Chris Matakas Quotes

Our most valuable victories are those which go without praise.
Chris Matakas
It is a shock to many college graduates that their segway into the real world is one of obligation, profound debt, and countless sacrifices of the soul.
Chris Matakas
Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life's challenges for a lifetime.
Chris Matakas
The more closely two organisms depend upon each other the harder it becomes to tell where one organism ends and the other begins.
Chris Matakas
We can lose the roll, we can lose position, but we can constantly strive to win the moment.
Chris Matakas
Life is a constant build up and release of tension. If we go too far in either direction bad things happen.
Chris Matakas
Who you are as a person far outweighs what you do in an athletic arena.
Chris Matakas
I have never been as alive or awake as I have been through Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
There are no trophies for the real victories in life.
Chris Matakas
An intelligent consistency is the foundation of genius.
Chris Matakas
Anyone who has ever achieved anything has been a steward of his potential.
Chris Matakas
Jesus was not a carpenter forever.
Chris Matakas
We are only different because there exists something to be different from, and it is this difference that bonds us.
Chris Matakas
All these men recognized what they themselves valued, and lived according to these values regardless of their relationship to the values of their community. Each lived according to what brought them happiness and peace rather than commonplace prescriptions of the multitudes.
Chris Matakas
The secular world often finds its constituents disenfranchised and solitary as it has spent a great deal of time debating the religious community while failing to build a true community of its own.
Chris Matakas
Empathy is a breaking down of the false constructs of division between the observer and the observed.
Chris Matakas
Your progress as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner is a direct reflection of the standards you have for yourself.
Chris Matakas
We must remember that regardless of our differences in rank we are all equal as human beings. You can always tell how caring and compassionate others are in their actions towards those "below" them. Of course you are going to treat your black belt professor kindly, but how do you treat the white belt taking their first class? In spite of the division in belt rank there must be no division as people.
Chris Matakas
True mastery, it turns out, is not found in accumulating each and every tool under the sun. True mastery is learning that there are really only a handful of tools, and it is the proper application with correct timing and setting that makes them so useful.
Chris Matakas
Mastery does not exist.
Chris Matakas
If you are fortunate enough to have a particular activity with which you find greatest joy and technical success, it is your responsibility as a growing human being to continue that study. Whatever your endeavor, if you can expand upon the knowledge in your strongest subject, that new found understanding of all things will trickle down to every other area of your life.
Chris Matakas
Mastery, to whatever degree your circumstance allows, is determined by a handful of choices repeated daily.
Chris Matakas
Mastery lies on an infinite continuum, and as a result we will never reach the end. We can, however, see to it that we are as far along that continuum as our circumstance allows.
Chris Matakas
The best yardstick for our progress is not other people, but ourselves. Am I better than I was yesterday? This is the only question worth asking. As long as you go to bed at night a better practitioner than the one who woke up that morning, you have succeeded. Your worth should have nothing to do with how your progress stacks up relative to another.
Chris Matakas
If we do not master ourselves, we will be a slave to ourselves.
Chris Matakas
I have found the more worthwhile something is, the more of your life is required to achieve it.
Chris Matakas
I believe the devil exists in those little, seemingly unnoticeable moments when we choose to value our own insecurities over the service of others.
Chris Matakas
I believe it is the responsibility of each of us to pass on whatever we have learned in our time here. If I reach enlightenment after meditating in a cave for 10 years, but do not pass on this teaching and it dies with me, this was a wasted life. I believe we are here to help one another, and each of us has a unique wisdom that we should do our best to convey to others.
Chris Matakas
The most fulfilled among us are those who serve others.
Chris Matakas
Life is always easier when lived for others, and living for others is the best way I know to live for yourself.
Chris Matakas
Those who serve others have purpose. Those who serve themselves are lost.
Chris Matakas
Service, it seems, is the only antidote to existential frustration.
Chris Matakas
Your happiness is in direct proportion to the amount you serve others.
Chris Matakas
Every interaction with another is an opportunity to serve.
Chris Matakas
There is no higher calling than the service of your fellow man, and to do so through your own personal mastery of a craft is a gift enjoyed by few.
Chris Matakas
I have always found that effort is most easily produced when performed for the benefit of something external to ourselves.
Chris Matakas
As a human being, I know of no greater example of success than someone who is self-sustaining through using his passion in the service of others.
Chris Matakas
You have been blessed to stand on the shoulders of giants. Make sure that someone stands on yours as well. This is the only way of human progress.
Chris Matakas
The greatest effects we have on the world are the ones we can never see.
Chris Matakas
I am acutely aware that all I have been able to achieve has been in large part due to circumstances outside my control. This is why I teach, and this is why I write. I want to be one of those opportunities for others. Perhaps this is the true measure of success.
Chris Matakas
To base your self worth relative to others is to play a losing game. If you are at the bottom, you will be filled with self-loathing. If you are at the top, you will be filled with self-aggrandizement and ego. This will most certainly be one of your greatest obstacles to achieving whatever degree of mastery you are capable.
Chris Matakas
It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.
Chris Matakas
The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.
Chris Matakas
To know our values is to have a foundation on which to build a great life. Our environment and education will play a large part in influencing our formulation of this world view, but is ultimately ourselves that have the final say. We must decide what we value, and then live accordingly. After all, in the eyes of the world we could achieve great success, but if our actions do not coincide with what we ourselves truly deem worthy, we will find no peace.
Chris Matakas
A life of joy awaits the man who sits alone quietly in a room and determines what he himself believes rather than simply adopting the values of another.
Chris Matakas
A man has only so much life, and must diversify his efforts according to his values.
Chris Matakas
Properly directed thoughts result in properly directed actions. The only way to appropriately guide our thoughts is to know their foundation, our values.
Chris Matakas
When we know our values, we can easily measure whether or not our actions are in accordance with them. Values are the measuring sticks with which we determine the worthiness of our actions. To be better associated with one's own values is to remove a lot of the needless activities of daily life.
Chris Matakas
The best indicator of a man's philosophy is not what he reads or says, but the way in which he lives his life, the way in which he acts.
Chris Matakas
Our social contract is becoming an exchange of free thought for mindless stimuli.
Chris Matakas
Have a clear-cut plan on what you wish to improve, and seek opportunities to improve it. The more conscious and honest we can be about our shortcomings, the more strength we will have to improve them. We are going to train hard anyway, we are not going to sweat any more or less. It is simply imperative that the sweat is properly directed.
Chris Matakas
Autopilot is great, and removal of thought is one of the highest ideals of training. But removal of thought in the moment must be preceded by purposeful thought beforehand.
Chris Matakas
If something’s existence is contingent upon the existence of another entity, can we truthfully call them separate beings?
Chris Matakas
Life is so unlikely, so rare and beautiful an opportunity it is to live, we must be on constant guard to ensure that our actions are worthy of the life it takes to perform them.
Chris Matakas
This philosophy teaches us to leave safe harbor for the rough seas of real-world experience, and to accept that a rough copy out in the world serves us far greater than a masterpiece sitting quietly on our shelves.
Chris Matakas
Nothing worthwhile ever came from divided attention.
Chris Matakas
The most obvious, most absurdly recognizable phenomena in day-to-day life often become the hardest to remain consciously aware of.
Chris Matakas
The more we have outside ourselves the harder it is to get inside ourselves.
Chris Matakas
In the history of history, there has never been someone with your particular genetic make-up or life experiences. This being the case, we have no reference points with which to compare ourselves, and therefore it is futile to attempt to measure yourself relative to others.
Chris Matakas
Deep down I believe each of us is a well-spring of understanding and wisdom, but we simply never allow the space or time for this understanding to rise to the level of conscious thought.
Chris Matakas