Kate McKay

The “spiritual” side of Cus’s training philosophy centered on living a simple, focused, ascetic life. A fighter had to develop “character,” which Cus defined as the ability to hold to a principle, an aim, under the most intense pressure—to even be willing to die for it.

Cus believed that to be a champion, you had to marshal all of your life’s energies towards a singular purpose. Anything superfluous had to be placed on the altar of that goal.
The mission was everything.

STUDY AND READ WIDELY TO EXPAND YOUR MIND AND FORM A STRATEGIC PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

PRINCIPLE #3:
CONTROL YOUR MIND AND YOU CONTROL YOUR REALITY

Cus also knew that thoughts not only affect your actions, but that your actions affect your thoughts. To be a champion, he advised Tyson, he needed to eat, sleep, and train like one. Once he started to act like a champ, he’d feel more like a champ, and the more he felt like a champ, the more he’d act like a champ … and on the cycle would turn toward victory.

Cus said, “You must know your mind well enough to know that, given a set of circumstances that are threatening, your mind will find excuses to avoid and evade, not to accept a confrontation of any kind.” This “wall” of resistance always stands between where you are now, and reaching a higher level, and Cus believed that success in any endeavor required having the toughness to push through it.

“Fatigue in the ring is 90% psychological. It’s just the excuse of a man who wants to quit.”

“So long as a man can do what is required to be done, regardless of how he feels within,” Cus would say, “that man is a professional in whatever field he is in.”

“What people don’t realize is that when controlled properly fear can take you to a level of euphoria where you believe you’re invincible. Very few people can get to that level. But when you do, a weird aberration of nature takes place and you’re sent to a level of invincible proportion.”

In order to keep Tyson’s nerves from locking up his abilities once he got into the ring, Cus worked to ingrain his skills and reactions to the point they were instinctual, and could be performed even in the presence of fear. “The body knows things that the mind doesn’t know it knows,” he’d tell Tyson.