#509: George Mumford, Mindfulness Coach to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, on Awareness, Compassionate Action, The Dizziness of Freedom, and More

When you change a behavior or a habit, you have to experience anxiety; you have to experience uncertainty; you have to experience discomfort ... When we grow, the only way that happens is you got to be able to be a little bit uncomfortable. You got to be beyond your comfort zone. You got to have a discomfort zone.

When you go get interviewed, if they tell you you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread, you say, ‘Thank you,’ and you just smile. And if they tell you you’re the biggest choke artist of all time, you just thank them and smile.

I had a conversation with Kobe [Bryant] early on in my first year I worked with him when I said to Kobe 'The best way to score is not to try to score.'

A lot of people think that the practice of mindfulness, the practice of insight meditation, is just sitting and being still; a big part of it is cultivating wisdom and talking about integrity—talking about walking your talk, but also understanding how to cultivate a sense of compassion for yourself and others and how to, I guess love is the way I would talk about it. When you love something, you labor of it—you make it grow.

The acronym that I remember is ASK ... Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be open to you.

A crisis has two meanings: one meaning is danger, which we get, but the other meaning is opportunity.

That which hinders your task is your task.