Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself. There is no such thing as defeat until you admit it to yourself, but not until then!
In 1964, my father did a demonstration at the Long Beach International Karate Championship. He spoke about Chinese gung fu and demonstrated some of his showstopping techniques on students and volunteers. His charisma caught the eye of Jay Sebring, Hollywood hairdresser to the stars, who was in the audience—and whose producer client had recently been talking to him about a show that needed an Asian actor. Jay left the tournament mesmerized by this young Bruce Lee kid and called his client, William Dozier, to tell him about my father.
Some time later, back at their home in Oakland, the phone rang and my mother answered. When the man on the line identified himself as a Hollywood producer looking for her husband, she thought it might be some kind of practical joke. She gave Bruce the message and when he called back, he was asked to come down to Los Angeles for a Hollywood screen test.
My father made his way from Oakland to LA just days after the birth of their first child, my brother, Brandon, and auditioned for a show about Charlie Chan’s Number One Son. He wowed the room, and although plans for Number One Son were ultimately sidelined, the producer loved Bruce so much that he paid to hold him until he could cast him in another project. He was soon offered the role of Kato in The Green Hornet.
The Green Hornet and Kato were a crime-fighting duo who took on a host of villains week to week. My father was cast in the sidekick role, but there was no hiding how much of a badass he was, and soon the inequity between the Green Hornet’s crime-fighting skills and Kato’s became obvious, to fans at least. Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps), the TV show Batman had hit the airwaves at the same time as The Green Hornet and proved to be much more popular, and The Green Hornet was canceled after only one season.
But something life-altering had already taken place. My father saw how showcasing his gung fu in a mass entertainment venue was lining up with his clearly stated life’s purpose: he was letting the world know of the greatness of his Chinese art. He began to think that if he could originate his own projects, he could bring an authentic portrayal of a Chinese man and Chinese art to the silver screen, and he would be helping and teaching people at the same time. He saw how a career in Hollywood, if he were successful, might also provide a good income for his family. Many boxes could be checked on the grand vision!
I imagine he could see this newly adjusted goal painted across the canvas of his mind just as clearly as the chain of schools he had once imagined, and being a practical dreamer, he didn’t just close up shop and put all his eggs in the Hollywood basket. He continued to open schools, opening his third in Los Angeles in 1967, and he taught privately at home and at other people’s homes while he looked for more opportunities in film and television, and began trying to create some media opportunities of his own.
Between the years of 1966 and 1971, my father worked tirelessly to make it in Hollywood. After The Green Hornet went off air, it was hard for an Asian man to springboard into a starring role (or even a meaty supporting role). And my father refused to take roles that were demeaning portrayals of Asians, making the opportunities even fewer for him. He’d been the second lead on a TV series, but he wasn’t considered a bankable star. Still, he auditioned as much as he could, and was able to land small parts in film and on TV. He played Asian kung fu guys in Ironside, Here Comes the Bride, and Marlowe, and took on jobs in fight choreography as well.
One of his students was writer Stirling Silliphant, with whom he sometimes collaborated and worked to hone his creative ideas as well. Another student was Ted Ashley, the head of Warner Brothers Studio, to whom he pitched a number of projects and tried to get support. And all the while, he continued to train and teach, while maintaining three schools in Seattle, Oakland, and Los Angeles. In other words, he was doing everything he knew how to do. He was working hard and straight up hustling.
By mid-1970, my father’s career seemed to be moving in the right direction. He had pitched the film The Silent Flute to Warner Brothers and they were considering it as a possibility, and he had just pitched a TV series called The Warrior to Warner Brothers as well. He was hopeful that he was on his way to truly fulfilling his goals, but it was taking a long time, and success was elusive and distant. So he kept up his training and his teaching and his Hollywood-ing so that he was always ready to avail himself of any opportunity that came along.
One morning my father was getting ready to work out at home, where he typically trained. He trained outside in the backyard, which is possible most days of the year in Southern California. He had his own weights and training equipment, such as punching bags set up under the eve on the back patio—no fancy gym for him.
On this particular day he had a lot on his plate, and having already cultivated a certain level of fitness, he figured he could skip his warm-up. He started off with something called a Good Morning exercise, where you place a weighted barbell across the tops of your shoulders and, while holding the bar steady, bend at the waist and lean forward with a straight back as far as you can go (face to knees if you can), and then pull yourself back up in a similar fashion all while shouldering this weight, which, if you knew my father, was likely to have been very heavy. It’s very difficult to do (and should not be attempted unless you already have proper experience and training). He brought the barbell down, and when he began to rise, he felt a twinge and a pop in his back. He knew immediately that something bad had happened.
As the day progressed, his back worsened, and he couldn’t stand up straight or move without pain. He tried resting it and treating it as an athlete would (ice, balms, etc.), but the pain would not subside and his mobility was seriously impinged. So he sought out a doctor for a diagnosis. The doctor told him he’d injured his fourth sacral nerve quite seriously, and ordered him to bed rest. That, alone, would be bad news for an active person like my father, who made his livelihood through his physicality, but there was more bad news to come. The doctor told him he would have to prepare for the idea that he would never do martial arts again, and that he may, in fact, never walk again without considerable pain.
Not just bad news—devastating news. Not only would he not be able to work in Hollywood with this kind of injury, he couldn’t train or teach as effectively either. Enter … the obstacle.
It is not a shame to be knocked down. The important thing is to ask when you’re being knocked down, “why am I being knocked down?” If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for this person. Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality. To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary, and its punishment is but an urge for me to exert greater effort to achieve my goal. Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth.
Obstacles come in all shapes and sizes and levels of intensity. Some are momentary obstacles—you procrastinate too much and now you might fail your exam, or your car broke down and you are going to miss a big meeting. Others are more chronic and serious—you may have an addiction problem or struggle with clinical depression. Still others can come out of nowhere—you may have been in a car accident or a pipe burst in your apartment. Obstacles are a given. You will never not encounter them. Some may be of your own making, your own choices, and some just land on you. Whatever the situation, it’s best to try to remember that the obstacle is just “what happened.” It is neutral in this way. It is what has occurred. And it’s what you make of “what happened” that makes all the difference.
Of course, there will be initial shock and plenty of emotions. You might be upset or numb or depressed. Allow yourself this. But try not to get stuck there for overlong. Many people don’t get past an obstacle because they get caught in the devastation of it and become defeated. But when a seemingly devastating event occurs, it’s crucial to get to the next step of: Now what?
In everyday life the mind is capable of moving from one thought to one object to another. However, when one is face to face with an opponent in a deadly contest, the mind tends to lose its mobility and get sticky and stopped. This is a problem that haunts everyone.
The opponent in this case is the obstacle. When we hit a big roadblock, it’s easy not only to get stuck but to lose hope. My father said, “It is not what happens that is success or failure, but what it does to the heart of man.” What does it do to your heart? Will you let it defeat you? Or will you learn to use it to step into something new? Something unexpected? Perhaps even something better?
When it comes to a new obstacle, start off by just sitting with it. Be with it. Cozy up to it. Learn from it. What has it got to show you? To teach you? How will you have to change to move beyond it? What new skill will you have to learn? What old wound might you need to heal? When you get in the ring and you keep getting punched in the face, do you learn how to duck and cover and eventually learn how to hit back? Or do you just stand there and keep letting yourself get punched in the face until you go down and never get back up?
You have a choice in how you respond to anything that happens in your life. You may think that you don’t, but you always do. Remember, first and foremost, that a response is also an inward state of being. You may be conditioned to respond in a particular way, and that conditioning may seem ironclad, natural, and unquestionable to you, but it’s always just one option no matter how ingrained. No matter what happens to you, you hold the power to determine what comes next. You are in charge of your reaction, and in this way, you are all powerful.
Remember, my friend, it’s not what happens that counts; it is how you react. Your mental attitude determines what you make of it, either a stepping stone or a stumbling block.
There my father was: an elite athlete with big plans and dreams that are suddenly in jeopardy of being lost forever. How did he respond? Well, first, he was upset. Naturally. But my mother always said that after a big shake-up, my father would typically get very quiet. He would sort of retreat into himself for a while to sit with the problem. In this instance, he began his process by following the first natural steps before him—taking care of his body by resting and going to the doctor. Then, once he had had time to masticate on the situation a bit, he would go into research mode (see chapter three!). He spoke to doctors; he bought books on back pain; he tested his pain and range of motion slowly and methodically. In my father’s library to this day are numerous books on healing back pain.
Being Bruce Lee and valuing time, he also wasn’t going to just lie in bed and do nothing even while he was “resting.” So, aside from reading and researching, he also wrote. With ample time on his hands, he began to record his thoughts on martial arts for posterity and clarity. He began a work he called his Commentaries on the Martial Way, a seven-volume tome that expressed his thoughts on combat and training. He worked on creative ideas as well—more film and television ideas. He continued to teach from the sidelines. Students would come to the house and he would sit in a chair to instruct them. He just kept going—doing what he could do and using his time purposefully.
He also read what we would call “self-help” books during this time—books that helped cultivate a powerful mindset and positive attitude, such as Happiness Begins Before Breakfast by Harry and Joan Mier, The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, Anxiety: A Condition of Modern Man by Heiri Steiner and Jean Gebser, Give Yourself a Chance: Seven Steps to Success by Gordon Byron, Joy: Expanding Human Awareness by William C. Schutz, and the list went on and on. It was during this time that my father, the man of intention and symbol-maker that he was, grabbed one of his business cards and wrote in his big, beautiful script on the back (and with a big fat exclamation point after it): Walk On! He had a wooden stand made for the card, and he put it on display before him so that he could see it every day from where he recuperated. Whenever he was down or frustrated, he had a reminder to: Just. Keep. Going. Just keep doing your work, one step at a time, one moment at a time—even if you’re not sure where it will ultimately lead.
I see Walk On! and it reminds me of Dory from Finding Nemo saying in her singsong voice, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Swimming. Swimming.” It doesn’t matter how long it will take to get better (whether that’s mentally, emotionally, or physically). If you never start, you will never get there. If you let fear or being upset stop you and you retreat into paralysis, then you most definitely will never get there. And let’s say you spend the next ten years just walking forward in your progress a tiny bit, one millimeter at a time—well, at some point you will be able to look back and see the miles of progress. But not if you don’t keep going. If you stay in one spot, the view never changes, but if you keep moving forward, then new landscapes are revealed, and along with them, new potential.
Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up—it might leave a scar, but then life flows on, and like running water, if it stops, it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend because each experience teaches us a lesson. Keep blasting because life is such that sometimes it is nice and sometimes not.
So here you are, faced with a need to dig into your toolbox because you’ve just encountered an obstacle. And you now know that you have to compel yourself to walk on—keep moving forward. But knowing all this and doing it are two very different things, and the first big differentiating factor is your state of mind.
If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.
I often tell my daughter when she is stressing out about an exam that all the complaining and groaning and worrying is just making it harder to study. The studying is already hard enough. She doesn’t have to like the studying, but if she wants to do the best she can, then studying is an important factor. So I tell her to try as best she can to take the layer of negative emotions and pessimistic thoughts off the task at hand and move it to neutral. You are the creator and the interpreter of your life in every moment. Things have meaning to you because you give them that meaning—no one else. Even if the meaning you are using came from someone else (your parents, your pastor, etc.), you still chose to adopt this meaning and use it. You are in charge.
If someone insults me, I can choose to be insulted, or I can choose to hold that person in compassion because they are obviously struggling with something themselves, or I can choose to express myself to them, or I can choose to walk away. I can choose to make that insult mean that the world is a terrible place or I can choose to make it mean that there’s a lot of healing to do in the world and wonder how I can do my part. I am the creator of my experience. I get to choose.
Worry doesn’t solve a problem; it makes a problem out of the problem. Pessimism doesn’t solve a problem; it makes a problem harder by implying it is impossible to solve. Fear doesn’t solve a problem; it stops us from attacking the problem because we are afraid of failing or making the problem worse. Doubt doesn’t solve a problem; it gives you an excuse not to solve the problem. And apathy doesn’t solve a problem; it leaves you uncaring about anything at all. All this negativity just blunts the tools you have at your disposal to overcome an obstacle. It creates obstacles in front of obstacles.
Realize that you are powerful. Don’t give your agency to others or to negativity or to circumstance. Don’t hinder your abilities. Your world has no meaning except for the meaning you give it, and maybe there’s no need to give it any meaning. Stepping stones or stumbling blocks—the choice is yours. Consider this realization like my father did:
I’ve always been buffeted by circumstance because I thought of myself as a human being influenced by outside conditioning. Now I realize that I am the power that commands the feeling of my mind from which circumstances grow.
During this time of the back injury, my father was laid up. My parents had two small children (four years old and six months old). To make matters worse, they had just bought their first house and now were risking being unable to pay the mortgage because my father couldn’t work. My mother had to take a job answering a switchboard late at night while my father tried to put two small children to bed with a back injury. My father was embarrassed that his wife had to take a job to make ends meet, but what else could they do? If they were going to make it through this, he was going to have to swallow some pride, and they’d have to figure it out.
If my father had injured his back and thought to himself, “I’m Bruce Lee. I can’t have a back injury!” then he might have tried too hard to push himself back to health too soon and injured himself more in the process. He might have become despondent, feeling like he could no longer “live up to” the person he and everyone else thought he was while his family lost their home. He might never have gone on to make movies in Hong Kong. He would have been that guy on that sixties show The Green Hornet that lasted one season, and we would never have had much reason to revisit that part of his career because that would have been it. A blip on the screen of pop culture.
But because he was a person who believed in research, inquiry, experimentation, and taking control of his own destiny, he was able to ask himself: What can I learn from this obstacle? How can I move forward from here and encourage myself to keep going? Rather than leaning into some outside, idealized version of his identity, my father was able to take a step back and assess this challenge.
And he had one more cultivated ability at his disposal. An important component of being a highly skilled martial artist is an absolute sensitivity for timing. In a battle against a skilled opponent (or obstacle), you can only progress and strike at the appropriate time. If you strike too early, you may get blocked or parried or not reach the target at all. If you strike too late, your target may not be there anymore or may have already popped you a good one.
Dealing with an obstacle requires this discipline. Push yourself too hard, and you may flame out. Don’t push yourself hard enough, and you may never get there. Bruce Lee, hot-tempered, fiery man of action that he was, had impeccable timing. And part of that timing was the development of patience. Yes, he struggled with this given his temperament. But here’s what he said about patience: “Patience is not passive. On the contrary, patience is concentrated strength.” Think about the back injury. He needed to patiently and appropriately rest, research, and approach his recovery with the best timing and effort for the best outcome. Too much activity too soon and he would risk reinjury.
Sometimes it takes all you have just to wait. Can you see how for a man of action like my father, the implementation of patience would take so much concentrated strength? I myself am a “tackle the problem” kind of person, but sometimes, in the face of a great obstacle, we need to pause and check in with ourselves, with the timing, with what we’re being shown. We have to engage all our senses and remove our egos from the picture in order to move forward appropriately and in a way that gets us around that obstacle permanently.
One should get rid of the obtruding self and apply himself to the work to be done as if nothing particular were taking place at the moment. Use the ego as a tool rather than a possession. Inwardly, psychologically, be a nobody.
When we are powerful enough to assign our own meaning to the world, we don’t need to make up a story about what kind of person we might be in the eyes of others. We don’t have to follow anyone else’s expectations about overcoming obstacles. Instead try on the concept of being a nobody. What does that mean? It means check your ego at the door and don’t let your definition of self-importance or self-protection get in the way of your progress around obstacles.
By allowing himself to be a nobody inwardly—not “the great martial artist and star Bruce Lee” but just another guy, with a bad back, trying to live life to his fullest and do something with his time while he has it—Bruce Lee was able to become a somebody who most of us will never forget.
Beyond being a nobody, overcoming obstacles requires harnessing willpower. As my father said, “The spiritual power of man’s will removes all obstacles.” And you may remember that in one of my father’s affirmations he wrote, “The power of will is the supreme court over all other departments of my mind.” My father considered himself a “self-willed” man. Now, this is not the be-all and end-all of one’s existence because, as you are seeing, there are times when other sensitivities are necessary beyond willpower. But in the pantheon of action and purpose, my father considered himself fully weaponized, not only because he was a skilled fighter and in peak shape, but because he knew how to harness his will.
Harnessing my will is what I have to do to make myself sit down and write this book or eat well or work out or deal with my issues and problems. Sometimes I’m simply inspired to write and eat well and work out and grow. But if I always relied on a need to be fully inspired to act on my own behalf, I would hardly ever do so, and it would be super inconsistent. It’s much easier to be lazy and ignorant and feel justified all the time.
Do you want me to make an argument about why I should eat whatever I want every day, no matter how bad it is for me? Okay, here you go: Why shouldn’t I always have delicious, fatty, sugary, salty food in my mouth every time I eat? It makes me happy. Isn’t life about being happy? And feeling good? Well, this is what makes me happy and feel good.
But then, the counterargument is that it really only makes me feel good while I’m eating it, and it really only makes some limited version of me feel good and happy, because I don’t feel good and happy when my body feels like crap later. For a brief moment I think, “Yum!” And then eventually, I feel horrible, physically and mentally. See the problem?
So yes, we need to use our willpower, but how are we using it? Are we using it to manage and maintain a façade or even multiple façades? Or are we using it in the long game of our lives—in service to our personal growth? As my father posited:
What is will? It is the attempt to direct one’s energy within the unlimited unfolding of the universe in order to join in harmony with this unfolding in the direction of one’s doing.
By this definition, your will is not an isolated thing that you harness alone. Rather, it takes into consideration the unfolding of everything around you such that you can direct your actions in concert with all that is happening. You know the phrase “Go with the flow”? If you are not taking this more holistic approach to willpower but rather just pushing hard against the flow of things with your determination, then you are giving yourself a much harder time. You may be able to paddle upstream for a little while, but try to travel the entire length of the Mississippi this way. You’re going to gas out eventually.
Let’s look back at “should-ing.” Using one’s willpower in service of “should” is not using it spiritually and will not remove the obstacle. I “should” eat healthily and I can “force” myself to do so. But that is not connecting me to anything purposeful. It is using guilt to make me submit. Now, if I use my will to eat healthily because I have a vision for a long life and a strong body and because it will make the accomplishing of all my other goals easier because I will feel good and have lots of energy, well, that is the spiritual use of my will. In that scenario, I am taking into consideration the whole picture and infusing the path with positivity. I am directing my energy and my doing in harmony with the unfolding of the big vision I have for my life.
Just as my father harnessed his will during the time of his back trauma to not only recuperate, research, and strategize his recovery, but also to continue the pursuit of his goals and dreams by reading and writing, we can use our wills to accomplish our goals while nourishing our souls. The intentional and beneficial ways in which we use our time lie at the root of sustaining our spirits and realizing ourselves. As my father said, “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
All accomplishment starts from a place of deciding that what you want to accomplish is possible. Remember the practical dream? For Elon Musk, going to space is possible. For Bruce Lee, being the first Asian leading man in a feature film in 1960s Hollywood was possible. Whatever it is, don’t discount it just because it may be big, take a long time, and you’re not exactly sure how you’re going to get there. Believing your dream is possible is a key factor when facing the obstacles that will inevitably appear along the path—and a necessary component in overcoming them.
Now, I want to tell you something you might not know. My father had back pain for the rest of his life. He wasn’t able to magically cure himself of all back pain through his will and positivity. But you know what he was able to do? He was able to strengthen and heal his body to the point where the weakness in his back was supported by the surrounding muscles and the overall health of the rest of his body. Following his injury, he always took lots of time to warm up and cool down. He cared for his back constantly with ice and heat as needed after workouts. He took Western and Eastern pain relief medications as needed. And he learned how to train and teach and act and perform with his bad back.
More important, he didn’t let the injury define him or stop him or cancel out his dreams. All of the movies he made in which he is shredded into the best shape of his life and kicking ass left and right, he did with this weak back. And it took more time for him to be able to do those things because of the care he had to give his back, but that’s what it required and so that is what he did to achieve his dream.
I mean, who has the most insecure job as I have? What do I live on? My faith in my ability that I’ll make it. Sure my back screwed me up good for a year but with every adversity comes a blessing because a shock acts as a reminder to oneself that we must not get stale in routine. With adversity you are shocked to higher levels if you allow yourself to go beyond your current circumstances.
When the dream starts to fall apart or the formula we are using stops working, this can be a time of crisis. Or this can be a time of coming back to oneself, back to your dream, back to your clarity. It can be a time to reassess and maybe dream anew. It can be a time to purposefully empty your cup, unclutter your thoughts and emotions, and make space for something you haven’t considered before. And if the clarity, vision, and purpose of your dreams are still there for you, even in the face of big obstacles, then it is time to pick up the pieces of the dream and reassemble them. Same vision, different shape perhaps. Or newly clarified vision, even more defined shape. Whatever the configuration …
Put the different fragments of the dream together and re-own these fragmented parts; re-own the hidden potential in the dream. As we progress and time changes, it is often necessary to reform the formula.
There is always something to learn if you look closely—and especially from within our obstacles. Our obstacles are among some of our greatest teachers. They will show us how to benefit most from our strengths and our weaknesses. They will open us up to new realms of understanding and help us develop new skills if we allow them to do so.
Do what seems wise to be done, forget it and walk on. Walk on and see a new view. Walk on and see the birds fly. Walk on and leave behind all things that would dam up the inlet or clog the outlet of experience.
Sometimes we are sent on a whole life journey we never intended to go on, specifically because we rose to the occasion of what our lives threw at us. In the case of my father, he was able to work with his obstacle and stay on his path. A boulder fell into his stream, and his stream adapted and kept on flowing. But for some of us, the changes life throws at us can be unfathomable. An obstacle is one thing. It’s a problem, maybe even a big problem. But what about when life stops making sense altogether. What then?