YouSaid · the spoken record

Maurice Ashley

lines on the record: 119
first: 2020-07-29
most recent: 2020-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I need a nice life wrecking. That's a good thing. Like just upend all the BS. Just come on. Get that out of the way and get to the real stuff. That's what you want from somebody. So keep wrecking people's lives, man. Just keep doing it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. I'm proud of you for it.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only that I appreciate you, man. I appreciate what you're doing, watching you over the years, seeing how you've remained intellectually curious. The way you open up your home, if you will, online, that is with your hospitality to people, be able to express these great ideas that they have. You are a connector and a revealer, and you do it through your intellectual curiosity. I think that's just a wonderful thing. You have influenced me so much. Like I said, you wrecked my life, but that's a good thing. I appreciate that. That's what I want from people I call my friends.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember when your producer said. Tim's going to study chess for two weeks and then go try to play one of those hustlers. And I was like, really, good luck with that. He's in trouble. And you had some trouble. You had your hands full with the”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got to tell you I gotta tell you, it's funny because the only reason I was in that park was because you were playing one of those hustlers yourself.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's very funny to see, but to me, that's how you stay fresh. That's how you stay fresh. Now, I've studied French as well. My father lives in France, so I visit him and been to Paris many times for chess and stuff. So for me, travel and learning languages and exploring the world is my greatest joy, really. That's my greatest joy in life. And part of it is the dancing. And there's nothing like having something like salsa and bachata, which is a different. form of that dance, which is my favorite one over Sausa, in fact. But there's nothing like having that wherever you go because it's just like chess. I can always find a game, find a club where people play chess in any country I go to. I can always find a Sausa club. Always. Always.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But in the last six or seven years, A friend of mine doing salsa, and he convinced me to start it, and I fell in love with it, Latin music, which added to then being Latin culture, I'm totally immersed in studying Spanish right now. I studied Spanish back in middle school. In the worst way you can study, you know how we study languages and we forget that stuff. Now I'm immersed myself. I'm personally invested. Like I'm studying chess is how much I'm studying Spanish. I'm watching Mexican telenavelas. I'm taping them so I Wait a minute. I closed caption. Okay, what was that word? All right, let's go. Boom. Meantime, I'm watching the story. I mean, I'm hooked, man. I'm so hooked.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's my hallmark for my intellectual approach to everything. At least it's what I want for myself. It ain't easy, right? Obviously, because you want something certain somewhere, you know stuff in your brain. But I think what I want to know more than anything is how to process information. That's what I want. I want how to process new information as it comes in to be able to judge properly, to not be biased one way or the other. I don't want to be predictable. I just don't want you to know exactly what I'm going to say before I say it because that's what you knew I said 20 years ago. I can be different, I can be completely changed. That's cool. It means I'm growing and we're all growing. And I don't want to be the same person I was at 30 thinking I knew it all and I'm the same person at 50. No way. I've grown way beyond that. And one of the ways I've grown, of course, is with salsa dancing and bachata. I love to dance. I've danced just music itself, you know, for a long time.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a certain predictability, in fact, to the life of so-called facts. And what it does, when you think of that concept, is that it humbles you. It humbles you into realizing that the knowledge base that you think you're accumulating, I mean, any specialist in fields know this is constantly happening, right? Doctors are constantly upgrading what they know because I don't want the guy who only read the handbook from 1980. I want the guy who's looking at the 2020 stuff. So we are always behind the times. We are always, that's just the way it works. So for me, the thing I want is process. I want to be open. I want to be flexible. I want to keep an uncertain mind. I want to be as least prejudicial as I can be so that when that new interesting data comes in, I'm ready to throw everything out that I thought and embrace this new idea.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great book for what you just talked about. Because what you think you know has become history 10 years ago, right? You know, we knew Pluto was a planet. I still know Pluto is a planet, right? It's nine, not eight. Kids today already know, they've already incorporated into their system. They'll never make the mistake to call it a plan. Facts are changing under our feet. We don't see it until it experiences its half-life. And then suddenly the tallest building.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You gotta have fun. What do you mean? You've got to enjoy life. By the way, before I answer that question, there is a book called The Half Life of Facts. The half life effects by Samuel Arbsman, the subtitle is Why Everything We Know Has An Expiration Date.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, you've got to deal with what you've got. And so my stuff is in storage. There's going to come a point where I figure out a place I want to be my headquarters, if you will, a jumping off point place my kids can come visit and put their feet up. But for now, it's just absolutely liberating to just floating and going with the winds. Although I got to tell you that damn COVID breeze is no fun. That is putting a damper on the travel like nobody's business. And so I've got to respect that for now at least until we resolve this one.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. And it's also a nod to minimalism When you're living out in a suitcases, they want it to be 50 pounds. Like, this is not 50 pounds. Take whatever's in here and put it in your other small bag. It's like, I need everything that I have with me, man. What do you mean? Tim Furry says, I'm supposed to have this. I'm kidding.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But anyway, I really feel that it's important to be flexible. To embrace uncertainty There's always been hallmarks for me. I don't really know. I don't really know. I'm just observing. This is what I'm thinking at the moment. It may change as I get more facts. I don't really know. I don't want you to know what I'm going to say before I say it because I'm so predictable. I don't want to live in that strict level. I want to be the person you say, really? What made you change so much? Why are you living this life? And now I'm actually living that life, by the way. I got to that point where I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I have unlimited time. I choose the gigs I do. I'm traveling the world. I mean, last year I gave up my apartment. I've been 15 months of Vagabond. I've traveled all over, man. So I've been everywhere. I've been few countries in Africa. I've been all over Europe. I'm just living totally out of my suitcases. It's so liberating and wonderful.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when you got a wife and kids, the mystic is not hearing that right. What do you mean for our work week? What are you talking about? You don't want to do what you're doing anymore? How are you going to get paid? You could get into some serious arguments, and I did, trying to just upend your existence because you just read a book by some guy who say, you know, you only have to work four hours a week.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, you get the program put in and all of a sudden I know Kung Fu, right? That line. To me, when I read a book, when I read a book, that's how it is. I start reading a book, and then I'm like, oh, damn, that makes a lot of sense. Gotta make some changes. I'm very impressionable that way. But you taught me something deep. I mean, your book for our work week, I mean, I was a riot. I mean, you wrecked my life for a while. Franklin, you literally wrecked my life for a while because I was looking at my life like, you know what? This man is right and this life I'm living is unacceptable. I can't do this anymore. This has to change. Everything about it has to change.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You may not be getting better. Which, if as long as you're doing the work, everything's fine. Those two books really had impact. I have to say, think about me, that I feel a lot in my life like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. You know, like when you get programmed.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the biggest lesson of that book was that the journey was more important than the destination. And that you would plateau, that you would have to love the plateau. Sometimes on the path to mastery, you're just going to get stuck. You're not getting any better. You're working your ass off and you're not getting any better. What's going on? Well, it's not a linear trajectory. That's not how it works. You always grow every single day. Sometimes you have to go your studies and your work causes you to actually lose ability, lose specific efficacy because you're trying out new techniques. It's like Tiger Woods when he decided to reconstruct his swing despite the fact that he was the best player on the planet. But he wanted to reconstruct his swing and maybe lose more tournaments. But at the end of that reconstruction of the swing, when all of it became natural, suddenly he was Superman. What happened here? How do you do that? There was no complacency where he was. And that is because you have to enjoy that process and love the plateau.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It just made me even more thoughtful, more wise about the journey. It doesn't necessarily solve the problem. It's not like when I was 25, I had it all down pat. No way. You have to do through it yourself. But it just helps so much to think about it in the long term and not just what's happening to you right at this moment. This too will change. The other book, Mastery by George Leonard. George Leonard was an Aikido practitioner. And he brought the principles of Aikido into life in that small book And talked about mastery, the different obstacles to mastery. Folks who just want to get it done quickly, people who just want to hear the secrets, people who give up for various reasons.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then there's a certain kind of peace and comfort that comes with becoming older and recognizing life, a kind of wisdom that you get. I was fascinated by this. It was almost like she was analyzing life like a chess player, like seeing them, analyzing it all the way down to the endgame. And I wanted, from that book, I wanted to have the wisdom of the seven-year-old and the 80 euro as an 18-year-old. I was like, wait a minute, if that's what I'm, that's the endgame. I want to have it now. I want to learn that now. So I've always respected. Older people From that, it made me really respect older people because they were at a different point along the passage. And I wanted to listen to the older guys talk. I'm like, what's up? What's this like? What's that like?”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Man during those decades. Of course, you can't be specific. Everybody's going to have their own experiences, but by and large, you're going to go out and get work, you're going to go out of school, you're going to go get work. You're going to try to establish yourself somewhere along the line. You're going to get a significant other. Eventually, you're going to have children. You're going to go through that father period someplace, you're going to have a little age crisis somewhere along the way. Your identity is going to shift a few times as you challenge yourself. And then at some point, you're going to become settled in who you are. You're going to come to a different level of acceptance. It's settled who you are and start to accept the world for what it is and you're placing it.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Passages, I read that book as a teenager, late teenager, 18 or 19. I had just gone through a pretty rough period of changing, actually I can't even call it changing, literally dropping friends in my life because I felt like those friends weren't about what I wanted to do. And I felt I needed to go in a different direction. And so it was a lonely period for me, a transition between great friends and the next set of friends that I would have. And this book passages was about the passages of a man's life. And so essentially, Dal Shihi, she just went from a man from his teenage years, his 20s, all the way to old age. Every decade, giving them broad strokes of what would happen to an”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my God, how are we going to teach these kids? And for the next, we're talking about potentially for the next year and a half, these kids are going to fall behind even further. It's heart”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How to solve it, you just got to go in there and improve schools top to bottom. By the way, COVID has really exposed the inequities of this. My ex-wife is a head of a department that does quality control in the school systems. And we're talking, she's just shaking her head saying, all of a sudden everybody realizes how unequal it is what kids are going through. Kids, we're supposed to be learning from home, but don't own a laptop. Or if they're home with two or three brothers and sisters, there's only one laptop in the house. So how are they all learning from the same laptop when there's only one in the home? And then they're dealing, if they do have it with poor Wi-Fi because mom and dad can't afford that. There's also some basic inequities that across the board that people are now having to deal with now that this pandemic has hit us, their eyes are open.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All by the way, skipping eighth grade. We jump from seventh grade to ninth grade because they knew it was a waste of time for us to be in the eighth grade class. If we were going through that, imagine what the other kids were going through, the kids who were not in our class, the kids who were on the slow track, or let's call it the normal track. A whole generation of kids underprepared for the challenges that they had to face. And through no fault of their own. This is a systemic problem. Unless this is addressed systematically, then you continue to have this challenge in preparing our kids. The vast majority of kids, not the special few, for life in the 20th century, for elite jobs, for top leadership positions. It's unacceptable. And so to me, that's really where that gap is. And I don't know, I mean, it's obvious.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was like the beginning of last year in Jamaica. This stuff is too easy. And my mother, she didn't know how to work the system. She finally had kids in school in America. So she gave me a report card to take to the teacher, to the guidance counselor. So I took it and I said, look, I was top of my class in Jamaica. And she's like, what is this? No, you are in the best class. You're 12 years old, seventh grade. You're in the best class. That's it. Now imagine that tiny Jamaica, tiny poor, no, you name it, right, country of Jamaica is producing basic education or good education that I'm in the best school in the hood, the best class that is, the best class in the school, and we're woefully, these kids are woefully underprepared. And they're the smartest kids.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For us, it was a joke, the American school system. Because I came to the country from Jamaica, where I went to one of the top schools. I tested into one of the top schools. I spent a year with Wilmer's Boys High School, but I was only 12. I was 11 when I got in, 12 when I came here. And I tested into the top class in my middle school. I took a reading test, the school guidance counselor, whoever it was, I remember her just having me do a reading test. I was reading on a 12th grade level. Great, you belong with the special kids, the smartest kids in the school. This is the top class. This is where these kids are like the kids on track to success. And I went into class that first day. And when I was done with the day, I went up to my mother. I said, I don't belong in this class because the stuff we're learning in this class, I already learned in Jamaica.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How long a list do you want me to put together? I mean, the biggest thing is lack of resources are good resources in a school, right? If you don't have a lot of money, the school doesn't have the top computers that it needs so kids can go in that room and use those computers. The school doesn't have the latest books for kids to read or enough books so that every kid can have a book. And kid teachers are facing this every single day in neighborhoods all across America. And it's sad. I mean, it's completely ridiculous. When I came to this country,”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inequities in education, everybody knows it. Everybody on any side of the aisle knows it. People are trying different things, whether Republicans, we believe in choice, or loosely speaking, and Democrats believe in public school, and we're proving that. I don't care what it is. That cannot be unfair because that's going to keep a group down. There are other things as well, of course. But to me, those are the two major areas of concern. love to see great movement on both of those As I watch right now I'm just I'm concerned I'm concerned because we also living with COVID and attention shifts easily I don't know that the results will come but I think if we have good-minded people who feel like they really want to see change happen I love the fact that corporations are are jumping in on this as well probably has to be private because when it's government you know question mark question”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My beautiful son who just graduated to high school and has all the aspirations of becoming an artist, and then somehow gets mistreated a certain way, I couldn't survive life if something happened to him. Just I couldn't imagine anything, right? So it's important that that is a place where we feel safe, we feel respected, we feel like justice is properly served by those who are champions of justice. You want to look at every police officer and say, this person's a champion of justice. They're a hero. And when you see stuff like what happened with George Floyd and the person on this guy who I won't name, we know his name, but I don't want to honor him as such, putting a knee on a man's neck for nine minutes, you're not a champion of justice. Then the rest of us have to watch that. And the rest of us are traumatized by that. None of us are angered. And now there's a reaction. We've got to get to that good place, right? We've got to get to that good place. And education.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reason why policing is so important is because police have the right to take life. They're the only group in society that just has the right to take your life on a judgment call of somebody who might have just joined the force in maybe 22 years old but has to make a snap decision and just makes it and then this person's lost their life. So that's important because it traumatizes the community when that happens. If it happens unfairly, it happens regularly and unfairly, even in perception, that's traumatizing to the community because when one black person feels under siege, I guarantee you, the larger group feels under siege. And I don't want to think about my son walking down the street.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and ready to be champions of justice that we expect them to be. So that's specific areas of concern we can address. I think that for me, the two big ones are police tactics and education. I came from a family that said you pull yourselves up by the brute straps, you work your tail off, you will be successful. That was our formula, right?”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then in terms of specific concrete steps that can be taken. So I can start talking about, you know, you need to address overincarcation of young black men or you need to address racism in police departments, even if it's just a small percentage. But that small percentage needs to be rooted out aggressively. And you can't have good cops ignoring bad cops, right? I don't care if it's if you might say whatever percentage, the percentage may, we don't know the percentage, but let's say it's 98%. That 2% has to be weeded out aggressively. You need to address the stress that police officers are dealing with when they're on the job. It's an extremely high stress position. Give them help. Give them evaluation. Maybe they need a little extra time off. Whatever it is to make sure that they're coming to a community's whole and healthy.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that first one is big, right? That's where it all starts. If the majority doesn't realize or doesn't take an interest, doesn't care, doesn't focus on the concerns of the minority. And again, minority in any sense, then whoever has the vote wins, right? And so that has to be where a mental shift takes place. That's where it all starts. In terms of legal structure.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anywhere there's a majority, I don't care where it is, the US, any, you know, it can be Nigeria, wherever it is, the majority has a responsibility. To very carefully address the concerns of the minority because otherwise you turn into tyrants without knowing it, with just taking care of your family. You take care of yourself, your family, and your friends. That's all you need to do. Yourself, your family, and your friends. But once that is amplified to those like you, you turn into tyrants without knowing it. So we're dealing with that right now. And I'm not sure where it's going to end up. You're old enough. You feel like, yeah, maybe there's going to be change you're young. You feel like, yes, it's a time for it. But we'll have to see how it shakes out.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The majority of the people. The majority doesn't feel that an issue is that important. They won't address it because they don't see it as a problem. And until the majority sees it as a problem and embraces it and now wants laws to effectuate that, it simply will not change. That's the only way it changes is the majority gets on board with it and a minority group can fight for those things, but they can't vote the way they want it to go. They can't legislate out those things out of existence because they're simply always going to lose the vote. So I think as great as democracy is, this one fundamental issue that the majority, so natural, right? Majority usually is supposed to win. If there's 10 of us, 10 buddies, and eight of us want to go to the movies and two of us want to go hiking, eight of us want to go to the movies. That's what's going to happen. It's so natural that you don't think about it. It's just the way things function. But we have a responsibility.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or whether it's incarceration or African Americans are incarcerated at a greater rate than others. And then this current issue of police brutality. And if these things weren't literally attacked, so you could address them comprehensively, then they weren't going to be solved. It's really that simple. They simply weren't going to be solved. We sort of hope for a certain evolutionary effect, if you will. It will happen over time. The law is there in place. Therefore, now everything else was going to undo itself magically. And what history has shown is that it just didn't. And sooner or later, you'll have these flare-ups that show the inequities that exist. And if the greater society, that is the majority in this country, doesn't feel impassioned to make the change happen, the change won't happen. It's just the tyranny of the majority. As Alexei Detuqueville said, democracy has its tyrants as well. And the tyrants are actually the people.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would necessarily embrace this principle and begin to carry it out in every way, the nefarious fingers of segregation and racism had entrenched themselves in such a way as to make it very, very difficult to undo. So a lot of people want to hope that these laws somehow changed everything fundamentally. And there have definitely been changes. I mean, you can go to a hotel now in places you couldn't before, eat lunch counters, you couldn't, et cetera. But so many other issues remain, whether it was in fair housing because of redlining, African-Americans couldn't get loans for homes, whether it's education, because if you live in a poor neighborhood, your taxes pay for your school, but your school is going to obviously be underfunded because you're in a poor neighborhood.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People's hearts hadn't changed. So immediately after Reconstruction came this redemption period in the South where they just simply undid all the benefits of those amendments and carried out terrorist campaigns against African Americans through intimidation, through burning down homes, through burning down neighborhoods like in Tulsa, through lynchings and the like that set it all back and putting in clauses, anti-voting clauses, making it very difficult to vote if your grandfather hadn't voted, then you couldn't vote. Well, of course, my grandfather was a slave. Of course he couldn't vote. All these impediments to keep African Americans down and then you fast forward to 1965, 6465, and you get the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. And those are, again, implemented as federal law. But you can't legislate on the ground people.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've been really down. I guess it's both ways, you know, down about all that's going on right now. We could be in 2020, and that this discussion is so relevant as though we're back 60 years ago, back 100 years ago, issues that a Frederick Douglass would notice and say, what? You guys haven't solved this yet. Are you serious? I think that the reason for that is because what happened in the society is essentially America tried to solve a problem by legislating it. As Denzel Washington said, you can't legislate love, right? You can't legislate respect. You can try to legislate fairness, but you can't make everyone everywhere get on that same page. So laws were put into effect like when the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15 Amendment happened and then the Reconstruction happened for the brief time that it did, but then...”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You move to the rhythm of someone else's drum. You get sold if they choose to do so. You're separated from your family members. If they choose to do so. And somehow you're not suicidal, depressed at least. How do you keep your head up? How do you keep your head up and forge a destiny for the future generations and produce people like Frederick Douglass or Harriet Tugman? It's stunning to me. It's absolutely stunning. I think it's a story that is not truly well told in schools deserves to be because it was just absolutely beyond comprehension and so inspiring.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That he was able to really describe it in a fresh way. And you should think about what humans had to go through. I just, I can't understand it. I sit today with the social unrest that's going on in the US now. But I sit today thinking about what happened to African Americans at that time. And I just don't understand how people kept their chins up. You're working as slaves. You're working for someone your entire life, your entire life. All you know is working for someone else with no compensation. How do you do that for hundreds of years? How do you do that? How do families tolerate that? And then you can get beaten at any moment on the whim of your master.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was fresh. It was fresh to what he was experiencing. By the time he got to his third one, he was already sort of seeing it through the lens of his experiences. And that was many years later. But the second one was enough of his life out of freedom.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is really what makes me want to do that, particularly the second one. He had three autobiographies, right? Those that he wrote. There's a great biography on him also by David Blight that's like the definitive one, but he wrote his own as well. He was just remarkable.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to teach himself how to read and then to become so well spoken, so articulate, so learned to stand up after having been beaten to a pulp so many times, finally escape, of course, and then to go on with little bitterness in his heart to fight for a cause that is simply an eternal one, right? One of the great causes of humanity to fight for the liberty of human bodies. I mean, I really just sit in awe at the grandeur of someone like Frederick Douglass. He's one of my favorite people in history. And he's one of those people you say, okay, who you want to go back and meet and sit down and talk to, please give me a three days. I need three days with Frederick Douglass.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The one that jumps to my head is another great African-American, Frederick Douglass. And he had it even worse than Jackie did going back in time. Obviously, Frederick Douglass was in the 19th century. I don't even understand how he became what he became. I really don't. I think about somebody who was a slave for the first 20 years of their lives.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then his dignity and strength in dealing with that just was so absolutely inspiring, that fortitude that it took, that mental toughness to be able to stand up to that and still perform at the highest level. Win rookie of the year and end up winning in World Series for the Dodgers. I mean, just even thinking about it right now, I'm feeling inspired inside. But those kinds of material, that's what I think really is a secret recipe for growth along the path to success. And I think it's extremely important to find those stories and read them and study them because you'll call on them on your quest, your journey. You'll call on them along the way. You'll remember something will be happening to you and you'll remember, oh, I read about this. It happened to this person. It's nothing like learning from other people's experiences.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grandmaster. I remember reading it on the plane and then finally finishing it up after I landed and I was back in the hotel. And I was so inspired by his journey because here I was trying to become the first African-American grandmaster in chess history. And I'm reading about this man who had broken the color line in baseball and the challenges that he faced. I faced some racism myself. paled in comparison to what he faced. Like I couldn't even talk about my experiences when you listen to the people putting a black cat on the field, calling him the N-word, left, right, and center, just screaming, spewing, hated him from the stands.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, absolutely. Biographies are some of the most inspirational materials out there. I think people read different things, right? But if you really want to know the journey, the path to mastery, the path to becoming a champion, the obstacles that you may have to overcome how to deal with those obstacles, there's nothing like reading the lives of great people. It's almost like the secret sauce for success along the lines of motivation and deep learning, deep patterning. I remember when I read Jackie Robinson's autobiography. And I was reading it actually on a plane to Germany where I would play in a big tournament that ended up giving me the second step, the second norm, we call it, out of the three norms that I needed to become a”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's so many great books out there. My friend Grandmaster Yasa Sirwan did a great series called The Winning Chess Series. Winning Chess. Strategies, winning chess tactics, really lucidly explained simple language, great little situations for you to learn a lot from. I think that series was very, very popular. Published by Microsoft way back when, but it's Evergreen. And I think that I could list a lot of books. That series was pretty spot on.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really. You got to get that position yourself. That's the hard part It's so much fun. It's so much fun to be able to get inside the minds of the great geniuses.”
2020-07-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #449: Grandmaster Maurice Ashley — The Path and Strategies of World-Class Mastery · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT