Almost all stress, tension, anxiety, and frustration, both in life and in work, comes from doing one thing while you believe and value something completely different.
Power is poison. Its effects on Presidents had always been tragic; chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bar the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.
When I'm in the ring, I'm doing great. As Razor Ramon or the 'Bad Guy,' I don't have a care in the world. But when I come back through the curtain, reality is there waiting.
I'm constantly out of my mind trying to stay in shape.
I was making comebacks every single year. That makes it difficult mentally. It causes a lot of stress.
I'm not coping very well with all the attention, if I'm honest.
Being an NBA player, a lot of stress comes with that: realizing there's a lot of pressure on me and accepting that for what it is, realizing that I might need help, I might need somebody to talk to, accepting that there's nothing wrong with that.
I'd read things, like people criticizing me. But no one likes to read stuff about that, and probably the main thing that was getting to me was me mum's illness.
Unlike other professions - doctor, lawyer, teacher, journalist, sales clerk, stock broker - when a cop makes a bad mistake, it could mean someone is dead. They take home mental baggage unlike anything carried in almost every other job.
Dialysis is horrible and left me so tired. I couldn't do it any more, it takes so much out of you. By the end I was tired of being tired. I could sleep 11, 12 or 13 hours a day and still be absolutely knackered.
At the end of the day, sleep is a barometer of your emotional health. And so if you're not in the right place where you need to be, then you're going to have voices keeping you up at night because you have to work through those issues.
I overanalyze things way too much, to the point where it affects my life. Like, when I'm talking to a boy, I'll overanalyze a text message he sent. And I have to think to myself, 'Just chill out. Some guy sent me a text message. That's all. Don't read something into it that's not there. Just be glad he sent you a text message!'
Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.
You might think that shifting your thoughts is as easy as setting your mind to it. But stressful thoughts aren't held in place through choice or will power. They're held in place through perceived truth value.
There is no pressure at the top. The pressure is being second or third.
When I get thinking, I get very knotted up. I chew things over a lot and take things quite seriously.
I've had matches go 38 minutes. To be able to move for 38 minutes and have somebody's life in your hands is a difficult thing.
One can summon courage and fortitude to face tragedy; irritations and frustrations are a cloud of mosquitoes that nip and sting and drive one frantic.
The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill.
The percentage of mentally disturbed people in the United States is very high. From the time the American gets up in the morning, he feels as if someone is trying to influence his will in some way: he is a person with a thousand pressures. The Americans live under a great strain ... and have great feelings of frustration.
It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into.
When your awareness is contracted, the flow of energy and information throughout your bodymind is hampered. You tend to stay stuck in toxic emotions such as regret, resentment, and self-pity. Non-nurturing habits such as overeating and not exercising take hold. The feedback loop between your mind and your body turns negative, and stress can hit you instantaneously or grind away at you day after day.
I am of the opinion that the burden of playing games is much too high, especially for international players that also play domestically with their clubs.
Expectations destroy our peace of mind. They are future disappointments, planned out in advance.
Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret who’s actually using you?
