Friday, January 31, 2020

The Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant. Quotes II

-LeBron is bigger than me in height and width, but I enjoyed hitting, and getting hit, a lot more than him. That impacted our head-to-head matchups.
-If you want to win a championship, you, the star, have to take on the responsibility of guarding the other team’s best player. I always prided myself on guarding the best.
-In turn, I loved showing him (Westbrook) my full arsenal of weapons. One of them was mental: knowing my opponent. I knew he was competitive, as much then as he is now, so I knew he would bite at the opportunity to block my shot. So I’d throw him a hard pump fake and either get fouled or go right by him.
-Pau Gasol was like a brother to me. Over the course of my career, I suited up with dozens upon dozens of players. Among all of them, it’s safe to say that Pau was my favorite teammate ever.
-What separates great players from all-time great players is their ability to self-assess, diagnose weaknesses, and turn those flaws into strengths.
-The game provided me with every opportunity that I ever imagined it would, and along the way I learned a innumerable amount. I’m not just speaking about on the court, either. Without hoops, I would not understand how to create or write, I would not understand human nature, nor would I know how to lead.

Thursday, January 30, 2020

The Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant. Quotes

-From day one, I wanted to dominate. My mindset was: I’m going to figure you out. Whether it was AI, Tracy, Vince—or, if I were coming up today, LeBron, Russ, Steph—my goal was to figure you out. And to do that, to figure those puzzles out, I was willing to do way more than
anyone else.
-I always felt like if I started my day early, I could train more each day. If I started at 11, I’d get in a few hours, rest for four hours, and then get back to the gym around 5 to 7. But if I started at 5 AM and went until 7, I could go again from 11 until 2 and 6 until 8. By starting earlier, I set myself up for an extra workout each day. Over the course of a summer, that’s a lot of extra hours in the gym.
-I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my game, but I also wasn’t willing to sacrifice my family time. So I decided to sacrifice sleep, and that was that.
-From a young age—a very young age—I devoured film and watched everything I could get my hands on. It was always fun to me. Some people, after all, enjoy looking at a watch; others are happier figuring out how the watch works.
-If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it.
-If you want to be a great basketball player, you have to be in great shape. Everyone talks about the fancy workouts and training sessions, but I also worked relentlessly to make sure that my legs and lungs were always at peak performance.
-Pain in one area of your body often stems from an imbalance somewhere else. With that in mind, it’s important to treat the root cause and not the effect.
-I always made sure my ankles were activated and moving. If your ankles are stiff, that can create problems in the knees, hips, back, and all the way up. So, I’d spend a lot of time before games working on my ankles—the core of the problem—so that I wouldn’t exacerbate the symptoms.
-I would begin stretching a couple of hours before games. Then, as the game got closer and closer, I would start doing more active, more range-of-motion things to get ready.

Calendar Books 2020. #1 January: The Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant


2019 reading list

1. January: Do as I say not as I do by Peter Schweizer
2. February: Compass, a handbook on parent leadership by J. Stenson. 
3. March: With love and prayers by F. Jarvis
4. April: Win forever by Pete Carroll.
5. May: Finding flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
6. June: Your words hold a miracle by John Osteen.
7. July: The spiritual child by Lisa Miller. 
8. August: Think positive thoughts every day by Unknown. 
9. September: Life after life by R. Moody. 
10. October: Siddhartha by H. Hesse.
11. November: Death by E. Kubller Ross
12. December: 1984 by George Orwell. 

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

The Mamba Mentality

Five Pillars Of The Mamba Mentality:
  1. Be Passionate. 
  2. Be Obsessive. 
  3. Be Relentless
  4. Be Resilient. 
  5. Be Fearless.

Friday, January 24, 2020

Death by E. Kubler-Ross. Quotes X

-Humankind will survive only through the commitment and involvement of individuals in the own and others' growth and development as human beings.
-Through commitment to personal growth individual human beings will also make their contribution to the growth and development of the whole species to become all that humankind can and is meant to be.
-You must give up everything in order to gain everything. What must you give up? All that is not truly you. You can be yourself only if you are no one else. You must give up their approval, whoever they are, and look to yourself for evaluation of success and failure, in terms of your own level of aspiration that is consistent with your values. Nothing is simpler and nothing is more difficult.
-When we know and understand completely that our time on this earth is limited, and that we have no way of knowing it will be over, then we must live each day as if it were the only one we had.
-There is no total death. Only the body dies. The self or spirit, or whatever you may wish to label it, is eternal.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Death by E. Kubler-Ross. Quotes IX

-How we interact with one another and how we experience ourselves are more important for dying persons than the content of their religious myths or their articulated philosophy of life.
-There is a cost to participation in our own radical change for the better. The price is that we become committed persons.
-There is no need to be afraid of death. It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we are alive, to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes from living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
-Death is the key to the door of life.
-It is through accepting the finiteness of our individual existences that we are enabled to find the strength and courage to reject those extrinsic roles and expectations and devote each day of our lives to growing as fully as we are able.
-We must learn to draw on our inner resources, to define ourselves in terms of the feedback we receive from our own internal valuing system rather than trying to fit ourselves into some ill-fitting stereotyped role.
-When you fully understand that each day you awaken could be the last you have, you take the time that day to grow, to become more of who  you really are, to reach out to other human beings.
-The world is in desperate need of human beings whose own level of growth is sufficient to enable them learn to live and work with others cooperatively and lovingly, to care for others, not for what those others can do for you or for what they think of you, but rather in terms of what you can do for them.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Death by E. Kubler-Ross. Quotes VIII

-Through reaching out and committing yourself to dialogue with fellow human beings, you can begin to transcend your individual existence, becoming at one with yourself and others. And through a life time of such commitment, you can face your final end with peace and joy, knowing that you have lived your life well.
-We must learn to die in order that we may learn to live.
-In order to grow, you must continuously die and be reborn.
-The issue is awareness, of living in the present. Whatever our present existence consists of, if we are at one with it, we are healthy.
-Death separates us from all that we hold dear, including our very selves. It is the ultimate of separations. And unlike any other separations, we have little choice as to whether or not the separation will occur. However, what it is in our control is the quality of the separation experience.
-I have lived more in the past three months than I have during my whole life. I wish I knew forty years ago what I know now about living.
-Acceptance is the beginning of growth.

Death by E. Kubler-Ross. Quotes VII

-Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life.
-If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short  and that everything we do counts. When it is the evening of our life we will hopefully have a chance to look back and say: it was worthwhile because I have really lived.
-It is not the quantity of life but the quality that counts.
-I am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of hurting my family and my boyfriend. I don't want them to suffer.
-This can't go on. I want to die. I am so sorry to say that, Daddy, and I love you so much.
-And before my very eyes I saw that dying is a birth. It is terribly, terribly hard. It may be the hardest thing a person ever does. But one does emerge from the dark into the light.
-Where there is suffering the gift of courage is given.
-Death is another beginning, not an end.
-If you can face and understand your ultimate death, perhaps you can learn to face and deal productively with each change that presents itself in your life.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Death by E. Kubler-Ross. Quotes VI

 -Death follows no predictable timetable, but chooses its own time and place.
-One of the hardest kinds of death to accept is that of one's child.
-When someone you love dies, you have lost part of yourself.
-In the end we are always alone, but it is not the number of people who surround us in our dying, not is it the number of years that we have lived that is significant; it is the quality of life and the courage and strength we have shown that ultimately gives us the strength to face this final journey alone and with dignity.
-Her awareness cost her her complacency.
-It is the promise of death and the experience of dying, more than any other force in life, that can move a human being to grow.
-We are meant for something more in this life than simply eating, sleeping, watching television, and going to work five days a week.
-There is life after death. We will be reborn again one day in order to complete the tasks we have not been able or willing to complete in this lifetime.
-It was there in the midst of suffering that I found my goal. It was there in the midst of poverty, isolation and suffering that I lived more than in all the years before or afterwards.
-Where does a human been get the inner strength and equanimity to face crisis in life? What turns people with the same human potential into beautiful, caring and loving, self-sacrificing human beings?