Don t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like

water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; Yo u put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be w ater, my friend.

Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee 3 July 2009 43 Comments LessonsLearnedFromBruceLee Sure you know Bruce Lee the martial artist and movie star. But do you know Bruc e Lee the philosopher, comedian or master of personal development? Bruce was on e of my early inspirations. He continuously pushed his mind and body to new le vels and his physical prowess inspired and influenced body builders and martial artists alike. As far as heroes go, Bruce Lee truly set an example of what it m eans to be YOUR best. Bruce was all about making the most of what you ve got, see king truth knowledge, and applying what you know. If you ve seen him in movies o r you know some of his quotes, you know exactly what I mean. In this post, I s hare my lessons from Bruce Lee. My Top 10 Lessons from Bruce Lee These are my top 10 lessons from Bruce Lee: Be YOUR best. It s not about following in someone else s footsteps or trying to be somebody you re not. It s about unleashing your best version of yourself. Acco rding 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. It s not about blindly adopting patterns and practices . It s about taking the best of the best and tailoring it. It s also about throwin g away what doesn t work. Bruce borrowed concepts and techniques from everybody a nd every art in a relentless pursuit of the best of the best. According to Bruc e, 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 kno w and have a curiosity to explore new paths. If you re cup is already full, you c an t learn new things. According to Bruce, First empty your cup. Aim past your target. Aim past your target, so when you fall short, you stil l land in the ballpark of success. Bruce Lee was famous for his one-inch punch, but in reality he was aiming past the one-inch. According to Bruce, Don t fear fa ilure. 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 ever ything and don t get locked into a particular style. According to Bruce, Expose yo urself to various conditions and learn. Focus on growth. Push past your limits. According to Bruce, There are no l imits. 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. It s not enough just to be smart. It s not enough just to master your body. Your body and mind support each other. Your body hel ps turn what you think or dream up into results. According to Bruce, As you thin k, so shall you become. Apply what you know. Life is not about watching from the sidelines. Use wh at you 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. 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 you ve got, including your mind and body, pushing past your limits and following a path of continuous lear ning and growth. Bruce Lee s Physical Feats While we don t know whether the following stretch the truth, we do know you don t lo ok the way Bruce did by default. It was by design and he pushed his physical li mits. BruceLeePhysicalFeats These are some of the physical feats attributed to Bruce based on various demons trations, his friends and associates, and interviews: Bruce performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger. Bruce performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups. Bruce performed a sidekick while training with James Coburn and broke a 150 lb (68 kg) punching bag. Bruce could cause a 200-lb bag to fly towards and thump the ceiling with a s idekick. Bruce could snatch a dime off a person s open palm before they could close it, and leave a penny behind. Bruce s striking speed from three feet with his hands down by his side reached five hundredths of a second. Bruce Lee Quotes I ve included some of my favorite Bruce Lee quotes below. I ve organized them using the following categories: Art / Artistry, General, Goals, Growth / Learning, Li fe, Mistakes, Positive Thinking, Personal Development, Power / Speed / Flexiblit y, Self-Awareness, Simplicity, Time, and Truth. BruceLeeQuotes 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 o f all human capacities thought, feeling, will to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmo ny with it. The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts his patt ern. As a result, his action is and , more importantly, his thinking become mech anical. His responses become automatic, according to set patterns, making him na rrow and limited. General It s not what you give, it s the way you give it. Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. To realize t hat it s just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasa ntness, 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 pre tty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows ol der, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquencha ble. Obey the principles without being bound by them. Showing off is the fool s idea of glory.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for o r against. Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick. What is is more important than what should be. Too many people are looking at wha t is from a position of thinking what should be. Goals A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as somethin g to aim at. If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal. 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. Don t 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, yo u 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 honest development of one s 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 will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are on ly 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 mi nd 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 can float 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 creatio n. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I ve come to und erstand that life is best to be lived not to be conceptualized. If you have to t hink, you still do not understand. Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as w e as constant 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 the re 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

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, and your tools will strike at the right moment. Positive Thinking Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choos e the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success. If you think a thing is impossible, you ll 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 mys elf to 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 li fe is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am gro wing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, ev ery day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of t he past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude. I m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you re not in this wor ld 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 streng th quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling str ength of his 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 for whatever 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 w ho has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or wi llow survives by bending with the wind. 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 su re to work adequately on speed and flexibility at the same time. In combat, with out the prior attributes, a strong man will be like the bull with its colossal s trength futilely pursuing the matador or like a low-geared truck chasing a rabbi t. 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 like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; whe n 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 kno w ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: When you know yourself and your op ponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, y ou will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opp onent, 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 sen se, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All conce pts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abs tract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves an d feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understand ing allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life f rom 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 mirr or of relationship. When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen f rom the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing els e can be I or can exist. Simplicity It s 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 expen d 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. 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 t he classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shad ow you are not understanding yourself. Time Flow in the living moment. We are always in a process of becoming and nothin g is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will discl ose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. If you love life, don t waste time, for time is what life is made up of. The moment is freedom. I couldn t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live free ly 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 re sult of thought and therefore has no time. Truth All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The trut h is outside of all fixed patterns. Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is wi thout choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is p erception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Aw areness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Where to Go From Here? While there are countless resources on the Web, and you can always check out his movies, my favorite book on Bruce Lee, is by Bruce Lee. WhereToGoFromHere It s Tao of Jeet Kune Do . Aside from the fact that it s written by the master hims elf, I like the fact that Bruce wrote it while he was bedridden for six months. You can just imagine how Bruce, the warrior, put everything he could into shari ng the best of what he knew, while dealing with a pretty traumatic point in his life. I also like the simple sketches throughout the book which show how he bor rowed the best of the best, such as the boxer s hands or a wrestler s grappling move s.