Back when I was a middle school teacher, I ran a student leadership program and we did a yearly Leadership Retreat. One year I did a retreat where I weaved a Bruce Lee theme throughout the 3-day event. The first time we got together I started my talk by showing the opening scene of Enter The Dragon:
After that I started every gathering with a Bruce Lee story, including his one-inch punch,
Empty your cup, and other stories to pump him up as a really incredible man and martial artist. I painted a picture of a brilliant, super athlete that had everything going his way.
On the last day, I shared the following information about Bruce Lee:
- His parents moved him from Hong Kong to LA because he was in a gang and they were frightened that he’d get in a fight that would cost him his life.
- He had horrible vision and learned to fight close because he couldn’t see what an opponent was doing at a distance. And he wore contacts for all of his adult life.
- One leg was an inch and a half shorter than his other leg, and that’s why he had such a deep stance.
- He lost out on the role in the TV series Kung Fu, that he helped to create, because he was ‘too Chinese’ for an American audience. And this is why he moved back to Hong Kong to create the movies that made him famous.
None of these could be seen as things that worked in his favour, but in each case he took what were disadvantages and made them into advantages. So often we are defined by what we perceive are our limitations, Bruce Lee took what others would use as excuses and made them into things that defined what he was capable of. He didn’t accept road blocks, he used them as launching points.
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I often wonder how much more we could have learned from this man if he hadn’t died so soon.
