This inspiring story is about Bruce Lee, the legendary martial art master.
“Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d
run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under
eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would
get his time down to six-and-a half minutes per mile].
So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said,
“Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I
can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and
it’s only two more and you’ll do it.”
I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into
the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I
really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any
more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still
running-” if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.”
He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles.
Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?”
He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always
put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread
over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your
morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are
plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it
kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
From The Art of Expressing the Human Body
By Bruce Lee, John Little
