Whatever Lights Your Fire

How a kid who wouldn't touch anything in the room ended up with a butterfly knife dancing in his hands.

The Tour

Not every kid walks into the Mastery Room and lights up.

Some of them sit down, fold their arms, and dare you to impress them. They've been dragged to enough offices, enough programs, enough well-meaning adults with clipboards and theories. They're not rude about it. They're just done.

This kid was like that.

I showed him the pool table. Nothing. The board games. Nothing. The jacks, the three-pointers, the training tools along the wall. Polite nods. Eyes somewhere else.

But I noticed where his eyes kept going.

The cabinet.

He wasn't going to ask. That would mean wanting something. And wanting something in front of an adult had not worked out well for him before.

So I kept talking.

The Lizard Brain

I told him what I tell every kid who comes through that door.

We have a reptilian brain. Just like lizards. It's the oldest part of the nervous system — the part that doesn't think, doesn't analyze, doesn't second-guess. It just executes.

And lizards can catch flies with their tongues.

I'd ask him — I wonder what your reptilian brain can do?

He was listening now. Not performing listening. Actually listening.

I told him the nervous system is programmable. Like a video game. You don't beat the level by trying harder — you beat it by training smarter. Rote practice builds the road. The mastery mindset is how you travel it. Put them together and something happens that's hard to explain until you feel it — one plus one becomes five.

I told him about the rest. How you go home frustrated, can't get it right, sleep on it — and come back the next day and bam. Your brain was working while you slept. Organizing. Wiring. Locking it in.

I told him about the moment it clicks. When your body does it with its eyes closed while your mind goes somewhere else entirely. When you've crossed over.

Full master.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then — barely above a whisper:

Can I get good at the knives?

Of Course

Whatever lights your fire.

We started with one safe throwing knife each. One for him, one for me — so we could throw together. I'd show him a form and he'd mirror me. Then he'd throw and I'd mirror him back. Two people, one target, no grades, no pressure. Just the knife, the wall, and the space between trying and getting it.

Dr. B on the side — coaching, watching, giving feedback on form. Framing every miss as fertilizer. That's information. That's your body learning. Get back up.

He got back up every time.

And then one day — maybe the second week, maybe the third — he went for it and the knife landed exactly where it was supposed to land.

Thump.

He looked at the target. Then at me. Then back at the target.

That face. I've seen it a hundred times and it never gets old. The face of a kid who just discovered that his body is capable of something extraordinary — and that nobody gave it to him. He built it himself.

When he passed, the cabinet opened further.

Butterfly knives.

Now that is something to watch. The butterfly knife isn't just a knife — it's a conversation between your hand and the blade. You learn to flip it, spin it, roll it around your fingers, open and close it like it has a heartbeat. It takes patience. It takes feel. And when you get it, when the blade starts moving like an extension of your own hand, something lights up in a kid's face that no report card has ever put there.

We practiced together. We breathed together. Focus, form, reset.

Fraternal. Two people doing something hard, side by side, because it matters.

The Room Was Just One Door

The cabinet was the beginning, not the boundary.

If your fire was somewhere else — a different instrument, a different skill, a different arena — we'd find wherever that training lived best and bring it to you. The right place, the right teacher, the right equipment. Whatever you needed.

Because the training was never really about the knife.

It was about learning that your body is programmable. That your mind can be trained to go quiet at exactly the right moment. That the nervous system you were born with is more capable than anyone ever told you.

The lizard cabinet was just the door this kid needed.

Every kid has a door.

The job is to find it — and then get out of the way while they walk through it.

Is your child still looking for their door? The Get Good page is where we start.

Or if you want to understand the full framework behind the Mastery Room, /learn is where it lives.

Your kid's door is out there. Let's find it together.