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My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu QUOTES

My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu QUOTES

1 " I firmly believe that life will continually try to teach you the same lesson, with increasing pain, until you heed the call. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

2 " Jiu Jitsu forges friendships in a way I’ve never known. Being involved in an art as intimate as this, where bodily connection is a must, the common cultural boundaries of personal space are broken. You will never see more hugs, high fives, and physical expressions of love than on the mats. Ultimately, this proves to be one of the most fulfilling aspects of our pursuit of mastery. Along the way, we learn to love others as we love ourselves. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

3 " Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

4 " Relationships formed through Jiu Jitsu are deeply rooted in respect for one another, and this is often not the case in matters of modern society. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

5 " Jiu Jitsu provides a place of fellowship that, unfortunately, our society has largely failed to create. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

6 " It is fellowship, this most fundamental need on our way toward achieving our highest expression of the human experience, which Jiu Jitsu provides. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

7 " This is the opportunity the fellowship of Jiu Jitsu affords us. To reach our highest potential of self, and then to offer that self to another. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

8 " The point of meditating is not to learn to sit quietly in a room. The point is to live that way in the world. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

9 " Thoreau and Huxley calmly state what I have spent years trying to articulate, and never found the words for doing so. To read the words of these great men is to read the highest expression of my very self which is inexpressible due to the shortcomings of my particular nature. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

10 " Quotes tell a story. A stringing together of a few words can leave you with an idea that changes the course of your life, and can direct you toward reaching your highest potential as a human. The story they tell is derived from the experience which inspired them, and it is our sharing that experience that allows for the quote to resonate so deeply within our being. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

11 " Words make the intangible aspects of human experience communicable, and a single sentence can shatter our world view and assist us in the formulation of a new one. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

12 " Life is easier lived when lived for others. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

13 " Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

14 " We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

15 " Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

16 " If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

17 " Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

18 " I wanted to get to the most essential aspect of my being, and look around for a while. I wanted to explore what I am in my most basic self. I wanted to chip away at all of the nonsense I have acquired through my twenty-nine years on this earth. I wanted to find truth. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. Jiu Jitsu has peeled the veil of daily life, and has shown me what lies beyond the curtain. We willingly accept the chains that circumstance forces upon us, and we grow to find comfort in them. We attach various fetters of day-to-day living to our being, and we do so with a smile. We accept these constraints for they come in the way of comfort. We accept conformity for it appears the path of least resistance. We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

19 " Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu

20 " We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life. "

― Chris Matakas , My Mastery: Continued Education Through Jiu Jitsu