Excerpt from a black-belt acceptance/reflection speech by Lex Fridman where he summarizes life lessons learned through martial arts: humility (realizing he is "not special"), the importance of outworking others to become excellent, learning from losing in competition, and gratitude for both the "pain" of training and the "love" of his community (he references a conversation with "Phil" about competing and being supported regardless of win/loss).
Chapters
So I learned more in these maths than I have in all my years. I'm a nerd. I got a PhD. I learned more about life, about the mind on these maths than I have in all the years of school. I think two things, two of the biggest things I took away is the humbling reality that I'm not special. And if you want to be good at anything, you have to work really hard. And if you want to be the best in the world at something like I do, I want to build robots better than anybody else in the world, or whether that's knitting or yodeling, anything, you have to work. But you have to work harder than anyone else in the world. And the second lesson I learned, I used to compete a lot. I used to lose a lot. And I used to hurt to lose. And I remember. I don't know if Phil remembers this conversation, but I think late blue belt. I was going to a big competition and I said, you know, I don't know how I'm going to win. It's like 50 people division. And you said, well, give everything you can to win, but whether you win or lose, you're still going to have a home here. Still going to love you. So the two things I'd like to say thank you for is the pain and the love.
