Rule #1

Don’t Beat Yourself

To see a man beaten
Not by a better opponent
But by himself
Is a tragedy.
Cus D’Amato

You will reach a point in time in your life when you will stop wrestling.

It is at that time life will become your new opponent.

Life will be the most formidable opponent you will ever face.

No amount of training will ever prepare you for the onslaught that life has in store for you.

To win in life, as in wrestling, you must first learn not to beat yourself.

A new wrestler learns not to beat himself by eliminating putting himself in bad positions and by deciding never to do anything that exposes his back.

In life, you must first learn to do the same.

Having a great stance in wrestling is of paramount importance in the process of learning how not to beat yourself.

A great wrestling stance has three lines of defense:

The head, the hands, and the hips.

Each line of defense is designed to protect the most valuable parts of a wrestler’s body from attack from his opponent.

Never breaking stance is key to a wrestler’s success on the wrestling mat.

In your battle against life, your new stance is your lifestyle.

A great lifestyle will keep you out of bad positions.

A great lifestyle will keep your back from being exposed.

A great lifestyle will stop life from scoring easy points on you.

A great lifestyle has three lines of defense

your mind, your body, and your spirit.

They will always be under attack by life.

Decide early on not to partake in any activity, especially the use of drugs, alcohol or the reliance on any chemical that will change the state of your brain, as it will inevitably and undoubtedly diminish your mind, deteriorate your body, and evaporate your spirit.

Thus putting you in a bad position and exposing your back to life.

Living a clean lifestyle is the fundamental building block to sustained happiness and success in life.

You must never break your lifestyle.

As soon as you do, life will take you down.

And if you happen to break your lifestyle and life doesn’t take you down, well, that outcome is even worse.

Mistakenly, you will feel that your lifestyle is not as important in stopping the attack from life.

You wouldn’t be more wrong.

Your lifestyle must protect the three most valuable areas in your life; your mind, your body, and your spirit.

You need your mind to make good decisions,

your body to be in ultimate health, and the fortitude of your spirit to win verse life.

Imagine for a moment that you are in a wrestling match verse a highly trained, extremely motivated opponent.

An opponent that is not only looking to beat you but looking to annihilate and humiliate you in the process.

For a few years of your life, that opponent will be the competition lining up across the circle from you.

For decades after wrestling, life will be that opponent.

Have you ever been thrown to your back early in a period in a wrestling match and had to fight off your back for the entire two minutes to not get pinned?

It’s not a fun thing to have to do.

It takes a lot of energy to survive and stay in the match.

Now, imagine getting thrown to your back early in life and having to spend the next ten, twenty, or even sixty years fighting, trying not to get pinned.

With the full faculty of your mind, the health of your body and a razor-sharp spirit, you will have the tools needed to beat life.

With any portion of your mind, your body or your spirit at less than full capacity you will undoubtedly give up easy points to life, put yourself in bad positions and ultimately life will throw you to your back.

Life is too skilled of an opponent to attempt to beat with anything less than your best.

If there is anything in your lifestyle that makes you vulnerable to giving up easy points to life, it is imperative that you immediately drop everything and direct your full attention to making the necessary corrections.

Do not go on to any other rules until those necessary corrections have been made, as no matter what you do if you do not master Rule #1, “Don’t Beat Yourself,” mastering all the other rules will prove fruitless.

There is nothing more important to the quality of your life than living a clean lifestyle.

As Cus D’Amato, the former trainer to Mike Tyson so prophetically said,

“To see a man beaten, not by a better opponent but by himself, is a tragedy.”

“Don’t Beat Yourself”

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