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Richard Bresler Books

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“Everything changes when you say, "What's it going to take for me to change the way I feel?" Just by articulating the question differently—orienting it around the solution—you change where you put your focus. And when your focus shifts, it changes where you put your energy. And when that happens, things start to change in your life.”

ChangeFocus
Book:Worth Defending: How Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Saved My Life
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“Most therapies take the approach that if you change the inside then the outside will change. That hasn't been my experience. In my experience, it's the other way around. You take what you're doing now that you don't like and you figure out what you want to do instead and you just start doing it. You change what's happening outside, and the inside follows. And that's it.”

ChangeTherapies
Book:Worth Defending: How Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Saved My Life
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“Rorion used to say that when a person walks into a Jiu-Jitsu school they're never walking in thinking, I wonder if these guys can teach me to be a world champion. The first thing on the average person's mind when they walk into a martial arts school is self-defense. They're walking in because they want to learn how to defend themselves in a worst-case scenario out in the world. That's most people's underlying insecurity.”

Self DefenceRorion Gracie
Book:Worth Defending: How Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Saved My Life
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“Think about a big, strong white belt on his first day of class. What's it like rolling with him? You probably catch him, but up until that point it's kind of crazy, kind of wild and unpredictable. It's different from rolling with a blue belt who may be good and fast but who's mostly doing moves that are recognizable as Jiu-Jitsu. But the thing is, the average guy you fight out in the street is going to be a lot more like the white belt. When you get mounted on a guy like that, you can't rush into things. You have to focus on weathering the storm.”

Brazilian Jiu JitsuStreet Fights
Book:Worth Defending: How Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Saved My Life
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“Rorion had filed trademarks for both the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu triangle logo and the name itself. Which isn't really a problem in and of itself, and isn't even that odd a move: the idea with a trademark is to be able to control who gets to represent your brand and to corner any revenue that interest in the brand generates. It's standard business practice and, given what Rorion was trying to build, it would have been a mistake not to do it. Without an enforceable trademark there would have been nothing to stop anyone from hanging out a shingle and claiming that they taught "Gracie Jiu-Jitsu," or selling a teeshirt with the Gracie logo. The problem was that in the mid-'90s he started aggressively enforcing the trademark... against members of his own family.”

Rorion GracieGracie Jiu Jitsu
Book:Worth Defending: How Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Saved My Life
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