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Kindle Notes & Highlights
People think athleticism is just physical, but it’s not.
“Never mistake movement for action.”
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teacup, it becomes the teacup. That water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
Bodybuilding is hard work—you lift those weights and you feel exhausted—but it’s not smart work.
I could learn from watching, not just doing.
Anyone who concretely visualizes a realistic and more immediate goal when planning for long-term success has a vastly better chance at change and achievement.
without the other guy, there is no me.
After the fight is a time for humility, acceptance and analysis, no matter the result.
Sometimes, from the craziest people comes a surprising wisdom.
individuality is a major part of expanding knowledge.
At any given time, in life or in battle, you only need to know two people to succeed: yourself and your opponent.
Your opponent, too, constantly changes. He changes shape. His nature, though, is always the same: he wishes to defeat you.
your mind is faster than any part of your body, and it controls your reflex time.
It’s not enough to just look in the mirror; you need someone to tell you ‘You’re doing this” or “You’re doing that.” People think the adversary is the tough part.
Coltrane asked that the next time she have a reason for liking or disliking something, because if she doesn’t have anything to back it up, the feedback was useless.
most people overlook obvious facts.
World champions need “truth-sayers” around them,
What you need is competing evidence, a reason to keep striving for even greater things.
Telling a person what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear is not really a winning combination.
I have a belief that all human greatness is founded upon routine,
this is how I get better. I pick small things and I practice them until they’re perfect.
It exhibits one of the great points that lies at the fundamental structure of all martial arts: control.
Holy crap, Cindy Crawford’s husband looks pissed off at me! He came here to see me fight, and here I am checking out his girl. I have to stop this.
Sure, it was risky and dumb, but I don’t think I had a choice. If you don’t believe me, you’ve never stared into Cindy Crawford’s eyes when she’s just a few feet away from you.
What anyone, regardless of whether or not they’re interested in martial arts, can take away from the story of GSP is the power of the marriage of vision with discipline.
This all sounds so simple, but the point that needs to be made here is about who we let into our inner circles and the environment we create for ourselves.
Fight days are especially odd days.
our minds pick up all kinds of information that our consciousness never tells us about.
It’s bizarre: a punch in the face hurts less when you win than when you lose.
Losing only becomes tolerable when you can look at it objectively and find ways of learning from it.
Because life is not a straight line—it’s in constant movement, and it chooses to be transparent when it wants to, not when you want it to be.
Another integral ingredient to being a champion is belief. But you need two kinds of belief.
Dreams on their own are utterly useless, but allied to a workable plan of action [they] garner the greatest of results,
Did you know that our toes and feet can keep our balance better than anything else? They keep us centered.
The better you get, the less room for error there is.
To many cultures, the foot represents the soul.
As intelligence prevails throughout humanity, maybe there’ll be fewer wars and better cars.
that someone without fear can’t push himself.
What happens when you accept and embrace your fear? Fear becomes your weapon.
Being smart is knowing what you’re not good at, and finding someone who is.
“Hard work ain’t easy, but it’s fair.”
People can cheat or rob you of almost any possession, but hard work belongs to you, and you alone.
As strong as Georges is, he’s extremely fragile. We all are.
There are two types of muscle groups: the prime movers: they do the bulk of the work, the lifting. They’re the larger muscles, like quads, pectorals, and glutes. the stabilizers: they keep your joints running.
A lot of people waste energy worrying about the things they can’t control—that energy can be better used!
no such thing as a glass half empty or half full. The glass is at half capacity, and that means something.
Firas rule of capacity.
The maven is a trusted expert. The maven understands, because the maven acquires a great deal of knowledge. And then the maven seeks to share it.
We realized that the glass is at half its capacity, neither full nor empty. And what happened is that we started to manage risk practically, by looking at the facts instead of listening to people’s fears and emotions.
paralysis by analysis.
