Chris Matakas Quotes

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

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

Life is easier lived when lived for others.

~ 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

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

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

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

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

~ 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

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 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

In mastering one thing, you have mastered all things because you have learned how to learn.

~ Chris Matakas

Freedom from the thinking mind is our underlying goal for most of human activity.

~ 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

You are the space in which these thoughts arise, but not the thoughts themselves.

~ 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

This is a trust that you just cannot find in modern society for there are no conditions to forge it.

~ Chris Matakas

The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.

~ Chris Matakas

No one's life will be harder because I exist.

~ 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

The quality of your life is directly proportional to the positive effect you have on others’ lives.

~ Chris Matakas

The medal from an old grappling tournament will not serve me today, but the courage I developed in its acquisition will. By investing in yourself, by using all endeavors as a vehicle to shape who we are, we exist in the present moment with a lifetime of growth behind us. I have loved many vehicles throughout the years, Jiu Jitsu more than any other, but the vehicle has, and always will, be a distant second to the driver.

~ Chris Matakas

On the other side of self-doubt comes a confidence from faith in the process. Even though our destination may be a long way off, each day we rise with a subtle smile as if we have already achieved it, because, when we are truly committed to a task, we already have.

~ Chris Matakas

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