Joe De Sena > Quotes

“They say a healthy person has a thousand wishes but a sick person has only one wish—to get well.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“Deep inside each human being is a spirit that hungers for movement and for growth. A live and burgeoning ball of energy, the spirit naturally moves, expands, gyrates—dances, even—purely by virtue of its desire for freedom. It craves beauty over entertainment, meaning over triviality, and knowledge over sensation. American society devotes few harbors to the trade of truth. Too often we sacrifice the pursuit of knowledge, distracted instead by sparkling material things.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“it’s not that we’re trying to avoid death; we’re trying to enjoy our lives fully, to wring every wonderful drop out of life that we possibly can.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“He tells his friend, the noble wizard Gandalf, “I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf’s reply is one of the greatest in all of literature. He says, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“These achievements ring hollow, because what matters is the journey, and there was no journey. Instant success imparts nothing of any real or lasting value. No adversity has been confronted and handled because everything came fast and easy. When adversity does arrive, and it always does, someone who has never encountered it before will have no clue what to do in response.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“A child without discipline is a child without love. — MR. ROGERS”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“The embrace of consumerism and convenience tends to lead to emptiness of the spirit and sickness of the mind and body.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“The easiest way to convince your body that sitting in traffic is not worthy of a stress-induced freakout is by showing your body what real stress feels like, in the controlled setting of your daily workout.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“In fact, living with the mindset “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” may get you there quite a bit faster!”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“Put one foot in front of the other, focus on the little goal right in front of you, and almost anything is possible.”
― Joe De Sena

“Spartan Up! Life Lesson No. 3: Always Remember Those Who Serve   In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a ten-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. “How much is an ice cream sundae?” the boy asked. “Fifty cents,” replied the waitress. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied the coins in his palm. “Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?” he inquired. By now, more people were waiting for a table, and the waitress was growing impatient. “Thirty-five cents,” she replied brusquely. The little boy again counted his coins. ”I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table, and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier, and left. When the waitress came back to wipe down the table, there, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies. You see, he couldn’t have the sundae, because he had to have enough left to leave her a tip. —Author Unknown”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“Your main obstacle is you. You are also your greatest opportunity.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Fit!: 30 Days. Transform Your Mind. Transform Your Body. Commit to Grit. – Your Complete Training Guide to Strength, Endurance, and Race-Ready Performance

“Once you sign up for a Spartan Race, once you tell all of your friends about it, you, too, are committed. To back out is to admit failure not only to yourself but also to others. This should motivate you to honor your commitment and show up at the starting line ready to race.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“Albert Einstein said that adversity introduces men or women to themselves.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“In play you realize simultaneously the supreme importance and the utter insignificance of what you are doing. And you accept the paradox of pursuing what is at once essential and inconsequential.”
― Joe De Sena, Extreme Balance: Paradoxical Principles That Make You a Champion

“People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing. In other words: mind-wandering. Imagine that. Half of our lives are spent spacing out. That is the human brain’s default mode of operation. The problem is, Killingsworth and Gilbert say, “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“My father hugged me and told me, ‘In the history of man, there has never been justice in the world, and there will never ever be. But what you and I can do is to help reduce other people’s suffering and not add to it.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“A Spartan pushes his/her mind and body to its limits. A Spartan masters his/her emotions. A Spartan learns continuously. A Spartan gives generously. A Spartan leads. A Spartan stands up for his/her beliefs, no matter the cost. A Spartan knows his/her flaws as well as his/her strengths. A Spartan proves himself/herself through actions, not words.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“I don't want to be rewarded with a trophy when I don't achieve my goal. I don't want to be protected from that pain. If I get a trophy when I fail, then I'm going to believe that I performed at the peak of my ability. And that may prevent me from getting better. This is basic psychology. Rewarding behavior only regenerates the behavior. Rewarding habitual failure breeds a character of failure. What kind of attitude are we encouraging when we give everyone a trophy? We're encouraging an attitude of self-congratulation that leads to apathy, where accomplishments are meaningless and hard work is beside the point.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“We want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could,” she says. “We don’t want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“Life doesn’t always give you what you want or even what you need. Sometimes it just gives you obstacles to see if you are ready for them. You have two options when you face an unexpected obstacle. You can put your head down and shut out the world, pretend that difficult roadblock isn’t there, or you can rise, look up, and take those obstacles head-on.”
― Joe De Sena, 10 Rules for Resilience: Mental Toughness for Families

“Adversity is around every corner. You can’t escape it. How you handle that adversity is how you build your legacy.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“It doesn’t matter what you think you deserve; it matters what you earn.”
― Joe De Sena, 10 Rules for Resilience: Mental Toughness for Families

“Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“The enormous spike in divorces in recent decades, as well as the rise of single hyper-indulgent and hyper-protective parents and “helicopter” two-parent households, has voided at least two generations of children of the “rite of passage.” Without rituals of endurance, transcendence of nature, physical tests, and the mysteries and rites of man- and womanhood, we are becoming far more cerebral, insulated, and fearful of the outside world. Physicality has become alien rather than second nature.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Up!: A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life

“With a determined sense of responsibility, I pledge these statements: I will follow my True North, I will commit to what is important, I will be ambitious and motivated in all that I do, I will value my time, I will make all my decisions by examining the upside and downside, I will delay gratification, I will grit it out, I will shift my frame of reference, I will live each day honoring my journey to live the Spartan Way.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“Don’t allow your dedication to weaken either. Get rid of distractions. Focus on what’s important, and learn to say “no” to anything that pulls you from the path of your commitments.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“the main difference between an amateur and a pro is their “depth of commitment. The amateur’s commitment is shallow. The professional’s is deep.”
― Joe De Sena, The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

“Discipline is not about being abusive; it’s about setting firm rules and boundaries and then enforcing them.”
― Joe De Sena, Spartan Fit!: 30 Days. Transform Your Mind. Transform Your Body. Commit to Grit. – Your Complete Training Guide to Strength, Endurance, and Race-Ready Performance