Blogroll
4 Oct 10 Lifelong Learning, Kicking Ass & The Timeless Teachings of Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee may be most known as an actor and a martial artist. However, he was much more than that: he was a philosopher and a great thinker, bringing together Taoist- and other eastern philosophies with western streams of thought, creating a fusion of ideas that where not constrained by the limitations of their origins.
Lee’s teachings can easily be applied to any part of life: your inner life, your personal relationships or your professional life, but let’s examine how they may apply to the areas of life long learning and improving oneself.
“The Usefulness of a Cup Is Its Emptiness”
This was a metaphor used by Bruce Lee to represent the concept of being prepared to accept new knowledge without being hindered or biased by old knowledge, preconceived notions or biases.
Many claim to have an open mind, but in reality the number of people with truly open and flexible minds are few and far between. Most of us are afflicted by various cognitive biases such as most commonly confirmation bias, meaning we tend to have our mind made up about what the “truth” is, and find the evidence to support it while conveniently disregarding or devaluing contrary evidence. This is particularly true for subjects which are heavily influenced by personal values and political ideologies, economy and politics come immediately to mind.
As much as morality and beliefs, both explicit and implicit can be valuable in many circumstances, they can cloud our ability to absorb when it comes to understanding and finding real truth. If we can strip ourselves of the constraining spectacles of morality, beliefs and prior knowledge just for a moment as we take in new information and knowledge, we can better judge the usefulness of our new knowledge without the filtering effect of pre-judgement.
“Absorb What Is Useful; Disregard That Which Is Useless”
Do not burden yourself with what you have no use for, and do not waste effort on methods, information or actions which you have found not to contribute to a useful end. Cut waste, and get to the core, the essence of what it is you are pursuing. In this regard I see many parallells between the Taoist roots of the concept, and that of Systems Thinking around organizational effectiveness and efficiency. To me personally, it was a liberating discovery to find a core principle that is applicable not only to learning, improving and my personal life, but also to the work that is my business.
Simplicity and cutting to the bare essence are simply timeless values applicable to almost any area of human existence.
“The Less Effort, The Faster And More Powerful You Will Be”
If you truly want to learn something to mastery, it should become part of you, instinctive and effortless. The more something is an instinctually learned part, whereby you don’t even have to think to do it, just be part of the moment, the more powerful it becomes. Bruce Lee’s martial art, Jeet Kune Do embeds this in the concept of “economy of motion”: efficiency, directness and simplicity, expending as little energy and movement as possible to achieve your end. These concepts can easily be transferred into almost any area, such as learning, mastering and executing any skill or achieving any goal. Let’s call it “economy of effort” instead of “economy of motion” in this context.
Have an open, flexible mind that is not clouded by prior pre-conceived notions, learn to cut to the essence of anything and absorb it, discard the useless and achieve mastery by pursuing the most efficient, direct and simple solutions - If you can internalise and integrate these skills and values into yourself, you’ll be halfway to truly kicking ass in any pursuit you apply yourself to.
