“A true champion is one who sweats from exhaustion when no one is watching.” – Bas Rutten
Sebastian Rutten, the Dutch-American actor and mixed martial arts legend, is quite a character. His kind, respectful way of treating people and his extrovert, and charismatic personality curiously magnetizes you favourably as soon as you hear him speak.
Bas had (and still has) a peculiar life. He has been through a lot of noteworthy experiences and is known for his incisive, warrior wisdom one-liners such as; “It is better to know a little bit than nothing.” Bas also said when talking about self-defence that you’ll have more chance of surviving a fight if you’d been to at least a few classes. Let’s explore this and more in Bas Rutten: 4 Life Lessons from the UFC Hall of Famer!
During our lives, we must learn and keep learning new things; that is the best way to keep our minds and brains healthy and young! And it can be seen throughout history, that the one who lags behind (not taking proactive control of their lives) loses. Enter the Greek, poet-soldier Archilochus’ saying here, “We do not rise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training.”
There is always something new to learn, a new fighting move, a song, a new trend, new technology, even new “ways of being happy” so if we don’t want to stay behind, we must keep learning and we must keep our minds open to change, which (for better or worse, but you can always focus on the positive!) is inevitable.
Your Ego Can Kill You
If you want tips about how to fight, Bas is your man. He talks about how controlling your emotions can make the difference between being an average fighter and a champion.
He tells a story of a fighter who cared more about media and interview exposure that he didn’t even make time to train, and well…we needn’t explain what happened!
Going back to emotional control, this is not just for fighting – if you can control your emotions and reactions, you become unstoppable. A good way to learn how to do this said Bas is, “doing something under pressure”.
Imagine an amateur fight, don’t think about winning or losing, just do it, just participate in it, learn how it feels and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to face your fears.
Pleasure and Happiness are Not the Same Thing
Bas says something which is pretty revealing: You cannot just do everything you like in life, and avoid what is difficult, this is one of the biggest problems we have in society.
You need to learn discipline, you need to go through rough days so then you can learn how to control yourself and be mature, otherwise, you will start a tantrum for nothing and quit as soon as a challenge is presented to you.
This might sound like a short lesson, but simplicity is always best, this is particularly true in today’s helter-skelter, ultra busy world!
Train Your Lungs
Bas teaches us how and why breath work (check out the book Breath Magic) is important and how to implement it into your daily life.
He used to have asthma but after getting into this “unusual” workout, everything changed forever for the better.
Bas Explains the Breath’s Importance:
- Breathing is the most important thing in your body that you should control; the survival rule of three states that the average human can go three weeks without food, three days without water but just three minutes without oxygen. So, which do you think is the most important and powerful?
- Your lungs do not do anything extra by themselves, the only way for your lungs to open up is by chest expansion, something that you must train.
- Metaboreflex: do you know what it means? It is similar to “gassing” when you are feeling fatigued while doing a workout for example.
So basically, metaboreflex is the feedback you get from exercising skeletal muscle, and if you do not have a good oxygen flow in your blood, the body will “steal blood” from other parts and this will create fatigue.
And the last fact might shock you:
- 95% of us breathe wrongly! So, we really should start doing our research and practice.
The Wolf, the Sheep, and the Sheepdog
What Kind of Person do You Want to Be? The one who hurts others, the ones who feels and sees evil but does nothing, or the one who helps others?
It’s time to take responsibility, we cannot keep turning the other cheek! It’s time to open our eyes and confront the negative energy within our own minds and in the world.
Just imagine how it would feel to get inspired to confront your fears, transmute them into constructive thought system loops, and help others to do the same? The same time and energy would be spent anyhow, so why not make it profitably spent? Let’s aim for a world where we help each other, and for that to happen, we must take the first step…with ourselves.
Summing Up…
Bas is a great person, who you might think (save for his athletic physique) would never hurt a fly, but he’s a dangerous man, because he is meek, not because of his fighting skills, but because of his mental, emotional and physical confidence, power and self-control.
He is also another example of why breath work should be explored and taken a bit more seriously, and why everybody should take it up in some form of systematic, daily practice.
Here’s another quote which will help you stop procrastinating on your dream and encourage you to start working on your most significant goals. “As long as you fight, you cannot lose…if you put everything out there, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. To me, you can never lose.” – Bas Rutten.
