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I had the good fortune of growing up best friends with one of the world’s best Mixed Martial Arts fighters ever, Urijah Faber. Recently I sat down with the former world champion to ask him what he’s scared of.

JY: When you go into the ring, the night of the fight, what are you feeling and does fear even enter your mind?

UF: Good question. A lot of people ask that, especially people outside the sport. They look at fighting, especially cage fighting, as something really scary, you know. I mean, I think there is a lot of emotion that goes into it, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it fear. Most of the fear that you have, or anxiety, isn’t necessarily the fear of a fight because a fight is going into battle with someone and this is what I’m trained to do. I spend four to six hours a day, simulating this action, sparring with my partners, and visualizing and working on different game plans. So, once I go into a fight, it’s not about fear of any kind of bodily harm. But there are things you are definitely thinking about. There’s an eagerness to win, eagerness to make sure people are happy. The biggest fear out there is, you know you have friends and family out there who are invested in watching and rooting for you, emotionally invested. There’s fear of your future. What your career is going to be like after. There’s an anticipation of the unknown. That’s what’s a little bit scary for some people, but I’ve gotten to a point where fear isn’t really a factor for me. I’ve accepted that I’m going to put everything out on the line. I’ve come to terms with the fact that life for me is going to be pretty stable whether I win or lose. That’s a thing that has allowed me to be less fearful and more excited about the event.

JY: So on a physical level, it’s the repetition that has allowed you to get to that point?

UF: Yea, I would say it’s the familiarity. For some people, speaking in front of large crowds is something that’s really scary. I bet for a lot of those people, after doing it over and over again, they get to the point where it’s no big deal. I think it’s the same thing. Granted, fighting, getting hit in the face, and vice versa. Being in, you know, simulation of fighting for your life, would be a lot different for someone who’s never done it before. But getting yourself acquainted makes everything easier.

JY: You’ve always, though, from the time we were little kids, haven’t had a normal level of fear around encountering conflict. Where do you think that comes from?

UF: Man, I think about this because I scout other talent and I have a management interest in some of these guys. I have a team that I’m building. I’m looking for talent, people who have a similar mindset. Where it comes from is probably a history of success and support, which came from my family mostly, being loved. I’ve got one of those moms who is always on your side. Even if there is a consequence, she is first going to blame whoever or whatever is giving you trouble. If you got in trouble at school, she was going to make sure it was dealt with by the teacher properly first. [laughs]

JY: I remember that happening. And I also remember other parents being nervous that you and your brother had too much freedom. You could stay out late when you were young or be home alone. Your parents really trusted you.

UF: Yea, and part of that was out of necessity. Both my parents were struggling to make ends meet. I almost felt like on my pop’s side though, he was more like one of our peers. You remember that. But he was also really trusting. He had that trust that, hey, we’re all just people here. He kind of acted like we were adults from a young age. But you know, we also had the fear of my mom too, the discipline. She was the iron fist. [laughs] Regardless, though, I knew I had support. When I went to Davis and I studied these things, you looked at the adolescent patterns. The most stable kids were, of course, attached to their parents, but when the parents left, they were still going to be alright. And I think I had a real, almost to an extreme, a sense that I was going to be ok.

JY: Yea, I have a distinct recollection of being in first or second grade and we were playing four-square and some sixth grader stole our ball and you went up and were just like, “what, you going to give us our ball back?” And the kid, who was about three times our size, you could tell he had a moment of fear. There was no fear in your stance. Logically, maybe there should have been. This kid might have been able to beat you up. But you didn’t think he could.

UF: I remember that too, and being a little bit unrealistic about stuff. I talk about that with my guys too. So much of it is the power of the mind and how do you really perceive things. An extreme optimist, even when you get beat up, you find something good that you did. I have a real ability to focus on the good thing, and to really believe that nobody is going to mess with me, nobody can beat me up, and that’s why I got into the sport. And from that stand point, I think there’s a carry over from my parents, my mom especially, that nobody does this to my kids. My kids can dance, my kids can act, my kids can do anything. It was almost unrealistic. It’s funny because I went to BJ Penn’s camp and I got time to spend with his dad. And his dad is delusional about how nobody should be able to beat up BJ. I talked to him and was, like, this guy’s not seeing reality. BJ has been beaten before. But then you see BJ and he’s got the same confidence that his dad does, the same it’s all in the mind attitude. Ignoring the fact that BJ has been beat before, his dad still talks like, “the reason nobody can beat BJ.” [laughs]

JY: The support is unconditional.

UF: Yea, I think for me it was being in a position when I was a little kid when I was kind of the man. Whether it was genetics or family support, I had a little bit of an advantage here, a little bit there. I was doing some acting even in first grade so I had some high confidence and stuff like that. But then, you know, it was also being willing to find out.

JY: And you did have natural ability, which created a string of successes. So what happens to you, like, let’s go to the Mike Brown situation when you got beat twice. There were a lot of positive things to find in the first fight and in the second but how were you feeling after that loss? Did you have any anxiety and how did you deal with that going into the second fight, and after that?

UF: It’s a good thing to talk about losses. Because you hear people talk about positive attitude, PMA, positive mental attitude and how important it is for successful people. I think that is such an important part of life, and it’s something that people can change. When I look at things, it never feels good to have the loss part happen. But you let it motivate you, or you let it bring you down. It’s almost going back to that denial thing. I don’t want to be one to make excuses, but I’d rather have an excuse than say, ‘I’m just not good enough.’ That’s permanent. There’s nothing I can do to change that. If I say, hey, if I was a little bit stronger here, or if I was a little bit faster there, or I was just careless, I made a mistake, you know, that’s what cost me the fight, and I can change that. So you go back to your positive mental attitude, maybe if I do this stuff, I can improve. The other thing is, knowing who I am. I don’t let a loss or a win define who I am. I know who I am. It has been proven over time. I’ve worked hard. I’ve lost before. I’ve lost games in elementary school. I’ve lost football games and wrestling matches, and you know, you don’t stop living.

JY: You lost a couple fights to me [laughs, completely untrue]

UF: Not that I remember [laughs]

JY: So, when you went into that second fight, you felt just as confident as ever that you were going to beat him?

Yea, and that’s something, they talk about guys losing. A guy who has really been knocked out bad, they say he’s never the same. I think it all depends on how you view things. They also talk about age. I had a reporter the other day ask me about age and she was saying, ‘a lot of people say that the shelf life for smaller fighters is shorter because they’re smaller,’ or something like that [laughs]. And I was just, like, oh really, that makes zero sense to me. I try to let my own beliefs control my destiny and know that I’m going to give my all. People also talk about hey, you lost the fight, you lost the second fight, how do you deal with that? And the thing is, when you have the ability to put that out there, to lay it all out, and exert yourself and put in your full effort, it kind of negates what really happens. Because it’s a release of tension. For someone who is living vicariously and watching at home, it might bother them for months on end, but when you are exerting yourself and giving your all, it’s kind of a release. If you didn’t get a chance to exert what you really felt you had like the first Brown fight, you know, I felt like I got caught early and I wanted to do more. But being able to exert your best effort takes away some of the negativity and fear of loss.

JY: And there were things in both fights that you could point to: you missed that elbow in the first fight and you broke both your hands in the second.

UF: Yea, and I’ll focus on that stuff.

JY: That’s logical. What about, do you ever use that fear of loss or fear for your career to help motivate you?

UF: It’s good you say that. There are so many people who are successful in this world and everybody has different approaches. There are guys who throw up before competitions. There are guys who can’t sleep the night before. And that may be what their body needs. When a bird is in a fight or flight situation, it takes a big crap so it’s lighter and takes off, you know what I mean.

Is that one of your strategies? [laughs]

No. [laughs]. I would say, the difference for me is that I would rather not focus on that. I don’t get a good energy from focusing on the fear and what could happen. I would rather focus on the fact that there are a lot of stable things in my life. You and I are going to be friends until we’re old men. My family is going to love me regardless. Do I like to lose? I hate to lose. But is it going to change who I am? Is it going to change my life in a way where I can’t live happily? No. It’s hard to focus on that. And some guys will be anti-motivated by that, you know. But I like to go into a situation where I’m enjoying it. I like to enjoy things and I can’t really enjoy something when I’m stressed all the time about what could happen if things don’t go the way they should. So I don’t really like to use that as motivation. I will use somebody talking bad about me, thinking that they’re going to one-up me, as a motivator, as something that gets my heart going, like, ‘come on buddy, you really think you can beat me up?’

JY: It’s having someone challenge your beliefs about yourself?

UF: Yea, and people often ask, how do you have to feel about your opponent? Do you have to hate him? I don’t have to hate him, but I have to think he’s a moron for stepping in the cage with me because I’m about to beat the crap out of him. [laughs] Shake hands before and shake hands after, but prove you’re the man in between.

JY: And you had an undefeated streak for a long time. Is there a feeling of, well, the thing that was a little bit scary, losing, happened, and it wasn’t so bad. What is there to fear?

UF: Right, and you know, people say it’s not about the destination, it’s the journey. I have different guys on my team who are so fearful of what might happen. One guy doesn’t really mind fighting. Once he’s committed to fighting he trains his butt off, but the commitment part of it, arranging the fight and saying I’ll take that date, has the worst kind of fear for him. He can’t commit to that. It’s almost like he has to be forced into it, and once he commits, he’s fine.

JY: What do you feel like motivates you to train hard?

UF: Well, I think what it starts out with is setting goals, you know. As a young kid, we were wrestling or fighting, rollerblading, we were physical kids and we learned what we like. I learned what I like at a young age. You knew what you liked at a young age. Throughout life, what I liked to do and what my goals were always coincided. So, once I knew that, I like to work out all day long. I feel good when I do that, I have a goal to have a job where I get to work out all day long. There’s your goal. It started out just following my heart and my passion and learning how to set goals and reach them.

JY: What was your thought process like? Because I remember we were going through this together. I was trying to write my first book and I was offered a few thousand bucks, and you started fighting and you were coaching wrestling for like $7000 for the season and you were doing your first cage fight? What was going through your head as far as, you know, there are societal norms that say this might not be a proper career path. There are people who would say, maybe you should sign up for veterinary school. How did you stick with your goal of fighting even though at the time there wasn’t even much of a career path for a lightweight fighter?

UF: I remember I was living in an apartment with three of my college buddies. You were living on a boat, writing a book about surfing and Buddhism. And I remember having that conversation, and we were both scratching by. The bottom line comes back to that confidence, and saying, hey, I know I’m going to be ok. And I’m going to just do stuff I like. That’s it, period. When I was doing the coaching at Davis, it was like, man what an opportunity. I think I was clearing like $600 per-month. My apartment was $200 per-month. I was working at a restaurant and busing tables to get some extra food and I was coaching little kids. But as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t even working. I was doing all the stuff I liked, and I’m surviving and I’ll be alright. If I need to go mow a lawn because I need some money, I’ll go mow a lawn. That kind of thing. My ability to do what I love had a lot to do with the fearlessness. I wasn’t worried about the security because I knew I’d be alright. I was really into doing things that kept me happy in the present. Because if I was happy in the present, I was happy in the recent past and I was happy in the immediate future, you know.

What about the pain issue though? That’s bred into us from 200 million years ago as mammals. You’re supposed to fear pain because it’s harmful and you may not pass on your genes if you hurt yourself. Is that an issue at all? Because even though the fights are sanctioned, something could go wrong. You could break your neck or whatever? You don’t think about that at night?

UF: I’ve been asked by my mom a bunch of times now. She didn’t want me to play football or wrestle because she thought I was going to get hurt, and, I mean, my answer always goes back to the same thing: how many people died driving? And if I go in unprepared, that would be putting myself at risk. But if prepare, physically, mentally, game planning to go into a situation, then my expectation of pain doesn’t really scare me. I don’t consider a lot of things pain because it’s just familiar to me. It may hurt if I hit you in the arm, but if I hit you in the arm everyday in the same spot, you’re going to get a callous and shrug it off. It’s one of those things where, it would probably be hard for me to sit and write for the whole day. I would probably lose my sanity. If that was my thing. But I mean, I could ask you, wouldn’t that drive you crazy if you had to sit and write all day? You don’t do that, I know. You write and do other things with your day. But there are people who sit at a computer all day. Is that going to kill them? It probably will be more likely.

JY: It makes sense. You’re not a risk taker. You don’t like throwing yourself off cliffs or driving fast. You want to do what you’re prepared for.

UF: Yea, I don’t want to sky dive. And I think that takes away a lot of the fear: preparation, then the mental side of things. I just had a good example. The first time the four-minute mile was broken. Nobody in the history of man had ever broken the four-minute mile. You know, so it was never documented, never been done. The one time it did happen, within months, a bunch of other people had done it. And after that, 20,000 people had broken the four-minute mile. It’s like breaking the mind part of it, the perception of what is scary and what is not scary. I got to believe a lot of it has to do with people’s belief in the after life and stuff like that. For a lot of people the actual fear of dying might be a lot to handle. I don’t sit and think about it, but if I sat and thought about it, it might be really scary to me too. I don’t sit and think about dying all day.

JY: What do you tell your team about fear?

UF: My path to being a good fighter had to do with belief in myself, love and support, and a bunch of trial and error. Does that mean that Mike Tyson had the love and support to make him a great fighter? No, Mike Tyson had: people were picking on me, people were picking on me, I knocked this guy out. He stopped picking on me. He had a success there. He knocked the next guy out. He had another success. The next guy he went to knock out gave him money, you know what I mean. That was his way of learning things. Mine, I would say, if you want to teach your kids to be a great fighter, great at anything, give them love and support. Don’t be the opposite way. Now, is there a different path for everyone? 100-percent. Fighters from great families and fighters from horrible families. Writers, politicians and musicians. There are lots of different paths. This is just my path. But I think it comes down to action and being positive.

JY: There are a lot of successful unhappy people and you’re loving what you’re doing.

UF: Yea, I think that’s important. One of my guys, he has the worst problem with confidence and he just moved down here a couple months ago. He’s got a terrible problem with confidence. Then I have guys who don’t have confidence problems. Then I have guys who always come to practice. So this guy has trouble with confidence and he’s not coming to practice all the time. And he’s being inconsistent on his diet. So, I told him, your confidence issue comes from the fact that you’re being realistic. You’re not being disciplined and so you’re not going to perform well. That’s your confidence issue. He’s like, well, I just need to work on my confidence. And I said, you need to work on your lifestyle that allows you to be confident. You don’t just decide to be confident by saying, you know today is my day to be confident. It’s about earning confidence. You earn respect. You earn success. It’s never easy. So that’s my main message. Hey, you guys really want something. If you’re confident and you work hard, you’ve got the mindset of a champion. If you work hard, and you’re not confident, you have the possibility of being a champion. If you’re not confident and you don’t work hard, you’re delusional and you’re probably not going to be a champion. You know what I mean. If you have all the confidence but no discipline, you’re probably in trouble.

JY: And those are the people who probably get screwed up.

UF: Yea. Unless you can learn from that. If someone comes in and says, I’m the baddest dude on the planet, I can beat up anyone. I’m going to go to this gym, and nobody’s going to touch me. If he goes in and gets knocked out, then gets knocked out. He’s going to say, wait, I’m not the baddest dude on the planet. I need to get better at this, this, and this. If he keeps walking in everyday and still has that confidence, he’s going to be dead soon.

JY: Have you learned from your losses?

UF: Yea, I think you have to make adjustments and you have to be realistic. During my first Mike Brown fight to the second one, like I said, I lost both fights but there was a marked improvement in the second one. I felt like I needed to throw on some weight. I needed to not be so careless. And it’s funny, after the first Mike Brown fight, I wanted to feel sorry for myself. I was not happy. The promotion assumed I was going to win, I think, and they had be scheduled to do a PR tour in Mexico. And so I went to Mexico City the day after my fight. I had to do a whole week of PR, and because everything was delayed in Mexico a week, I had to act like nothing had happened, you know. So I’m going on these shows. I just rocked in the first round. TKO’d in the first round. And I’m going on all these shows, telling everyone they gotta watch the fight. It’s going to be a big one and all this stuff [laughs]. And so I’m doing this stuff. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter to me. I’m going through and I’ve got a place in Puerto Vallarta and I’m in Mexico City. So I’m like, hey, can you guys just fly me home to my place in PV? So I go over there and I’m like, now I can feel sorry for myself. But I get there and I’m looking out at the Pacific and there’s a beer in my hand. There’s a hot tub on the balcony and I’m chilling for two days, waiting to feel sorry for myself and it just never happened. I met this hot chick and I had a great time. And I was like, dude, life is good. And it may not be that way for everyone, but there are always ways to find the good.