SUCCESS STORY

Bruce Lee’s Formula for Success

By Jacob Harle | Athletic Training Major, Pre-Physical Therapy

Bruce Lee, thirteen year-old future martial arts master, film-maker, and actor, panics at his best friend, William Cheung’s, door. The prodigy already has a long history of getting into scraps, and now he successfully bit off more than he could chew. Prior to a fast dash up the stairs to William’s house, Bruce was standing over yet another bruised and bloodied adversary, but this adversary has a lot of friends. Around 50 members of one of the many 1950’s, Hong Kong street gangs stalk through the city looking for an unfair fight. Calming his friend, William and Bruce emerge from the hillside home with confidence and nonchalance. The gang members, expecting fear and hiding, are surprised to see the courage of the two young Wing Chun students, and they suspect a trap lying among the hundreds of civilians surrounding them. Fearing a fight they may not win, the gang members beat feet. Without throwing a single punch, Bruce Lee and his friend William Cheung defeat 50 members of a gang in the dangerous streets of Hong Kong “(Wing Chun Association 2–3).”

Even at thirteen years old, Bruce Lee excelled within his passions. He couldn’t help but get into fights no matter where he lived, but he also couldn’t help but win those fights. When Bruce got in over his head, he outsmarted or acted his way out of any predicament, and, at the surface, Bruce’s success reflected his innate talent.

In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell takes a second look at the causes of success, and his findings disagree with the idea of innate talent. Gladwell analyzes success from a perspective in which no individual becomes an outlier without help from a combination of advantageous factors. He would argue that Bruce Lee benefited from special opportunities, cultural legacies, and the hard work required to make use of those factors “(Gladwell Outliers).” From a distance, talent and hard work alone created the martial arts master, but a closer look reveals Bruce made use of specific advantages that transformed a man of potential into a man who made history. Not even Bruce Lee climbs the ladder of success without being given arms.

Sixteen year-old Ip Man, having caused his fair share of trouble at school, didn’t receive any gold stars, but witnessing this injustice was too much for him. The woman did nothing wrong, and a physical beating was uncalled for. Police officers working for the occupying British treated Hong Kong natives with contempt and, in this case, aggression. Ip Man tired of it. The three year practitioner of the Wing Chun Kung Fu fighting art moved to intercept the officer. Enraged by the young justice seeker, the foreign officer struck out at Ip Man, but he experienced the brunt of Man’s abilities. Rumor spread the report of his actions and reached the ear of a local Wing Chun master. Under his tutelage, Ip Man grew into a formidable kung fu practitioner. His training served him well when Man moved back to his home in Foshan, China to become a policeman. However, in 1949, Ip Man, as an officer of a political party opposing the new Communist party, fled Foshan without his family back to Hong Kong where he opened up his new Wing Chun School “(Knight 1–3).”

Around this time film-maker, Lee Hoi-Chuen, his wife, and his young son, moved back to Hong Kong from San Francisco, California. Lee worked as a movie producer, and his son, having spent so much time on movie sets, already received some fame as a child actor (Wing Chun Association). Bruce Lee moved to Hong Kong at the same time Ip Man fled to Hong Kong, opening a quality, but struggling Wing Chun School. Before Man, Wing Chun instructors taught privately, so he pioneered a public institute for the art. After a rocky start, Ip Man’s school gained fame for teaching many influential martial artists, including Bruce Lee “(Knight 1).” Not only did Lee Hoi-Chuen move to Hong Kong when a famous teacher opened a revolutionary school, but Bruce’s reputation as a child actor gave Ip Man the incentive to accept him as a student “(Wing Chun Kung Fu Association 2).” Bruce Lee learned and practiced with intensity, and he soon became one of Ip Man’s top students until, due to racial tensions and his half-British heritage, Bruce was forced out of the school “(Wing Chun Kung Fu Association 2).” However, Bruce continued his zealous practice of Kung Fu even as he moved back to San Francisco in 1958, a time and place where interest in martial arts was just beginning to flourish “(Kerridge 72).” Bruce Lee took advantage of incredible opportunities that contributed to his success, but the formula for the historical figure we know today included more than a single variable.

Standing at center stage, a small figure commands a powerful presence. BLACK, the yo-yo master addresses his crowd in heavily accented, broken English as he explains his journey to the Ted Talk stage. BLACK hated sports as a child and never felt talented at anything, even after a split-second decision to buy his first yo-yo. Practicing for an entire week yielded only the slightest progress, but it was enough. BLACK was hooked “(BLACK: My Journey to Yo-Yo Mastery).”

“I thought the yo-yo is something for me to be good at. For the first time, I found my passion “(BLACK: My Journey to Yo-Yo Mastery).” BLACK captivates the audience with highly dexterous movements and two whirling yo-yo’s. Merging dance forms, martial arts, and yo-yo styles, BLACK’s yo-yo’s dance, and he proves his title of world yo-yo champion “(BLACK: My Journey to Yo-Yo Mastery).”

BLACK poured everything into a single skill by learning several art forms and applying it to one simple passion. “(BLACK: My Journey to Yo-Yo Mastery).” Following the Renaissance, the influence of the Renaissance man, someone who excels at many things, spread in the West. People aspired to be balanced and try many different things, but Eastern culture seems to have a different legacy “(The Renaissance: Intellectual, Geopolitical and Theological Shifts.)”

In Eastern culture, when an individual finds a passion, or is given one, they throw every bit of effort into that single task. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: the Story of Success, we are transported to rural China where “rice is life (227).” Gladwell explains the rigorous task of building a rice patty by carving it into the mountainside, engineering the perfect agricultural system for optimum hydration, and day to day tasks such as weeding by hand (226).” “Rice Farmer’s improved their yields by becoming smarter, by being better managers of their own time, and by making better choices “(Gladwell 233).” The whole family was willing to spend their life in rice patties because they found meaning in their work and they experienced the rewards of improvement. Essentially, Chinese farmers found their passion and dedicated themselves to it. This became a cultural legacy that Bruce Lee benefited from because “cultural legacies matter “(Gladwell 227).”

Bruce Lee applied everything he knew to make advances in his skills as a martial artist. Having learned what he needed from Wing Chun, Bruce began critiquing his own style and innovating a new martial art he called Jeet Kune Do, the way of the intercepting fist. He broke tradition and poured his efforts into training by taking nutritional supplements, adopting western bodybuilding cues and shaping himself to have the abilities his lifestyle required. He applied the Kung Fu of his Chinese heritage, his mind, and his body to make progress on a monthly basis “(Gwin 2) (Kerridge 71).” Like fellow performer and skill specialist, BLACK, and his ancestors in rural China, Bruce Lee found a passion, used innovation and perseverance to experience rewarding progress and ran with it.

Just as Bruce Lee is not simply talented, he isn’t the product of only opportunity and legacies handed down from generations. There are many formulas for success and many different measures of success, but every one of them requires hard work.

In the early 1990’s, researchers travel to an elite music school in Berlin, Germany, to find out how important natural talent is when factored into the equation of success at a given skill. Earlier studies performed by the days’ psychologists had begun chipping away at the idea of natural talent, so the researchers sought to settle the question once and for all by separating advanced violinists into groups based upon their skill levels. Their findings confirm the previous psychologists’ studies. All the violinists, having started at the same age of five years old had similar practice schedules until around the age of eight. After the initial ability threshold gained from the beginning eight years, the violinists who practiced the most, thirty hours a week, make up the most skilled group. What’s more, the researchers find the specific number of hours for their practice to be 10,000 hours. There are no naturals, there are no grinds, and everybody who loves the violin enough to practice nearly to the capacity of a full-time job, attained mastery in their passions “(Gladwell 38–39).”

Kung Fu was Bruce Lee’s Juliet. After receiving a beating from a rival gang member, Bruce pleaded with his mother for kung fu lessons “(Wing Chun Kung Fu Association 2).” Bruce fell head over heels, and immersed himself into the techniques, culture, and even the Buddhist and Taoist philosophies of kung fu “(Lee 27).” William Cheung gave insight into his peer’s practice schedule. “He practiced every minute of the day. Even while talking, he was always doing some kind of arm or leg movement “(Wing Chun Kung Fu Association 2).” When he wasn’t teaching, he was learning, practicing, perfecting, or acting within the realm of kung fu or his new art, Jeet Kune Do. The sixteen year-old breathed, dreamed and lived his passion, and it carried into his later life as his love turned into a deep commitment in which kung fu defined Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee won a cha-cha championship, but no one calls him a cha-cha master “(Lee 30).” Bruce began acting at a young age and was featured in several popular movies, but his status as a master actor could be argued. However, Bruce was undeniably a martial arts master having been featured multiple times in Black Belt Magazine, taught and influenced many of the days’ greatest martial artists, and won every fight with which he was challenged “(Lee 43–45).” His achievement would have been impossible if he had not achieved 10,000 hours of practice. In fact, in Bruce’s short, thirty-two years of life, Bruce likely achieved more than 30,000 hours of practice in the martial arts field. Bruce himself seemed to understand the significance of the number 10,000 when he said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks one time, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

The door of Bruce Lee’s “kwoon” on Broadway Street in Oakland, California opens to reveal a member of San Francisco’s martial arts circles and several of his Chinese comrades. Bruce openly teaches Caucasian students which, due to the present cultural tensions, is not accepted by most Chinese practitioners. A traditional scroll unravels to issue a challenge for Bruce, and losing means forfeiting his school. With his students and eight month pregnant wife, Bruce confidently accepts the challenge already throwing his over-confident adversaries off-guard. As their back bones begin to bend, the small gang decides a demonstration of techniques will be enough to decide the winner, but now Bruce is angry.

“No, you challenged me. So let’s fight!” Knowing a fight is inevitable, the challenger begins to suggest safety measures that only serve to further infuriate Bruce. Fearing this man’s combination of temper and skill, the challenger reluctantly agrees to the original challenge he issued only a minute ago. He assumes a traditional martial arts stance as Bruce slips into a comfortable Wing Chun posture, and the fight begins. Bruce’s furious straight, aggressive punches nearly send his adversary running, and three minutes later Bruce has the challenger on the ground admitting he’s had enough “(Lee 52–53).”

At this point most people, filled with bravado and confidence, would begin laughing and celebrating with their colleagues, but Bruce is an outlier. He walked away from his brawl unhappy that the fight had taken three minutes rather than two seconds, and with his heavy breathing and sore muscles. Just as Bruce had always done, he analyzed the fight over and over, and he adjusted his traditional learning to become the innovative master people hear about today.

Bruce Lee, given his short, intense life, seems untouchable, but he is not innately special. He is the benefactor of a special formula for his own success. He happened to move to the same place as the world-renowned martial arts teacher, Ip Man, who was pushed their by political unrest, and his work as a child-actor obtained for him the reputation to become a student and later on, an actor. His cultural legacies fueled his passion for kung fu and allowed Bruce to make practice a life-style. Bruce’s hard work and practice for 10,000 hours made him a master martial artist.

A successful person lives a life filled with joy and freighted with significance. Bruce’s deep passion and intense lifestyle achieved both these requirements, and his influence can be heard among martial artists, civil rights activists, philosophers, and more. Having died at the age of thirty-two, Bruce made up for the short quantity of his life with the quality of his life, and he was able to do so only with the cultural legacies and opportunities granted to him and passion-fueled hours of hard work. No one, not even Bruce Lee, succeeds on their own.

Works Cited

Bruce Lee and William Cheung: the Early Years. The Global Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu Association. 2014. Web. 14 May, 2015.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2008. Print.

Gwin, Peter. “Battle for the Soul of Kung Fu.” National Geographic 219.3 (2011) 1–10. Print.

Kerridge, Steve. “Bruce Lee.” Joe Weider’s Muscle & Fitness 74.3 (2013): 70–82. Print.

Knight, Dan. “Ip Man’s Biography: Life of the Martial Arts Legend.” 20 Jul. 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

Lee, Linda. The Bruce Lee Story. Santa Clarita: Ohara, 1989. Print.

Mulberry, Sam. “The Renaissance: Intellectual, Geopolitical and Theological Shifts.” Bethel University. Bethel University. 27 Mar. 2015. Lecture.

My Journey to Yo-Yo Mastery. Dir. Chris Anderson. Perf. BLACK. Ted Conference, 2013. Video.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacob Harle, a freshman at Bethel University, Arden Hills, MN, writes to explore the world of writing though he is seeking a career in physical therapy. Harle likes longboarding, strumming the guitar, and martial arts.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

I recognize a great sentence by it’s originality. Nobody wrote this same sentence before.

Though it uses more words, detailed description is not wordiness. It provides a connection for the reader.

A great sentence punches someone in the gut with brutal honesty. Bruce Lee eliminated the non-essentials from his traditional fighting background, and created Jeet Kune Do. The result is a highly efficient, straight-forward fighting system. Writing should look like Jeet Kune Do.

Dropping the reader in a moment makes them wonder what is happening and forces them to find out.

Don’t repeat an introduction to tie up a writing, but bring the reader back to where they started with new knowledge.

Words are powerful in that they can create a physical reaction from the reader by appealing to their senses. Make them see the scene, hear the scene, and feel the scene.

I remember reading The Maze Runner book series in about a week. The author, James Dashner, posed a bunch of questions at the beginning of the series and taunted the reader with them constantly. He rarely answered a question before the end of the series. A great writer asks questions at the beginning of their work and doesn’t answer them until the end.

No man creates himself. Success is a group effort.

Opportunities present themselves in ways we often don’t realize. Sometimes they appear in the midst of our greatest faults and failures.

My culture and faith significantly affect my decisions and outcomes.

I’ve heard all my life that there is always going to be someone faster than me, stronger than me, smarter than me, and simply better than me at whatever I do. I don’t need to be the best. Given adequate ability, I can find success in my interests by the power of practice and opportunity.

It takes a long time to master a skill. Some would say it takes ten thousand hours which translates to years of practice. Get an early start.

Nobody puts up with a task long enough to master it if they don’t love it. Find passion before finding a career because passion fuels action and excuses sacrifice.

Success dies without meaning. I could have all the money in the world, but if I don’t care about what I’m doing my significance is lost.

Professor Winter asks the class to read Steve Carell’s quotes. Carell believes he is an average, boring guy, but each classmate is intent on his words. Winter has always advocated that we share what we write because everybody has a story to tell, and believe it or not, it’s important.