Rodney Mullen
Rodney Mullen
John Rodney Mullenis an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur, inventor, and public speaker who practices freestyle and street skateboarding. Mullen is credited with inventing numerous skateboarding tricks, including the flatground ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and 360-flip. Mullen has appeared in over 20 skateboarding videos and has co-authored an autobiography, entitled The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself, with writer Sean Mortimer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSkateboarder
Date of Birth17 August 1966
CityGainesville, FL
CountryUnited States of America
Do what you love and try not to look at what other people occupy themselves with. Most people seem restless and bounce around too much to focus or even pay attention enough to themselves to figure out exactly what they really do love, as opposed to what the people that surround them are doing.
Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense.
I fell in love with skateboarding because it was individual; there were no teams, there were no captains, there was nothing to perfect. No style that had to be measured. It was completely opposite of what I saw in so many sports. It was creative. And to this day, that's what I love, that's always kept me back to it because it's endless creation.
The biggest obstacle to creativity is breaking through the barrier of disbelief.
Don't let anything poison your individuality. Break away & look in, not outward.
It puts a ceiling on your progress. You're blocked by your pride. To get good, you have to throw your board around and fall.
Skaters, I think they tend to be outsiders who seek a sense of belonging, but belonging on their own terms, and real respect is given by how much we take what other guys do, these basic tricks, 360 flips, we take that, we make it our own, and then we contribute back to the community the inner way that edifies the community itself.