Butterflies in Formation
how to weaponize the feeling most people run from
it’s the year 2010.
a young UFC prospect, just signed to the federation with barely a handful of fights to his name, begins signing his autographs in a way that’s quite unusual.
“jon jones. ufc champion 2011.”
people laughed. who does this kid think he is?
he had the talent, sure. but signing yourself as champion before you even sniffed a title shot? that’s not confidence. that’s delusion. at least, that’s what they said.
nobody really treated him seriously. but the kid turned out better than expected.
he went out and started dismantling everyone they put in front of him. one by one. ryan bader, brandon vera, vladimir matyushenko. each fight more dominant than the last.
the federation took notice. with the original title challenger injured and the fight card already set, they called jones on short notice. twenty three years old. twelve fights into his career.
the champion on the other side was mauricio “shogun” rua. battle-tested, experienced, one of the most dangerous light heavyweights on the planet.
nobody gave the young man much of a chance. but luckily for him, he wasn’t thinking about chances.
“i truly believe it’s my time, so i feel as if it’s already done.”
on march 19, 2011, at UFC 128 in newark, new jersey, jon jones stopped shogun rua in the third round by TKO.
champion. just like he signed it.
one year earlier. to the letter.
jon jones always fascinated me.
not in a sporting sense. i’m not an mma fan or anything like that.
what fascinates me is his mindset.
i’ve listened to many interviews with him over the years, and he always carried this immense, almost unsettling certainty that he was going to completely obliterate whoever stood across from him.
more than confidence. more than bravado. it was the kind of conviction that makes you genuinely believe the man when he looks his opponent dead in the eye and tells him what’s coming.
recently i stumbled upon a very old interview. early career. raw, unfiltered, before the fame and the controversy and all of it.
he said something that stopped me mid-scroll.
he used the term: “butterflies in formation.”
“when you have butterflies and you’re feeling anxious and you have anxiety or are nervous, that’s when you’re most powerful... a lot of people, instead of honing this power and using it, they allow it to just consume them. there’s another quote that says, ‘a big challenge, a big pressure is like a fire, it’s like a raging fire.’ either you can allow this fire to consume you and just take you over completely, or you can gain control of this fire and harness it and you blow it right at your opponent, dragonball Z style. that’s what i’m trying to do, trying to get my emotions under control and use this adrenaline to my advantage.”
— jon jones
it’s another early morning in my lab as i’m writing this.
rays of the rising sun are breaking through my blinds, landing directly on my notepad filled with a bunch of notes i taken throughout the last couple of days.
i’ve been thinking a lot lately about that idea.
i thought about it before a hard exam, sitting in the hallway with my heart going too fast, and i used it.
i thought about it before a conversation i’d been avoiding for weeks, and i used it.
i thought about it before every moment that mattered enough to make my hands sweat.
and it worked every single time.
sometimes just one shift in perspective, one reframe of what you’re actually feeling, can change everything about what you’re capable of in that moment.
it did in my case.
im one cappucino and triple espresso deep, and now i’m going to distill the essence of it into your brain as well.
let’s get into it.
THE UNINVITED GUEST
we all know this feeling.
this sudden electricity that runs through your chest before something that matters.
this sharp, uninvited aliveness that shows up exactly when you need to be at your best.
a sudden adrenaline spike that hijacks your body before your mind even has time to process what’s happening.
the easiest and most accurate way to describe it is this: butterflies.
that flutter in the stomach. that restless, buzzing energy that sits somewhere between excitement and dread and refuses to be one or the other. your heart rate climbs. your senses sharpen. your body shifts into a different gear entirely, one you didn’t consciously switch into.
biologically, it’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. cortisol and adrenaline flood the bloodstream. blood redirects away from your digestive system toward your muscles. your pupils dilate. your body is preparing for something it has classified as high stakes.
it is, in the most literal sense, your body mobilizing everything it has for you.
but here’s the problem:
for most people, it doesn’t feel like mobilization. it feels like a slow shutdown.
it can show up in different ways depending on the situation.
your legs become heavy, unreliable, like the ground beneath you suddenly stopped being solid.
your voice cracks mid-conversation and the words you rehearsed a hundred times dissolve before they reach your mouth.
your mind goes blank at the exact moment you need it most, wiped clean by the very system that was supposed to sharpen it.
the survival mechanism your body fires up to help you turns out to be the exact engine of your defeat.
but the universe is far too precise for that kind of cruel irony.
everything has a purpose.
the feeling was never meant to break you. it was meant to build you in the moment. to hand you more raw material than you’d normally have access to. more energy, more focus, more drive.
the butterflies were always on your side.
the only question is whether you’re flying them or they’re flying you.
THE TRANSMUTATION
people try to run from anxiety, brushing it off, suppressing it, hoping for it to pass as soon as possible.
but the truth of the matter is: this is the exact moment when you are the most powerful.
understand this: every emotion passing through your body is a form of energy.
joy. sadness. frustration. inspiration. anger. serenity.
doesn’t matter.
energy is energy.
it has no inherent direction. no inherent meaning. it is raw material, sitting there, waiting to be used.
the worst possible state you can be in is to feel nothing.
you go to a yoga class and the instructor would tell you to remove all thought, all feeling. to achieve some frictionless, emotionless stillness. to think nothing, feel nothing, essentially to become no one.
thank you mr. enlightened, but no.
there’s a reason why the greatest performers, the ones at the absolute top of whatever they do, carry something dangerous in their eyes right before they go.
they are not empty. they are not calm in the conventional sense.
they are loaded.
ticking bombs with a very precise detonator.
i want to feel. this is my fuel.
and the greatest realization you can ever make is that you can control this fuel.
instead of being dragged wherever your nervous system decides to take you, you simply choose the direction and channel it.
not repressing it. not fighting it. not white-knuckling your way through the feeling hoping it passes before the moment arrives.
letting it move through you completely, feeling it with everything you have, and simply giving it direction.
just like an alchemist who doesn’t destroy the base metal but transforms it into gold.
you’re not destroying the anxiety.
you’re transmuting it into power. into drive. into the sharpest, most alive version of yourself that only shows up when something actually matters.
here’s how you access that version.
THE ART OF HARNESSING THE STORM
the greatest lesson is to learn from the man himself.
in one of joe rogan’s interviews, jones revealed something that stopped the conversation cold.
before every single fight, he would arrive at the arena early. empty building. no crowd. no noise. no cameras, no pressure.
just him… and the octagon.
he would walk out alone, step inside the cage, and move around it. feeling the canvas under his feet. touching the fence. standing in the exact spot where, in a matter of hours, he would either cement his legacy or lose everything.
and then, after knowing the territory, he would run the whole night in his mind.
the walkout. the feeling of the crowd as he entered. the fight itself, every exchange, every moment, every decision. and finally, the moment it was stopped and his hand was raised.
by the time the lights came on and the arena filled and the world was watching, jon jones had already been there dozens of times in his mind.
“i take it so seriously as far as meditation, notes, visualization, preparation, everything. i take it a lot more seriously than a lot of people who play this sport. i’m obsessed with the game that i play.”
when you’ve been in the game long enough, you realize it’s all a game of attention.
wherever your attention goes, your energy flows.
when you’re loaded up with that raw energetic force and you channel all of it into every possible way things could go wrong, every reason you’re not ready, every version of failure…
it’s no wonder it always turns out like that.
that’s why your legs go heavy right when you need them most.
that’s why your voice cracks mid-sentence in the conversation that matters.
that’s why your mind blanks at the exact moment it needs to be sharpest.
you didn’t lack ability.
you just aimed the weapon at yourself.
one of the greatest skills you can ever develop is learning to take control of your attention under immense pressure.
don’t let the anxiety write the story.
direct every last drop of that energy into the outcome you desire. dwell in it. saturate yourself in it. give it everything you have.
establish a ritual before the moments that matter. rehearse the desired outcome thousands of times until it feels… inevitable.
when the pressure rises and the butterflies swarm and every instinct tells you to shrink, that is not the moment to retreat.
pour everything into the vision of what you want.
and you will be surprised how powerful you actually are.
every person reading this has the innate capability to take all that nervous energy, all that adrenaline, all that electricity the body so generously provides, and channel it into the reality they want.
the weapon was always loaded.
you just have to learn to point it.
get your butterflies in formation.
— Cipheron
let me be real with you.
everything you’ve read so far is just the surface.
it will get you moving. it will shift something. but if you want to take your game to an entirely different level, you need a deeper blueprint. something that goes beyond a single concept and rewires the way you think, operate and show up under pressure permanently.
that’s why i created the Mental Game Playbook.
based on real examples of the greatest performers in history, you will find there proven strategies to get your mind right and align it fully with the reality you’re after.
enter when you’re ready → mentalgameplaybook.com
thanks cipheron
Topuria too. He had a celebratory dinner the night before he fought Olivieria. Most people were questioning why — I saw it and laughed because I knew exactly what he was doing.