5 Powerful Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu that Increased My Financial Confidence
It all started in 2009, a couple of years after beginning my career in finance.
Layoffs are happening across Wall Street, and hundreds of my colleagues are let go in one afternoon. I go to the bullpen and realize all the desks are clear. I am the only one left in my class of trainees.
I’m about to become a financial advisor, and I have a year to bring in clients.
Back in the bullpen I sit with a phone in front of me, staring at a list of my friends’ parents whom I can’t bring myself to call, looking out the window at the seemingly endless concrete sidewalk, feeling hopeless.
I walk down long corridors of offices filled with bull and bear artwork (unofficial Wall Street mascots representing rising vs. declining markets) and men in blue blazers on headsets talking about interest rates while swinging a golf putter or a baseball bat. They talk about investing like sports statistics — proclaiming, oracle-like, and loudly, what the market will do and why people should listen. I feel jargon-bombed and maddened by the thought that I’m not able to discern whether what they’re saying is actually relevant, or whether it’s just hot air and financial flexing.
I notice that clients leave meetings intimidated, which is how I feel, too.
Fast Forward: An Unlikely Solution
The next few years I did everything I could to learn and grow my business. I got to the office at 6 AM to hear the stock market report “at the open,” I cold called, I networked, and fielded calls from advisors and clients rocked by the financial crisis.
It was world-class training. But every day felt like a gauntlet, and I started to feel overwhelmed.
I called my father, an attorney in Georgia, and asked him for advice (cue southern accent),
“Some of the best lawyers I know are black belts in karate or jiu-jitsu,” he said. “You might try something like that and see if it helps you in business.”
HA! Not the answer I was expecting. An absurd idea...but was it? Later that day I found myself Googling “jiu-jitsu near me.” I was intrigued when I saw that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (“BJJ”) is a martial art that you do mostly on the ground.
Instead of relying on brute force to overpower your opponent, you focus on leverage, angles, pressure, timing, and knowledge of human anatomy to achieve a non-violent submission. Jiu-Jitsu is just as much a mental chess game as it is a physical sport and you don’t have to be the biggest or strongest to prevail.
I dug that.
My First Lesson
The next week I headed to the gym to check it out. When I walked in, there were six guys tumbling around on a blue mat. “Hi, I’m here for the Jiu-Jitsu?,” I said, still questioning myself. I got a white “gi” uniform and a white belt and started training.
I remembered that in the Wall Street cult classic movie Boiler Room, high-energy rap music is the soundtrack for the future stockbroker, so on my drives in to train I switched on rock music (more my speed) with heavy guitar to get in the right headspace to “roll” or “spar” — one-on-one combat with a partner. I remember a session early on.
“Anne, you're with Shazan,” my coach said, pairing me with a higher-ranking brown belt. Shazan and I put in our mouth guards and faced each other on our knees. The timer was set for four minutes with a one-minute warning. I could feel my heart in my chest, the blood pumping as I started to suck in air harder — anything to resource myself for the certain danger I felt would be coming. We pounded fists, signaling the beginning of our round.
This moment, this gulf of uncertainty, became my greatest training ground. What will happen next? What will he do? What will I do? My mind started to project all the things that could go wrong. What if I get injured? What if I break my arm? What if I get cauliflower ear? Seeing these flashes of danger, my instincts told me: “Stop. Do not move forward until you have more certainty.”
Except the bell had already rung and it was fully on. Shazan grabbed the fabric above my wrist. I grabbed one of his wrists with both hands and pulled his arm down away from my body. He grabbed my gi. I grabbed his gi. I moved to the right to get around him and got off balance. He pulled me to the ground, applying the weight of his chest onto my chest, increasing the pressure with leverage by pushing down on the balls of his feet. I swung my heels in the air, rocking back and forth to throw him off me. Shazan bore down, increasing the pressure.
I was trapped, pinned, struggling to breathe. An inner voice shouted “mayday!” and my animal instincts took over: punch, kick, thrash, flail...anything to escape. After a few explosive exit attempts, my energy was drained. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I saw my coach hovering above me, shouting something, but I couldn't hear him. I was stunned: “Why doesn’t it seem natural for me to scream bloody murder right now? Why is using my voice difficult?”
Finding My Voice
After the round was over, Shazan sat next to me to share the moves that led him to prevail. This is common in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a culture where everyone teaches everyone else. He told me:
“When you’re scared or trapped, it’s natural to panic. But it counterproductively drains energy and gets in the way of clear thinking. Try to breathe slowly and relax, then focus on the next small step. Maybe it’s tucking an elbow into your chest to create space between you and your partner. Maybe it’s wedging a knee or lassoing your arm around theirs. One movement at a time, you can free yourself to safety. And if you need to end the round, declare it by saying “TAP” or smacking your hand on the mat loudly enough so that your partner can hear. You need to be loud. OK?”
I nodded my head, the information sinking in slowly — ever a well-mannered Southern girl. I slapped my hand on the blue mat and it made a loud sound. I smiled, feeling almost rebellious. I said the word: “Tap” out loud then again a bit louder: “TAP!”
Over the next months and years, with practice—and literal arm twisting—I learned how to strengthen my sense of security and confidence, both on and off the mat.
Here are 5 core lessons I’ve learned from Jiu-Jitsu that have transformed my financial life:
1. Planning is Indispensable
One of the first experiences you have in BJJ is being pinned underneath someone and not being able to get out. So you practice learning to free yourself. When pinned like that, one of the experiences I had was “freeze” - my mind would go blank. This was not unlike what would happen at work when I wanted to say something but found myself speechless.
What helped me slow down the amygdala hijack was to breathe and mentally prepare in advance. General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” To me what this means is that I will never be able to perfectly predict what the future holds but planning and practice in advance arms me with the ability/tools to respond to changes and opportunities with greater resilience and agility. Then, when I am in a high stress situation, if my plan is internalized, I have access to a framework - a “go-to” first response - rather than needing to create a new one in a time when I am experiencing a freeze response.
In working with clients in the financial crisis, I saw how planning was essential to help people navigate fear and uncertainty, ups and downs in financial markets or help them make financial decisions that align with their values when emotions are heightened. Planning is essential because when you’ve mapped out a plan in advance, you can tap into the wisdom of your prior clear-headed self.
2. Breathe & Trust Yourself
Let’s say I have mapped out a plan. In BJJ, the moment I slap hands with someone and the round is on, I face uncertainty. In sparring as in life, there is no way of knowing exactly what will happen. This means learning to accept and expect that uncertainty IS part of the plan.
With this in mind, I started to see the uncertainty in jiu-jitsu as a gift, helping me to free myself from the need to know what is going to happen and instead trusting in my capacity to deal with whatever comes. As someone close to me has reminded me, I have always dealt with whatever came my way (so have you). It helps to remember that.
The practice is then to be present in the moment. I love how literal this lesson is because the moment I start obsessing about the future or my to-do list, I get kicked in the face.
In navigating financial uncertainty, I am reminded of Shazan’s advice to breathe slowly and relax, focusing on the next small step, rather than making big moves in reaction to fear. This may include reviewing the foundation of your financial plan: cash flow. Having concrete knowledge of how much money is coming in and how much is going out of your financial life on a regular basis allows you to ground and plan by the numbers – not the potentially unlimited worrisome scenarios in your mind. In times of uncertainty, understanding your cash flow gives you the power to adapt creatively to change.
3. Know When to Tap Out
In BJJ, there are two ways to extricate yourself when you’re feeling trapped. One is through physical movement, and the other is by using your voice and yelling “Tap!” which is when your partner will stop. Using your voice is essential, but when I first started it felt very unnatural to me and I wondered why.
With practice, I showed myself over and over that I could remove myself from situations in which I felt impossibly trapped or uncomfortable. One of the most profound benefits of this was that once I got it in my body that I had the power to free myself, it translated to a sense that I was capable of doing the same with situations in my life.
I slowly but surely noticed how using my voice in BJJ helped me speak up more readily in other situations when I wanted to remove myself, whether it was declining an invitation, or taking steps to end a relationship that wasn’t working. I learned through the repetition of physically removing myself from uncomfortable situations that there’s a way, but I need to advocate for myself and move towards the goal, one step at a time. And sometimes, that means making the call to say TAP.
In working with clients, I have observed that one of the most critical components of financial peace and confidence is the exercise of thinking through liquidity planning together, playing through worst case scenarios in advance and planning out access to funds if those scenarios were to occur. This is one of the reasons it’s so important to include an “emergency fund” or “reserve” as a part of a robust financial strategy. Over time, markets will shift, life will happen, and there may be moments when you want to hide all your money under your mattress out of fear. What will help you resist that impulse is if you know that you have a plan for how you can access the money you need to feel secure in times of uncertainty.
4. Develop Technique Through Practice
When I started to learn about money and finance, it felt like going to a different country where all the billboards were in a different language. It was intimidating, confusing, and overwhelming. The brokers equipped with charts and graphs seemed to know what they were talking about, so in the early days it seemed easier to defer, stay quiet in meetings and agree. But, over time, not engaging had a cost: my self-confidence. I needed to learn how to take command of my financial education.
I noticed in Jiu-Jitsu that the most advanced grapplers were not short-term oriented, impulsive or reactive. The best black belts I knew were grounded, patient, and intentional—studying, practicing, refining one move at a time. This insight was key for me in learning about finance. Instead of focusing on the seemingly monumental mountain of learning, I focused on one thing at a time, learning the first concept, then the next thing, and then the next one after that.
In my first decade of practice, concept by concept, I earned the basics: Series 7, Series 66, life & health insurance licenses and then more advanced financial certifications: CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, Certified Investment Management Analyst®, Chartered Special Needs Consultant®, etc. As I did this, I discovered: the financial concepts themselves are not that hard, but most of the time they are written in a different language.
So I adopted a different learning technique, breaking concepts down bit by bit and learning numbers through drawing pictures and visualizing ideas. I looked at technical reports with the same eye as a piece of poetry: What is the author really trying to say here? I made a game out of translating them in clear language, pictures and human stories that made sense to me.
Line by line, step by step, I clarified concepts. I gained confidence. I came to enjoy engaging with numbers and finance. I realized — I could do this, understand this — anyone could, with practice.
5. Everyone is a Teacher
Early in my career I remember observing a meeting with a financial advisor and a client. It began with the client being presented with a thick stack of financial reports. Then, in response to what the client may have imagined would be a straight-forward financial question, the advisor launched into a financial soliloquy about the history of interest rates, emerging market valuations, the Fed - and within about 10 seconds the client’s eyes glazed over. This was a truly tragic moment because I could see that they had just checked out of their own financial life.
20 minutes later when the advisor came up for air they asked, “Any questions?” And the client who was just bombarded, now exhausted, might dare to ask a follow up question to be polite, but they might not, because they knew that if they did they may have to hear that whole thing again.
This is a common dynamic in the industry: Financial Advisor as the oracle in a 1-way conversation - pontificating on the future and telling you what to do.
The culture of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu inspired me — seeing the higher belts help lower belts and grapplers at every level teach each other — it reminded me that there is so much to learn from the experiences of everyone around me.
I began to wonder: what would happen if I shifted my perspective at work and thought of my industry’s “old guard” as invaluable teachers—there to help me learn tradition and, ultimately, shape a more modern technique?
Mindset Shift
This shift in mindset changed everything for me. Sitting with colleagues who had started in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I learned that many advisors had started their careers as “stockbrokers.” The history of the profession goes back over a century, when their job was to read ticker tape — and then call their customers to pitch the stock of the day. Trying to predict the future and telling you what to do was their job! With the rise of technology and the data explosion, the stockbroker has mostly gone extinct (though some hang on), but the communication style of talking at people continues today.
With this in mind, the stock market soliloquies became financial entertainment and the industry jargon, which once confused me, became my raw material. I enjoyed the process of translating intimidating concepts in an accessible way so that people would have more clarity — not opacity — around their finances. I came to believe that the role of a modern financial advisor should be to help clients organize what they have, clarify their vision of wealth, invest with intention, navigate uncertainty, and make decisions with confidence through the lens of their values.
Modern advice requires two-way conversation, not a one-way monologue.
Using this communication style and technique enabled me to support clients in making clear and intentional decisions based on their values and vision for their lives, as opposed to me making choices for them based on my own beliefs. As my purpose became clearer, so did my professional vision.
Freedom and Fulfillment
In the following years, I earned higher jiu-jitsu rankings and became the first female purple belt in my class.
As my confidence grew outside of the office, I gained command in my voice, values, and technique as a financial advisor, and built a thriving practice. I became hopeful and excited about the future of wealth management. There’s a whole world of independent financial advisors out there working passionately on behalf of their clients, and I wanted to be a part of that.
In 2019 I founded Created, a boutique wealth advisory. Our mission is to help people clarify their personal vision of freedom and fulfillment, and design their finances to bring it to life.
