Chris Matakas Quotes - Page 3

Jiu Jitsu is a baptism by combat, and serves a purpose in the inner life of the individual that has always existed, but our modern culture fails to acknowledge.
Chris Matakas
Plateaus are a manifestation of the law of diminishing returns, and when we reach one it simply means that it is time to adjust our methods.
Chris Matakas
After I received my blue belt, I soon recognized that the belts were simply an external representation of an inner experience, and that they mattered little compared to the person I was becoming.
Chris Matakas
The road from white belt to black is long and arduous; most never reach the end. There are simply too many obstacles of daily life, and too much effort and attention required, for this to be something that the majority of practitioners achieve. This is why a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, especially from a reputable source, is the pinnacle of martial arts rank. It is valuable because of what must be traded for its achievement.
Chris Matakas
Many of us begin this art with little to no understanding of what we are getting ourselves into. Then, maybe a year or a black belt later, we realize this odyssey we have embarked upon and rest happily in knowing we have chosen a noble struggle.I think we owe most of our successes to our initial ignorance. When we begin, we cannot see the obstacles ahead, and so we march on optimistically. In hindsight, when we look back and connect the dots, we see just how green we were at the start, and it was only our ignorance that upheld us from the crushing despair of the task at hand.
Chris Matakas
The quality of your life is directly proportional to the positive effect you have on others’ lives.
Chris Matakas
Every opportunity with another was an opportunity to serve my fellow man. Every moment alone was a chance to grow and become more of who I already was. I instantly felt how great a life could be, and that was only made possible by service toward others.
Chris Matakas
No one's life will be harder because I exist.
Chris Matakas
The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.
Chris Matakas
This is a trust that you just cannot find in modern society for there are no conditions to forge it.
Chris Matakas
For many of us, especially being so fortunate to live in a first-world country, the vast majority of pain we experience is due to the seriousness with which we identify with our thoughts.
Chris Matakas
You are the space in which these thoughts arise, but not the thoughts themselves.
Chris Matakas
This is what it means to be mindful. To watch the thoughts as they come and go without judgment while completely accepting what arises in the present moment.
Chris Matakas
Freedom from the thinking mind is our underlying goal for most of human activity.
Chris Matakas
In mastering one thing, you have mastered all things because you have learned how to learn.
Chris Matakas
I have been given the rare opportunity to teach Jiu Jitsu for a living. This is a privilege that I wake up everyday grateful for, and a responsibility that I hold dearly. I understand how rare it is to be employed through a labor you genuinely love, and one which can be used as a vehicle for positive change in the lives of others. Even rarer still, I am often reminded of the quality of Jiu Jitsu I have learned, and the opportunity to have learned it.
Chris Matakas
I use my understanding of jiu jitsu as a road map to learn other activities. I look for the similarities between the two, and use jiu jitsu as an allegory for whatever my new practice may be. I truly believe once you have learned one thing, you have learned all things because you have learned how to learn.
Chris Matakas
I train jiu jitsu because I love jiu jitsu. But I also train knowing that my practice in this art will allow me better practice in any art. If you have learned one thing, you have learned all things, because you have learned how to learn. I can think of no more worthwhile pursuit of education.
Chris Matakas
I believe that which you study is only matched in importance by the sincerity with which you approach it.
Chris Matakas
There is no concrete way to play Jiu Jitsu, and this is why so many different types of people find joy in it.
Chris Matakas
For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.
Chris Matakas
An arm bar in a vacuum is worthless. It is the realization of the truths which constitute that arm bar that is the real treasure we seek.
Chris Matakas
The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set.
Chris Matakas
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
Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats.
Chris Matakas
We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life.
Chris Matakas
I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself.
Chris Matakas
Jiu Jitsu can be a source of total transparency such as a mirror, but it takes a conscious choice to see what it has to say.
Chris Matakas
Do not seek victory, for victory in itself will not serve you. Seek to understand what made the victory possible.
Chris Matakas
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
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
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
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
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
There is no more valuable skill than studentship. The farther we go down one area of human understanding, the more we see the corollaries that all activities share. Everything I do for the rest of my life, all the skills I acquire, will be made possible because of my time spent on the mats. It has revealed a symbiosis between all things that I never knew existed.
Chris Matakas
Life is easier lived when lived for others.
Chris Matakas
When your words enter the material world in the form of ink or on screen, you are immediately afforded the opportunity to judge their worth.
Chris Matakas
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
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
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
I would more appropriately define mastery as the technical ability possible within the constraints of your particular existence.
Chris Matakas
Jiu Jitsu is the vehicle. Not the road.
Chris Matakas
The only way to consistently perform at your potential is to ask: Am I better than I was yesterday?
Chris Matakas
Devoting yourself to a particular art is invaluable. The art becomes our vehicle with which we drive down the road of life. We use this vehicle to learn about ourselves and this place, to conquer fears, to become more of what we already are. In my own life, I have found most valuable the transferable skills of learning from jiu jitsu to all other facets of day to day study. In devoting myself with such commitment to this art, in undertaking the task of understanding jiu jitsu to whatever degree by circumstance allows, I have unknowingly learned how to learn.
Chris Matakas
As an instructor, my goal has always been to use Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to help our students achieve their goals, whatever the case may be. I have yet to find a better vehicle for growth, and the moment I do I will certainly pursue it with the rivaled fervor that I approached Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
I can think of no more worthwhile aim than pursuing mastery in this craft while transcending one’s own limitations.
Chris Matakas
I am a better son, brother, friend, and teacher because of the daily sacrifice and effort I put toward my craft. WIth all the advantages modern society has created, it has left us wanting. We no longer need to struggle to survive. Our basic needs are now met with minimal physical strife or mental challenge. Technology and the advances of man have left us over-stressed and under-performing. We are now forced to actively pursue our struggles. If we do not go out of our way to stretch our comfort zones and grow, no one nor nature will do it for us.
Chris Matakas
There is an undeniable truth that as one progresses further in his understanding of a craft the rest of his life progresses along with it. This symbiotic relationship between all things is experienced on a daily basis, but rarely articulated through conscious thought.
Chris Matakas
My growth as a human being has been directly proportional to my growth as a marital artist.
Chris Matakas
Self-improvement is generally a removal of a vice rather than an acquisition of a virtue.
Chris Matakas
The major events in our lives receive the entire spotlight, but ultimately your life will be defined by the same handful of choices you make each day.
Chris Matakas
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
When you give your weakness permission to be because you understand that it is simply an expression of your strength, it tends to no longer be a weakness.
Chris Matakas
Society is a collection of selves perpetuating their myth.
Chris Matakas
We are now forced to actively pursue our struggles. If we do not go out of our way to stretch our comfort zones and grow, no one nor nature will do it for us.
Chris Matakas
We are force-fed beliefs through incessant advertisements by a culture that ceaselessly fosters our conformity to values which are of no service to the individual.
Chris Matakas
When you realize you are no longer made of glass, you lose the desire to demonstrate that fragility in others.
Chris Matakas
I envision a world in which the vast majority of us are actively striving toward our potential by serving others through mediums we are most passionate.
Chris Matakas
We see that the vast majority of our suffering is needless, and simply arises from the misidentification with our thinking mind.
Chris Matakas
As far as our relation to the physical world, I doubt there will be much more improvement. Our basic survival needs have been met, and much of our current progress is superfluous or downright troublesome. Most advancement is performed out of comfort rather than necessity. What we are lacking, what the world so desperately needs now, is adjustments of the mind. We need to see the world again with fresh eyes, and come to an understanding of who we are as individuals, and what drives us.
Chris Matakas