JoeyJoelle

Whether you like it or not, some of the greatest athletes, performers, and influential people were… well, Virgos.

Michael Jackson? Virgo.
Beyoncé? Virgo.
Keke “Get the Bag” Palmer? Virgo.

And one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Kobe Bryant? That’s right. A Virgo.

It’s fair to say that Kobe Bryant was one of the GOATs. But what truly made him one of the greatest?

His mentality.

And so, in honor of his legacy, let’s look at some of the wisdom he blessed us with.

1. “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.”
2. “So it makes sense to get up and start your day earlier, because you can get more work in. If I start earlier, I can train more hours and I know the other guys aren’t doing it, because I know what their training schedule, right? So, I know if I do this consistently over time, the gap’s just going to widen, widen and widen. And they won’t be able to get that back. So to me it was like common sense, thinking how can I get an advantage? Oh. Start earlier.”
3. “I wasn’t invited to parties, or you know, friendly gatherings. So, on Fridays and Saturdays, I would go to my rec room with my basketball and basically dribble myself to sleep. And I think that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, because durng those lonely hours in the rec room I discovered the hunger, the motivation and the desire to be the best possible basketball player that I could be.”
4. Posted right after he suffered an injury during a game.

   

5. “I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”
6. (About his parents) “They would say: Hey, there’s another the day. The sun will come out tomorrow. It’s time for you to move on and then go for bigger, bigger size. Set some bigger goals.”
7. “May you always remember to enjoy the road, especially when it’s a hard one.”
8. “A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness.”

9. 

10. “I think the greatest fear that we face is ourselves, actually, I don’t think it’s not anything that’s external or anything that’s superficial. I think the greatest fear that we face is ourselves, because we all have dreams. And it’s very scary sometimes to accept the dream that you have. It’s scarier still to say: okay. I want that. It’s scary, because if you put your heart and soul into it and you fail, then how are you going to feel about yourself?
11. “Always keep going. No matter what happens, the storm eventually ends. Put one foot in front of the other, through good days and bad, because the hard times will pass and leave you ready for what comes next.”
12. “You know sometimes you lay in bed and you visualize things, that’s at least how I’d go to sleep. Lay down I’d imagine playing for the Lakers and I would imagine what the uniforms would look like. I would imagine where we’d be playing and you know the smell of the arena and of this other stuff. And I would see myself, you know, getting hot. Scored ten straight points. But in a dream, like why would you ever interrupt that? Like you’re not gonna have a dream an be like okay, and then he misses his next six. Like, it’s not gonna happen. So you just keep dreaming and dreaming and dreaming, and before I go to sleep I’m like at 120 points, you know. And so when you grow up, downloading that into your brain over and over and over when you go out on the court, you’re just executing things that you’ve done a thousand times before. And you have that dream, then that becomes possible.”
13. “The lesson I cherished the most, is how important it is to love what you do. If you love what you do and it’s making you happy. All your hard work and perseverance will pay off.”
14. “When you have a dream, the one thing you have to watch out for are those out there that’ll try to crush your dream. And you cannot allow that to happen.”

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