"One afternoon I was training with Bruce" was no more than an opening sentence. You totally missed the purpose of these examples; each one has a meaning and involves a tip to make your life that much better. Think outside the box............ ( )

One of my favorite 'short reads'. Joe Hyams has a tendency to 'name-drop,' which is probably due to his background as an LA screenwriter, but he manages to pack a fair bit of interesting reading into this little book. For example, the "empty your cup" metaphor is often see in zen, but is illustrated very nicely in one of the early chapters. ( )

This was a book that I read very quickly, as it is possible to do. However, I am keeping it in my karate bag and I will go back to it often. I feel like many of the lessons in the book, although sometimes very blantantly spelled out, are integral to martial arts and to life in general. This is one book of mine that will be highlighted, underlined, margin-noted, and dog eared.

I highly recommend this book to serious martial arts practitioners of all levels, especially black belts. The only drawback is that I'm afraid it may be discouraging to beginners or non-practitioners because the author is always talking about how little he knows and how long it takes to understand. I hope that everyone comes to those conclusions often in their training, but maybe not till they have been doing it a little while; I wouldn't want beginners to get too discouraged! ( )

I was required to read this book as part of a belt test in one of my martial arts classes. While some of the chapters were interesting, I felt the bulk of this book was simply the author bragging that he had the opportunity to train with Bruce Lee, one of the pre-eminent martial artists of our time. Many of the chapters seem to have a feeling of, "one afternoon I was training with Bruce Lee in his garden when one of us said something particularly deep and now my life is better."

There are a few good chapters that do relate a principle of martial arts to every day life. There are also a few chapters that seem to glorify the spiritual or mystical powers of martial artists that are, in fact, just plain bull. And then there are a lot of chapters that relate principles that are common sense.

In all, not a great book. If I wasn't required to read it, I probably wouldn't have finished it. ( )

There's not much to this book, but it has some nice insights. It's not something you want to sit down and read cover to cover; I read one anecdote per day, just to give me something to poner, and it worked well. ( )