LL47: The Bruce Lee Lesson

Published by

Lem Usita

on

April 11, 2012

I know you know Bruce Lee as an amazing martial artist and a movie star, but did you know that he was quite the philosopher, thinker, and writer as well.

I learned yesterday that Bruce Lee did a ton of writing. He would be quite the blogger today if he was still alive. He would spend a bunch of time writing. He would fill up pages of thoughts from his mind. He would write it all down and get all of this thoughts on paper. Then he would go and burn all of those pages that he had just spent all this time writing.

The idea is that he would get all of these ideas out of his head and on to paper – then burn it all away. Once burned away, he would free his mindspace of all of these random ideas and thoughts, and would then fill his mind with new and better ones. He burned the junk thoughts to make space for new, better ones.

He was about emptying his cup, and discarding the things that were not useful.

I really like that. It is helpful to define his identity. Getting rid of useless things helped him to become more him. That’s a great lesson for leadership. Well, for leaders that want to be fresh, dynamic, and innovative. Too many leaders stick to old ways and rules. It worked before – why wouldn’t it work again?

If you want to check out all of my Leadership Lessons – the ones that I’m learning – click here.

2 responses to “LL47: The Bruce Lee Lesson”

Nics Cahill

April 12, 2012

‘ Too many leaders stick to old ways and rules. It worked before – why wouldn’t it work again?’ I find this so tiring, this inability to reach for something new or fresh. I worked for a tv company who continually said, ‘It’s not broken, we have nothing to fix, your ideas aren’t relevant to the show. Let’s stick to the format.’ The show got axed shortly after that for being too staid.

I think there is a balance to be found between – something that works, and doesn’t need tweaked, and something that is being done, because of traditional, or that’s how it has always been done. Change for changes sake is not always useful, but change is important, and things need to be kept fresh.

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1. Lem Usita
  
  April 12, 2012
  
  Hahaha-that cracks me up. My next post – that I wrote yesterday that I’m about to post has to do with what you are saying. Maybe it’s too similar to my last leadership lesson, but I’m post it anyway. Thanks for all of your comments. I would love to guest post. I’ll think of something. Maybe I can do a follow up on speaking to the land when I go to Hawaii next month. How about that?
  
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