A MEMOIR BY A TENTH-DEGREE BLACK BELT
Lessons From a Lifetime of Strength, Faith, and Purpose
Fifty-five years of martial arts. Seventy years of living. Four words that tie it all together: Listen. Observe. Value. Encourage.
Meet the Author
Greg Dillon grew up in Otwell, a small farming and mining community in southern Indiana, where he learned to work before he learned to fight. At fifteen he walked into his first karate class at a YMCA twenty miles from home, riding an old motorcycle he had bought with money earned baling hay and catching chickens for the co-op. More than fifty-five years later, he is a tenth-degree black belt, a lifelong teacher, and the creator of the L.O.V.E. principle: Listen, Observe, Value, Encourage. His book is the story of how a small kid from a small town learned that the size of the person in the room matters far less than what he brings into it.
Read Greg's full storyA life in numbers
55
Years in martial arts
10th
Degree black belt
1980
First-degree black belt earned
70
Years of lessons
The L.O.V.E. Principle
Chapter Four
Real listening makes room for another person inside your own attention: what they say, why they say it, and what they cannot yet put into words.
Practice Listen"Listening is not simply hearing sound. It is respecting the possibility that the person speaking may know something you need to understand."
Chapter Five
Observation is paying enough attention to recognize what is actually happening before it becomes obvious to everybody else.
Practice Observe"If you are the smallest person in the room, you cannot rely on size. You have to notice things."
Chapter Six
A beginner deserves the same basic human dignity as a high-ranking black belt. Worth is not measured by rank, money, or titles.
Practice Value"Value should be communicated while there is still somebody there to receive it."
Chapter Seven
Real encouragement meets people where they are, and helps them find enough reason to take the next step.
Practice Encourage"Encouragement is helping someone find enough reason to take the next step even when the entire road is not visible."
The Book
Before the black belts, the tournaments, and the travel, there was a small boy in an old barn in southern Indiana, paying attention.
In L.O.V.E., tenth-degree black belt Greg Dillon looks back on seventy years of life and fifty-five years in martial arts to share the four principles that shaped everything he became: Listen. Observe. Value. Encourage.
From a farm community between a cornfield and a coal mine, to a wooden YMCA handball room, to competition floors and seminars around the world, Greg shows how the smallest person in the room can stand the tallest, why a black belt is a beginning and not an end, and how the greatest fights of our lives rarely involve punches and kicks.
Honest, warm, and full of hard-won wisdom, L.O.V.E. is for martial artists, parents, coaches, teachers, and anyone who has ever been underestimated. It is a book about building a stance strong enough to hold you steady when life pushes.
A life in moments
1950s
Childhood in Otwell, Indiana, on his grandparents' farm with its old wooden barn under a metal roof.
Early 1970s
Finds a karate book at a school book fair. Curiosity turns into a search.
Age 15
First formal karate class at a YMCA twenty miles from home, under Master Tanaka.
1974
Graduates from Otwell High School and begins studying vocational technology at Oakland City College, where he meets Earl Heacock and Randy Beard.
1977
Competes in tournaments in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Nashville, Tennessee.
1980
Earns his first-degree black belt from Master Gene Gross, and receives a first place trophy from World Champion Herb Johnson in Indianapolis.
Later years
Studies with Grandmaster George Dillman and travels internationally for seminars. Teaches generations of students.
Career
Serves in the utility industry as a medical first responder, trained in high-angle and confined-space rescue.
Today
Tenth-degree black belt with fifty-five years in martial arts, author of L.O.V.E.
"Success has a way of hiding its own beginning."
Speaking and seminars
Talks on the L.O.V.E. principle, perseverance, and character, drawn from fifty-five years of teaching. For young people who have been told they are too small, and for the adults who shape them.
