Lessons Learned From Bruce Lee

7/31/2019 Lessons Learned From Bruce Lee

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Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee

Sure you know Bruce Lee the martial artist and movie star. But do you know Bruce Lee

the philosopher, comedian or master of personal development? Bruce was one of my earlyinspirations. He continuously pushed his mind and body to new levels and his physical

prowess inspired and influenced body builders and martial artists alike. As far as heroesgo, Bruce Lee truly set an example of what it means to be YOUR best. Bruce was all aboutmaking the most of what youve got, seeking truth knowledge, and applying what you

know. If youve seen him in movies or you know some of his quotes, you know exactly

what I mean. In this post, I share my lessons from Bruce Lee.

My Top 10 Lessons from Bruce Lee

These are my top 10 lessons from Bruce Lee:

Be YOUR best. Its not about following in someone elses footsteps or trying to

be somebody youre not. Its about unleashing your best version of yourself.

According to Bruce, Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself,do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

Absorb what is useful. Its not about blindly adopting patterns and practices. Its

about taking the best of the best and tailoring it. Its also about throwing awaywhat doesnt work. Bruce borrowed concepts and techniques from everybody and

every art in a relentless pursuit of the best of the best. According to Bruce, Absorb

what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.

Keep an open mind. You have to be willing to throw out what you already know

and have a curiosity to explore new paths. If youre cup is already full, you cant

learn new things. According to Bruce, First empty your cup.

Aim past your target. Aim past your target, so when you fall short, you still land

in the ballpark of success. Bruce Lee was famous for his one-inch punch, but inreality he was aiming past the one-inch. According to Bruce, Dont fear failure.

Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Stay flexible. Be flexible in your approach. Learn from everybody and everything

and dont get locked into a particular style. According to Bruce, Expose yourself

to various conditions and learn.

Focus on growth. Push past your limits. According to Bruce, There are no

limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond

them.

Know yourself. Your blind spots and ignorance can be your biggest weakness.According to Bruce, After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

Master your mind and body. Its not enough just to be smart. Its not enoughjust to master your body. Your body and mind support each other. Your bodyhelps turn what you think or dream up into results. According to Bruce, As you

think, so shall you become.

Apply what you know. Life is not about watching from the sidelines. Use whatyou know and put knowledge into practice. Test yourself. According to Bruce,

Knowing is not enough, we must do. Willing is not enough, we must apply.


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Make things happen. When there is no wave, make one. According to Bruce,

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

I think it really boils down to making the most of what youve got, including your mindand body, pushing past your limits and following a path of continuous learning and growth.

Bruce Lee Quotes

Art / Artistry

Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the

soul.

Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not

the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human

capacities thought, feeling, will to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So willthe voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.

The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts his pattern. As aresult, his action is and , more importantly, his thinking become mechanical. His

responses become automatic, according to set patterns, making him narrow andlimited.

General

Its not what you give, its the way you give it.

Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. To realizethat its just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an

unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, oftenhot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts

mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

Showing off is the fools idea of glory.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or

against.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have tokick.

What is is more important than what should be. Too many people are looking

at what is from a position of thinking what should be.

Goals

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to

aim at.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, youll never get it done.

Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.


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Growth / Learning

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

As you think, so shall you become.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a

wise answer. Dont fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is

glorious even to fail.

Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a

cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it

in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water,my friend.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth.

To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honestdevelopment of ones potential.

I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It willspread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only

plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is

ever going to help you.

In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup.

Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.

The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you canfloat comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.

Life

Life is better lived than conceptualized. This writing can be less demanding

should I allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation.Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and Ive come to

understand that life is best to be lived not to be conceptualized. If you have to

think, you still do not understand.

Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as we asconstant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.

Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.

Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than

any established style or system.

Real living is living for others.

Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. There is what is only when

there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Mistakes


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Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to

be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, andyour tools will strike at the right moment.

Positive Thinking

Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the

positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

If you think a thing is impossible, youll make it impossible.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Personal Development

Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look

for a successful personality and duplicate it. I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I

cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myselfto indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my

self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best

to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing dailyand I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there

can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past

misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Im not in this world to live up to your expectations and youre not in this world to

live up to mine.

The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits. What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.

Power / Speed / Flexibility

A powerful athlete is not a strong athlete, but one who can exert his strength

quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster

movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling strength ofhis muscles remains unchanged. Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit

as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.

Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but

being flexible. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready forwhatever may come.

Endurance is lost rapidly if one ceases to work at its maximum.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who haspracticed one kick 10,000 times.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow

survives by bending with the wind.


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One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the

opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or

spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way

The athlete who is building muscles though weight training should be very sure to

work adequately on speed and flexibility at the same time. In combat, without the

prior attributes, a strong man will be like the bull with its colossal strength futilelypursuing the matador or like a low-geared truck chasing a rabbit.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is likeice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has

no style, he can fit in with any style.

Self-Awareness

After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know

ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: When you know yourself and youropponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent,

you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or youropponent, you will be imperiled every time.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense,because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of

self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image

of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about ourbeing. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to

lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can

perceive and take the right avenues. To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we

are.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Understanding comes about through feeling, from moment to moment in the mirrorof relationship.

When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the

center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not thesubject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I

or can exist.

Simplicity

Its not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it

thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our

decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.


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When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The

classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the

classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow you are not understanding yourself.

Time

Flow in the living moment. We are always in a process of becoming and nothing

is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and youll be flexible to change with the everchanging. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the

living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose

themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

If you love life, dont waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

The moment is freedom. I couldnt live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely

from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.

The timeless moment. The moment has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the

result of thought and therefore has no time.

Truth

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside

of all fixed patterns.

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without

choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness hasno frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

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Lessons Learned From Bruce Lee