Liberate Yourself!: How To Think Like Bruce Lee

I have read, and thoroughly enjoyed, a lot of books about Bruce Lee, including his own out put, and most recently his daughter, Shannon Lee's "Be Water, My Friend: True Teachings of Bruce Lee". For my money this is the best summary of Lee's thinking I have read to date.The contents are very concise, the writing style and pace of narrative are engaging and there's no "filler" or padding out (I actually think the book could have been longer but thankfully the author has been able to exercise concision as I say).Given that Lee was such a pop icon a lot of his thinking has filtered out into the wider culture, you may be familiar with some of it already even if you have to read Lee's writings, seen his interviews first hand. This is a great overview to the most important and main points: Self-expression; Self-actualization; Thirst for Knowledge and Understanding; Fluidity/Flexibility/Responsiveness of Thought and Action; Developing your abilities; Remaining Adaptable and keeping striving.There is an element with Lee that people can be overly critical of some of this thinking, in my opinion it has aged well and I'm often interested and surprised at how much thinking he had done in what was admittedly a short life. I have read about Lee having a lot of books, a library, and studying ideas about as much as he did martial arts (or before that dance), it comes through in what I have read of his output. Uncharitable others have said that Lee was just a "second hand dealer" in ideas, at the worst people have pretty much said he plagiarized and only ever possessed a pretty shallow or superficial understanding.That's not my view and I'm really glad for the sort of "literature review" that he did do and exercise in summation, what remains is some great thinking about personal, psychological and physical development that's bound to stand the test of time and prove enduring.Plus, Lee deserves to be read in context too, if you do not think a lot of this read as "fresh" remember that Lee developed his ideas some time ago. At the time there was nothing like the "real fighting" mixed martial arts of today and Asian culture, cinema, martial arts and philosophy was all very novel.Interviewers would talk to Lee about "Karate" when they meant "martial artistry", and had no sense of the history between Japanese Karate and Chinese Gung Fu (or even rival schools there, the "closed shop" nature of martial artistry which Lee wanted to eradicate) despite its actual depiction on film in Lee's "Fist of Fury". Lee certainly needed his "attitude of undaunted optimism" a lot of the time when dealing with that kind of ignorance, let alone the out and out racism and Hollywood exclusivity that is well chronicled elsewhere, if not here so much.Chris Kent has done a great job as an author, Lee speaks in this book (positively "booming" from the pages) but I think there is something of Chris Kent in this work too and he is the sorts of representative someone like Lee deserves and needs. I hope he writes more books on either Lee, motivation or martial arts in the wider sense. Recommended. A pleasure to read, it is a "power up" in the shape of a book.

Up until recently, I had the 1st edition of this book as an e-book, but with the release of this new edition I decided to buy the book in printed form. I can say: thouroughly recommended, not only as a selfhelp/ motivational book, but also to understand what Bruce Lee was about, how he thought and how he put it into practice for his own personal growth. This book therefore is very useful for those that want to apply his thinking in your own daily life, but also for those who want to understand what made Bruce Lee so successful. He was not just a martial artist, he was a scholar of life, and in the short time he lived, he did so to his fullest potential, something that anyone who reads this book, might just be able to do themselves too and that is quite liberating :-) Well done Chris!

An amazing person and a brilliant book.

Great book! Another interesting read on JKD theory and ideas by Chris Kent. Definitely worth a read

J'aime la philosophie de Bruce Lee.