Bruce Lee’s mental exercises were daily practices he practiced to maintain his enormous capacity as a philosopher and martial arts teacher. Although he first became known as an actor in action films, Lee was much more than that. In fact, he was a master of the art of living.
Bruce Lee is considered the first great representative of martial arts in the West. Before him, little was known in this hemisphere about ancient combat practices involving the mind more than the body. Bruce made them popular and fascinated them all over the world.
“If you want to learn to swim, dive into the water. On the ground, no mood will help you. -Bruce Lee-
Bruce Lee’s mental exercises were routines that allowed him to strengthen his body, mind and lifestyle according to his art, he used to bring with him a notebook where he wrote down his thoughts and the data he had to remember, it was this notebook that allowed him to learn about Bruce Lee’s mental exercises.
The most important of Bruce Lee’s mental exercises was what he did on a daily basis to strengthen his will. He called it “the supreme court of every department of the mind,” that is, the force that determines everything else.
To work on his will, a daily goal of action was set, which although it does not give much detail, it is the origin and achievement of a goal that did not please him so much.
Bruce Lee knew the powerful effect of emotions on behavior. He knew that positive emotions strengthen the mind, while negative emotions weaken it. That’s why one of the mental exercises he did was aimed at transforming how he felt.
Their goal was to dilute negative emotions or turn them into something that would contribute positively to their development. In turn, it cultivates increasingly deeply positive emotions, because personal strength inhabits them.
Bruce Lee’s mental exercises on reason were intended to make him the fundamental guide to his life, that is, to make reflection and reasoning a filter, a basis on which to build actions.
Bruce Lee said, “I will put all my desires, my goals, and my purposes under the faculties of reason. “With that, he declared that it is a superior function, the one that guides and gives course to follow.
Imagination is the ability to design mental scenarios, sometimes it is wasted and used only to fuel fears or dreamlike ambitions, in this case, of little use.
For Bruce Lee, imagination is the basic nutrient of action plans. Reason gives a purpose, or a goal to which we are directed. Imagination shows us the different ways and means that can lead us to achieve our goals.
The key to Bruce Lee’s mental exercises is to focus willpower, emotions, reason, imagination and all personal resources to achieve a previously defined goal.
The operation within this complementary scheme allows us to remember the objectives for which we strive, in addition to the paths that lead to them and the emotions and thoughts that accompany them.
For Bruce Lee, there is a bigger goal in life, a primary goal that must become the axis of all minor goals. This central goal was born from the depths of ourselves: the unconscious.
Therefore, one of Bruce Lee’s mental exercises was to navigate this unconscious to reveal the intuitive image that carries the main purpose, remembering this image every day is fundamental to focus all our personal resources.
For Bruce Lee, consciousness was primarily about the ethics of action. In his notes, you can read that one of his desires is to “combine justice and piety in my judgments. “This would allow us to discern what is right and what is wrong. .
He also emphasizes that one of his goals is to strictly adhere to the rules of conscience, and once he has figured out what is good and what is not, he promises to stick to that verdict regardless of the consequences.
Bruce Lee’s mental exercises are a kind of advice or parameters that you have to work on every day, there’s a lot of truth in all this, because they were the result of one of the most exceptional characters in the martial arts world. .