast tri-tip. I like to marinate the meat for a long time. Then I do a wet rub and a dry rub. It’s a commitment, but I do it because I love it. When you do what you love, you come at it with heart. You transcend the going-through-the-motions-ness of existence and dip into some actual glory. I say scour your heart to find the things that make it flutter, and define goals that are in line with the things that actually mean something to you—the things that mean the most to you! Be in love with your purpose. Be a champion of your own dreams.
HAVE THE HEART OF A CHAMPION
Having the heart of a champion means I’m not just here to have fun and make some money—it means I really want to be the very best. It means that no matter what I do, I’m always going to establish straight off the bat that I’m not joking. It means that if I’m going to go to the trouble of doing something, I engage every piece of myself. I use every muscle. I go all in. I am fully present. I don’t half-ass. I push hard. I bulldoze through my comfort zones. I meet each day with a built-in willingness to be my best, to over-deliver. I make over-delivering my base point. I exercise enthusiasm. I ritualize my practice. I get animalistic. I go beyond what I think is normal. I chisel toward precision and perfection. I study myself. I study my enemy. I don’t spend my days on nonsense. I don’t fill my mind with trash. I cultivate confidence at the cellular level.
BE EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE
It excites me to live in a world where gender norms are blurred into oblivion and I can be a super girly-girl who can properly pirouette and happens to also love punching people hard in the face. I feel great pride in being part of the conversation that compels girls to go up against boys, to help equal all the playing fields, to debunk the universal myth of the all-powerful male.
I want women who feel beaten down, at any stage of their lives, to read about my darkest moments and see that hope dies last. That there’s always a way to get up, to find another avenue, to protect, to evade. I want women to own the fact that you can be pretty and a badass and graceful and gritty. You can be an athlete-warrior-dancer-ninja-cheerleader who can bake a cheese soufflé. You can be a tomboy in a tutu. You can w
restle and dance. You can wear high heels and lip gloss. You can do anything and everything. You can do it all. You can dictate your destiny.
People always ask me who I admire, who I want to be like. But the truth is that while I look up to lots of different people, I don’t want to be the next anyone…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I cannot express enough gratitude to my mom and dad. Mom, you have been my biggest fan and greatest supporter. You never lost faith in me through all my mistakes and successes. Dad, I am who I am because of you—a warrior with an attitude who won’t take no for an answer. Thank you.
I’d also like to thank Ken Shamrock and Urijah Faber, for seeing my potential and nurturing my growth.
My story was not an easy one to tell; and now that it lives in the pages of this book, I’d like to also thank some of the people who helped make it happen: Margaret Stohl, Monica Haim, and Krishan Trotman—thanks for digging deep with me and helping bring my truth to life.
Finally, I would also like to express the deepest of gratitude to my managers Mark Schulman, Mike Roberts, Jeff Meyers, and Leah Almondia. You helped me rise from my ashes to become what I am today, and I am forever grateful.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is my story and my truth.
It’s not an easy one to tell.
To avoid unnecessarily identifying anyone in particular, I have taken the liberty of changing some of the names of the characters that appear in the book.
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