For the sincere student, it mustn’t be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.

Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life’s challenges for a lifetime.

Make no mistake, you earn a white belt. The belt is a physical representation of a commitment to the beginner’s mind. It is a vulnerability and a willingness to learn that shines through.

We rise to meet each day because there will come a time when the day will rise without us.

Things can be added, but that doesn’t mean that anything is missing.

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.

In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique “harder,” rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand.

Today’s world is flooded with participation trophies. In an attempt to promote equality we have robbed our youth of the most growth-inducing aspect of competition, failing. If you want to be resurrected, you have to first be crucified. Everybody wants to be reborn, but no one is willing to die. Losing, in the context of whatever arena it may be, is a microcosmic death. When we learn from our failures and grow because of them, we are reborn.

Choosing to forgo the small rewards of society now will lead to the monumental rewards of becoming a person of value later.

Epistemologists have come to a loose description of knowledge as justified true belief which is not based off false assumptions, but even this is fallacious as the prerequisite knowledge required for justification makes this a circular definition.