If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 30 years I’m pretty sure you know who Bruce Lee was. 
If you have, then you may be interested to know that Lee was a very famous martial artist and actor who sparked the first big interest of Chinese martial arts in the West in the 60’s and 70’s.
But besides being an awesome fighter and iconic figure Lee also had some very useful things to say about life.
Here are 7 of my favourite fundamentals from Bruce Lee.
1. What are you really thinking about today?
“As you think, so shall you become.”
Perhaps the most basic statement of how we work. Think about what you are thinking today. What do those thoughts say about you? About your life? And how well do they really match your plans for your life and your image of yourself?
It’s easy to forget about this simple statement in everyday life. It’s easy to be quite incongruent with what you think on an ordinary day compared to how you view yourself and your goals. A simple external reminder such as a post-it with this quote can be helpful to keep you and your thoughts on the right track. An brilliant and beautiful expansion on this thought can be found in James Allen’s As a man thinketh (that can be downloaded for free here).
2. Simplify.
“It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
If you want to improve your life then it’s tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don’t really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived.
Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.
Adding more thoughts and thinking things over for the 111:th time may create a sense of security. It’s also a good way to procrastinate and to avoid taking that leap you know you should take. And the more you think, the harder it gets to act. Perhaps because you want to keep that comforting sense of security and avoid the risk of wrecking that feeling.
Thinking has its place. It can help you plan a somewhat realistic route to your goal and help you avoid future pitfalls. Overthinking is however just a habit that will help you waste a lot of time. It’s more useful to replace that habit with the habit of just doing it.
3. Learn about yourself in interactions.
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
The one person that is the hardest to get to really know may be yourself. Studying yourself while you are alone may result in some insights. But it’s also likely to produce a lot of made up thought loops and doubts in your mind. A good way to really learn more about yourself is study yourself in interactions with other people. How people react and act in these interaction can over time teach you a lot. And what you think and how you react can perhaps teach you even more.
What you see, feel and hear in other people may be a reflection of you. The things you learn by thinking this way may not always be pleasant, but they can be enlightening. They help you to see yourself and also how you may be fooling yourself. And these powerful insights can be very valuable for your personal growth. So, in interactions with others, try asking yourself: what is reflected?
4. Do not divide.
“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
This is a very useful and powerful thought. It is also one that obviously is hard to live by. Why? I believe it’s because the ego loves to divide and find ways to “add more” to itself. It want’s to feel better than someone else. Or more clever. Or prettier. Or cooler. Or wiser.
How can you overcome this way of thinking and feeling?
To me it seems to boil down to not identifying so much with your thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that you stop thinking or feeling. It just means that you realize – and remember in your everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through you.
You are not them though.
You are the consciousness observing them.
When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It also enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out. When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.
To learn more about this I would recommend Eckhart Tolle’s books and signing up for the 10 free and excellent webcasts - available both in video and audio form – that he’s doing with Oprah right now.
5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
“Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
The ego wants to add because it thinks it’s not enough. One way of doing that is by craving validation from others. We want to feel smart, pretty, successful and so on. And the validation makes you feel good for a while. But soon you need a new fix.
And the problem with being dependent on validation from other people is that you let other people control how you feel. This creates a rollercoaster of emotion in your life.
To find more emotional stability and to take control of how you feel you need to get your validation from to a more consistent source. Yourself. You can replace the expectations and validation of others by setting your own expectations and by validating yourself.
And so you validate yourself by thinking about how awesome you are. You don’t sell yourself short. You appreciate how far you have come and the positive things you have done. You appreciate your own value in the world. You set goals and you achieve those goals. This builds confidence in yourself and in your abilities. These things will help you to build a habit of inner validation.
Now, showing off. Why do we do that? To get validation from others. However, this need for validation often shines through and that is why a thing like bragging seldom works. Instead of seeing the cool and successful person you are trying to project people just see the insecure and needy person looking for validation. And your bragging falls flat.
6. Be proactive.
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
It’s easy to get locked into a reactive mindset. You just follow along with whatever is happening. You do what the people around you do. You react to whatever is going on.
And so you get lost in your circumstances. This way of thinking doesn’t feel too good. You tend to feel powerless and like you are just drifting along.
A more useful and pleasurable way of living is to be proactive. As Bruce says: to create opportunities despite the circumstances around you. This feels better and provides better results. But on the other hand it’s also more difficult. It’s easier to just drift along in the reactive stream of life. And if you want to be proactive then you may have to take the lead quite often. And that can be scary.
Still, living proactively is so much more rewarding and exciting.
7. Be you.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
Just being yourself is a hard thing to do. You may do it sometimes. And other times you may forget or fall back into old thought patterns. Or you may imitate someone else.
And that comes through too. And it may work.
But I believe that being the real you will work better. Because there the genuine you is shining through. Without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness. It’s you to 100%. It’s you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication - on the same wavelength as your words. It’s you coming through on all channels of communication.
So I’m not saying: “yeah man, you should just be yourself because it’s the right thing to do etc.” I’m saying that I think being your authentic self – the one where you do little dividing, the one that needs little validation from others, the one where your ego is not running the show and trying to get something from someone – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuine and people really like authenticity.
Image by SabTomie.
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I don’t usually read articles in whole, but you said “BRUCE LEE” and I was hooked.
Awesome post.
I like all of your fundamentals, but did Bruce Lee ever have anything to do with these? Wonder why you felt like using his example for this entry:)
cheers.
I love this one:
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
This is a difference between reactive people, who complain they have no luck in life, and proactive people. People who act, all the time look for or create new opportunities and exploit them. Reactive people wait.
Just look at the post above yours and you have your answer.
I also read the article because it said “BRUCE LEE!” Otherwise I would have clicked the stumbleupon icon and moved on.
Maybe not as effective as writing SEX in big letters, but good enough.
thanks
I’m not sure I want to emulate the advice of someone who died young and mysteriously and whose son died the same way.
Bruce Lee may not have created these principles but his all-too-brief life embodied them. Lee is mostly remembered as a martial arts movie star, but he was also an avid student of philosophy of all types. Indeed, his greatest assets were his mind and his will.
Bruce Lee was a hard working genius. He never backed down from a fight. I’ve heard that he would fight people who challenged him on his movie sets. They never believed he was as fast as his movies portrayed, but he always proved them wrong. He was confident and humble at the same time. He made sure his challengers knew he was the best fighter, but would never make people feel bad about losing.
I love watching his movies and I’m glad there are people carrying on his legacy, like this blog post.
Good article, but you forgot another -> “Be water, my friend!”
I love those two qualities - humility and confidence. It’s something I constantly strive for, but have a ways to go still. In a lot of ways it seems so perplexing, but really humility is strength under control, so you have to have the confidence in order to be humble. This has always been so fascinating to me and you know instantly when you meet somebody who has mastered it like Bruce Lee. They are “wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove” as the Bible puts it.
This article is full of wisdom. Thanks!
“To hell with circumstances, I create opportunities”
“Everyday is a decrease, not an increase”
This is how we should live our lives and be disciplined.
Excellent article
Man, awesome post! Lets take a deep breath. ahhhh
7. Be you.
“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
Then why the hell am I supposed to concern myself with this?
The statement actually infers I should not be here, and if you were heeding his advice you wouldn’t have written the article at all.
Your article actually tells me to ignore your article.
But at least I am expressing myself, being myself and have faith in myself.
I really like the change your thinking part — 4. Do not divide.
Shifting your thinking really does work whether you pray, sing a song or use Neural Linguistic Programming or concentrate on only happy thoughts. It really works!
You can knock years off your life I’m willing to bet.
Thanks for the post.
i think he died of overdose, didn’t he?
No, it was a bad reaction to some headache tablets which caused a brain seizure.
As mentioned, I’ve never seen these words acredited to the man himself but they are certainly in line with his philosophies and ideals.
I’ve read every word he’s written and every interview he gave. He was a truly great man in mind, body and spirit and I’m sure he would approve of the advice given here
Be water my friends
he died of a drug overdose!!
do as i say not as i do.
hashish, that’s how he kept his form and speed.
do your research, he was trying to fill the void just like
all of us.
beer.
If it wasn’t for your motivation, and true self I would not have reached my true potential. I give thanks to Bruce! you are still teaching me so many things.
PS
Great Post! I like keeping things very positive and this blog seems to be dedicated to just that.. Creating opportunities and making things happen, seems to be favorite mindset.. I feel if I have too much going on in my mind, I become numb with thoughts and begin second-guessing myself.. By creating opportunities and not waiting for things to happen, it forces you to “pull the trigger” and only by experience, does anyone really gain confidence.. Great blog. Will read it often!
Such powerful stuff. I can really relate to the #1 point “What are you rally thinking today?” In this world of confusion and competition for one’s attention it is truely a matter of self-defense to understand the value of mental focus on what is personally productive.
The post-it note idea is a keeper.
Thanks,
Bill Tessore
http://BillTessore.com
Bruce Lee R.I.P
Those are amazing tips. Thank you..especially on the simplicity part. And of course that quote from being proactive..”“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
Thanks for that!
Groovy…However….i say that just drifting along is a good way to live…if you are always fighting the current, you’re just going to be a cold, hungry fish.
Great reading! Something I’ve bookmarked to come back to again. One of the inspirational articles I shall reread many times.
Thank you.
I like his fighting style”accurate” which can apply in online business.We must deliver an accurate info to our readers.
You missed my favorite Bruce quote “the height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”
Great post!
yeah. what he said
bigdonkeynuts:
You can’t overdose on hashish. Just like you can’t overdose on weed.
Great post. Oneevilgenius you missed the important clarifying phrase in that post, “duplicate it (a successful personality)”. You do have a reason to be here and to read posts and to concern yourself with such things. The point is to learn what works from others and assimilate those things into your own being. That is not the same as duplicating an entire personality, which the quote is implying. The point is, dont try to be exactly like someone because they aren’t you. But, you should try to learn from others.
yeah. what he said
Funny, all of these sentiments were written down by the Romans 2000 years before Lee even lived, and, assuredly, aeons before the Greeks first came across the Chinese or Indian presentation of these ideas while moseying down the Silk Road.
RE : oneevilgenius Mar 21st, 2008 at 6:35 am
7. Be you.
[i]“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, [b]do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”[/b][/i]
Then why the hell am I supposed to concern myself with this?
[b]The statement actually infers I should not be here, and if you were heeding his advice you wouldn’t have written the article at all.
Your article actually tells me to ignore your article.[/b]
But at least I am expressing myself, being myself and have faith in myself.
………………
your logic FAILS !!
there is NO “successful personality” being duplicated here.
GOOD ARTICLE, WISE WORDS to live by !
Thanks for this great post! I’ll definitely be back for inspiration.
A great list! Best advice I heard was about 5 years ago when I was getting into physical fitness and weight lifting: Be happy but not satisfied. I’ve applied that mantra to my physical fitness, my job and my social life and it’s allowed me to get enjoyment out of the decisions I’ve made but to always strive to better them.
“We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. Yet, it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but also its own talents as well”
This changed my life. Before then, I always thought the lack of talent, of resources, and of mentors meant I could never become anything in life.
Just by watching Bruce Lee, I realized that it is all about heart. When you got the indomitable will to go after your dreams, everything becomes possible.
I read that quote when I was 12, overweight, sick, and weak. Since then, I won national martial art championships that everyone said would be impossible to win.
Love this guy! The best martial artist of all time.
Bruce is one of the greatest men who have ever lived. He taught Chuck everything he knows!
You forgot to mention his guiding philosophy:
“No way as way”
It brings a tear to my eye. Bruce’s intensity, determination, and wisdom- the example he set, is his gift to the world, his legacy. To truly appreciate this gift,
use no way as way.
“I’m not sure I want to emulate the advice of someone who died young and mysteriously and whose son died the same way.”
Wow - you must be an American - As paranoid as a junkie…
“he died of a drug overdose!!
do as i say not as i do.
hashish, that’s how he kept his form and speed.
do your research, he was trying to fill the void just like
all of us.
beer.”
And surely this is another American. About as smart as the can of beer that he loves so much. So little knowledge, yet so arrogant.
What happened to-
“When you point to the moon and see only your finger, you miss all the heavenly glowyyyyy.”
Awful lot of Enter the Dragon nuggets missing from this post.
I enjoyed the responses more than the article itself !
all of this was preached by buddha long before bruce lee.
what kevin advised oneevilgenius is absolutely correct ‘The point is to learn what works from others and assimilate those things into your own being.”
Hey bigdonkeynuts, no one ever “kept his form and speed” by smoking hashish, unless you are referring to the little known Stoned Monkey style
I mean really, come on!
Nice article, always good to see Lee’s philosophy used like this.
And when all those persons come saying “The romans did it” and “the chinese did it” and yada yada, i always remember this snippet from the simpons: Bart drinks like 10 glasses full of water the night before christmas so he can wakeup early the next morning. “I am a genius!”, says Bart about his idea, only to be interrupted by Lisa saying “you aren’t a genius, the indians did the same thing so they could wake up early to attack!”… this always triggers the following question in my mind - Is Lisa’s knowledge of more value because she LEARNED it and knows where it comes from, or is Bart’s more valuable because he TOUGHT ABOUT ON HIS OWN? (i always lean towards Bart’s side because, in MY BOOK, it has more merit to come with your own solutions.).
Sure, Lee may have grabbed here and there from several asian and martial arts philosophies (most probably did) to come up with his own lifepath philosophy: so tell me you haven’t, ever, NEVER mixed and matched concepts to come up with your own “way”.
So there, and as old Bruce said:
AAAA-TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
If you like these, read “Zen in the Martial Arts” by Joe Hyam. Short read, many similar concepts with a bit more depth. My favorite book ever (tied with Ender’s Game =)
To the person who said the following:
“hashish, that’s how he kept his form and speed.”
You have no ideia what weed does to your body, do you? If you can smoke weed and be in the mood to workout, you’re one special person!
He did had (Bruce Lee, I mean) severe migraines (and one that would prove fatal). The drugs were just a way to cope with them. Remember that Bruce Lee was extremely concerned about his body and health, just check the nutrition part in his wikipedia article.
The stuff he talks about, in this article, are present in most Eastern Philosophies, and in all (I believe) Martial Arts. But even if Bruce Lee wasn’t inventing the wheel with these statements, his charisma and iconic figure gave these words and thoughts that much power.
As others have said, it was the embodiment of his philosophy ( an eclectic mix of Chinese and Indian influences) that stood him out form so many others in his chosen field. As all creative works are derivative, its great to see the rehashing of Lee´s philosophy in all areas of thought - its how the web works anyway. But back to Lee for a moment, how does one embody change? How does the idea get from the written word to your brain and from there into your daily activity? How does anything so passive s advice, become alive?
This is a great post. The idea is to always measure yourself by your own values not those of other people. The day i stopped living my life based on what others were doing was the day i woke up.
And for those people who talk about so-and-so culture did this before this-and-that culture. Yeah xxx culture might be better than yyy culture, or older, or more ancient, or produced more wise men over the years. So what? How does that even affect YOU? Ask yourself what YOU’ve done in life instead of wasting time comparing deeds of people that lived years ago. If you’re constantly looking to your dead ancestors to prop up your deeds, that’s all you’re gonna take with you to the grave.
Bruce Lee came from a very poor background, was declared a cripple after an accident, but still became THE most iconic martial artist ever through sheer hard work.
So, it’s probably worth listening to him.
At school a friend lent me his copy of Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit, and there’s one quote that’s stuck with me, “There are no limits, there are only plateaus.” It’s just a great motivator.
bruce is prolly da coolest name in da english language
he be da man. he could kick chuck norris butt.
Wow! Great article. Thank you. I will certainly be one to print these out and stick them to my monitor at work.
“Be you” - Well said. I learned this lesson a while ago, and what a fresh breath of relief that was.
Keep up the good work.
I hear some Pickup Training overtones in this post. -Though they are good ones.
very well done man, bizimunda
GREAT!!!!!!! thank you, I am going to bookmark this post and reread often!
“5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.”
“If you like this article, please give it a thumb up in Stumbleupon. Thanks a lot! =)”
Uh…. hm….
Great inspiration! It’s really true, a lot of times we get so caught up thinking things over for the 100th time and all it does really is add stress and delay your actions. Live life to the fullest!