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 abut 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.
Bruce Lee’s Top 7 Fundamentals for Getting Your Life in Shape
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 abut 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.