Tate

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I lost all fear of dying after my Dad died. At first I thought it was a strange depression or sadness. A bitterness at the world. Over time I thought it was just the accepting of the inevitable. Why fear what you can’t stop? Then, after a few years, I thought I was brave because he was inspiring to me. I’m not afraid of anything anymore. Since the day he died I haven’t felt fear. But now I know it’s just because I want to see him again. My father's teachings and sacrifices shaped my philosophy on life. I honored him in everything I did. To my father: Rest In Peace. I have your name and your heart. We fight till the end. Tates do not give up.

I looked into your eyes once. I found all my wishes and in the same moment saw them all come true. My love for you runs through my veins like the rivers of heaven. And when you are away, I look for you in the flowers, the sunset, and in the moon. And if a thousand others love you, they only love you a drop compared to my ocean of love for you. I would recognize you in total darkness, were you mute and I deaf. I would recognize you in another lifetime entirely, in different bodies, different times. And I would love you in all of this, until the very last star in the sky burnt out into the oblivion.

You shouldn't join The Real World. That doesn't make any sense. Are you telling me that people should spend a few hours a day from home getting rich, when instead they can spend all their hours every day away from home staying poor? Why would you want to do that? You can spend two hours a day inside The Real World, learn how to make money online, be geographically free. Or you could go work a nine to five and never be rich. There's no reason to join The Real World, because The Real World teaches you how to make money online, quickly and efficiently. If you join The Real World, you make money the same day you join, which is stupid. What you should do is get a job, work a whole month, and then get that paycheck, and then realize that you barely made any money at all by the time you pay rent and you travel to this shit hole. You give up all your time for nothing at all. That makes more sense to me. I can't think of a single reason why you'd join The Real World when you could just get a job and stay poor. jointherealworld.io

There is no treasure waiting for you at any destination. The only reason the destination exists, is to motivate you to undertake the journey. The journey is the gold.

You need to understand very well how the world perceives you. I used to do sales, door to door sales. I'd knock on doors and I try and sell windows when I was 21 years old, a long time ago in England. I realized that once the sun went down, no one would answer the door to me, and I kept losing to the young girls who were selling windows. It was because they got more leads than I did. They had a lower close percentage, but they got more leads. And I worked out that they got more leads than me, because when I knock on your door at night in the dark, you don't answer it, because I'm big. So I realized I have to start earlier. Everyone's starting at 1pm and working till 10pm walking around because they think more people are likely to be home. I'm going to start at 7am, even if I interrupt them getting ready for school, even if I interrupt them getting ready for work, even if they get mad at me. At least they opened the door. I looked at myself, I identified the problem, and I tried to remove friction on my path between me and the money by making sure I interfaced with the world the way that they want to interface with me. You must do the same thing.

Their power lies in your fear, if you don’t fear them, they have no power.

I hated my Romanian cell. It’s terrible in my American cell. But nothing is as bad as Marcell.

I pissed them off and I upset them and I broke The Matrix and I told the truth and they had to assassinate me. I'll take that. My father was 57, which is still quite young. But that's still 20 more years for me. In 20 years from now, I'll be kind of tired. I'm already bored of the women. I'm bored of the cars. I'm bored of the money. I'm bored of the diamond watches. I understand if I continue down the trajectory I'm continuing down, that the end result is going to be me getting into a lot of trouble. And getting killed. I'm ready for the bullet. Dying a hero's death is far better to me than a few extra years of consciousness and dying peacefully in your sleep. A hero's death is the best thing a man could ever hope for. Men used to go out looking for it. My father died a hero's death, He left a massive impact on people's lives. And isn't it a son's job to follow in his father's footsteps? Isn't that the whole point of it? I mean, I do have his name.

I was in a hotel room in Brasov, Romania. It was about 7 p.m. I was sitting on the bed and I was due to commentate on an MMA show at 9 p.m. My phone rang. It was my Mum. I picked it up and she said, “Your Dad is dead”. I said, “Okay, I'll call you back”. I hung up. A girl who was in the room with me at the time. She said, “What happened”? I said, “My Dad died”. Tristan was on the other bed. He said, “Dad's dead?” I said, “Dad's dead.” And then we just sat there quietly for about 10 to 15 minutes. And then I said, “Tristan, let's get ready and go do this show.” He said, “Are we still doing it?” I said, “Yeah.” I didn't see the advantage of cancelling our commentating contract, when they flew us there from England. We commentated on the entire show. After the show, we went back to the room. The girl I was with was like, “Oh, is there anything I can do?” I was like, “No.” I was very irritable. She kept asking me if I was okay and it was pissing me off. I was like, “Can you just sleep somewhere else? Just leave me alone. You can't resurrect my father and you just keep asking me questions and you're pissing me off.” She left the room. Dad died of a heart attack in a chess tournament. Literally died on a chessboard. Best way to go for a professional chess player. Tears ran down my face, but I did not cry. There were tears in my eyes, but I don't know if sad is the right word for how I felt. I felt more anxious. Imagine every police officer on the planet just evaporates. You’d be like, “Well, what happens now?" You're nervous, on edge, scared, worried. That's how it felt. I didn't feel sad. I understood mortality well enough. It was more like, “Okay, well, Dad's gone.” So now what? Like, “T, what do we do? Dad's gone. We're the bosses now. We don't get told what to do anymore.” This is weird. That's how it felt. A strange anxiousness. And the weirdest thing about this is that the day before he died, I had messaged him. I was in a nightclub in Brasov. We talked on Facebook every few days. I messaged him randomly: “Dad, my chi feels off. Are you here?” It's the last message I sent him. He never read it. And then he died. The next day I woke up and my inbox on Facebook was flooded with stories from people who knew my Dad. It was very nice for me to read these stories of people I'd never heard of. People were like, “Hi, you don't know who I am, but I was in the military with your father.” “I met your father at a chess tournament.” They told me all these amazing stories of my father doing incredible things. A guy sent me a message saying, “Nobody is going to understand when you tell people how smart your father was. But I just want to tell you a quick story that when I joined the military, I was already fluent in Russian, and I lived with my Russian wife. And within two weeks, your father was correcting my Russian.” It was the Air Force record for the fastest assimilation of a foreign language. It was incredible. Everyone called him E-T, like an alien. They told me all these stories. A kid in Africa contacted me, said, “I can't get hold of your Dad. He's not responding.” I'm like, who are you? “Your Dad was sending me money and paying for my chess lessons.” I didn't know my Dad was sending this kid money. So I sent this kid some money. It was sobering but refreshing for me to read all these nice stories about him. To know that he made an impact on so many people's lives. And the fact that he died while playing chess gave me huge solace. I was happy that he died at a chessboard. That's how he should have died. A hero’s death. A warrior’s death. That's the best death I could have ever hoped for him. On the battlefield. Now I want to affect as many people's lives as possible and die a hero's death. I would hate to die peacefully in my sleep. I can do better than that. If this story ends with me pissing off the government so much that eventually I get drive-by shot somewhere, I wouldn't be disappointed with that ending.

People forget that Icarus flew. And those who laugh at him for flying too high, have never left the ground.

If you have a problem in your life and you completely ignore it, it doesn't go away. It gets worse. If you don't pay your mortgage and ignore the letters, you end up homeless. It doesn't just vanish.

If you're struggling to find quality men to be friends with, maybe you're not a quality man. Every relationship in the world, including friendships, is mutual. So if you're really going through life and you can't find anyone who's of quality to be a friend with, you need to look in the mirror and realize: maybe I'm a nobody. Because if you're a quality person, you meet quality people, male and female. That's how it goes. You shouldn't have to vet your boys. Your boys are who you go to war with. That's what men are about.

Read that again.

Every man thinks they can fight. Every man thinks they can fuck. Every man thinks they can drive. You put a man in a Ferrari, he's like, Don't worry, I can drive. I'm good. Every man says that. Every man thinks, Oh, you don't want to mess with me. Every dude. These are three easy things to lie about. In the world we live in now you need to have some kind of tangible proof.

Sales jobs are probably the best job any person can get. If I had to get a job again, it'd be a sales job. You learn a lot as a salesman. Sales is a really important skill. And if you're actually good at it, it's not even really like having a job. They don't fire the top salesman. You turn up late. You crash your car. Sorry. Boom, here's my numbers. So if you're a salesman, it's the only time you get any kind of freedom, and also all the responsibility and all the pressure is on your back, where it belongs as a man. You need to adopt stress and adopt problems if you want to be successful as a man.

At 39 you can not fight like you can at 25. However, counterintuitively, age makes you better at showing love and taking damage. Age gives a man a larger heart and thicker skin. You suffer better. You love more. You’re a better person, and although you can not attack the same. You absorb difficulty better than ever. Practice makes perfect.

Men only become good men through negativity. Men who have been through a lot of pain are very kind. When I see a man who's been through a lot of shit, it makes you kinder. You don't want it to be put on anyone else. The biggest gangsters and killers and evil people sometimes can be the kindest. Men grow kind from pain. The worst men on earth are the ones who haven't had enough pain. Those are the arrogant pieces of shit.

How do you make people like you as a man? As a man, to make people like you, you have to show usefulness and competence. Everybody likes the competent man. Everybody likes the man who is good at things, because everyone is selfish. If you're friends with the man who's good at things, he can help you do things you want done. That's how your life as a man improves. Your competency makes you more likable. The more people who like you, the more influence you have over them, which allows you to bend the world towards your will. Men win through competence.

For most people, injustice remains a distant abstract concept - a background noise - a problem in someone else’s life, until the system suddenly turns its weight against them. We navigate the world assuming fairness is the default, Ignoring the struggles of others becomes comfort which breeds indifference.