By JT Tran

As a kid you had his posters on your wall (I’m not ashamed to admit that I did!), maybe you took up martial arts to be like him, and had all his movies on VHS (yup that’s what us kids of the 70s/ 80s had at home!). Bruce Lee was an ultimate icon of his era and made being a masculine, confident Asian man in the Western world the coolest thing ever.

Now decades later I want to show you how Bruce Lee has some wisdom that can work to improve your confidence today and get your dating life in shape.

I’ve taken 7 of his most famous mottos and I want to show you how they apply to getting the girl, improving your game and making your romantic life kick ass!

1) “Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

Sounds like Bruce Lee was one step ahead of me in differentiating between ‘hook ups’ and longer term ‘dating’ and the different feelings they involve and skills they require.

For short term hook ups or one night stands, you need to burn bright: be bold, be the man, take risks and go after what you want- whilst respecting what turns a woman on and what a hook up feels like to her.

Successfully dating a girl, or several girls if that’s what you want, long term is a little tougher! Dating requires you to be a great organiser, a good listener, a man who women will respect and someone who knows what he wants in life.

Ultimately, however, remember this: A MAN IS ONLY AS GOOD AS HIS LIFE.

Don’t expect your relationship with a girl to stand still: it’s a constantly changing and evolving process as both partners grow either apart or together. There is no finish line; just new things to learn, new growth to have and new skills to pick up along your journey. Explore what it means to be a man who is in a meaningful relationship or to fall deeply and romantically in love with a woman.

So don’t start out learning PUA as a ‘magic bullet’ solution. Adopt a better lifestyle and be prepared to keep working on it to really see change and results.

2) “The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

Aim to be smooth and effortless- not fast- during your pickup. Being a great pickup artist isn’t about always walking up to a girl in the bar and saying:

“You look hot, we should hook up”.

Or about being able to grab a girl on the dance floor, or put pressure on her to hook up with you. This can make you seem really uncool or worse, desperate and horny.

Instead master the art of approaching women in a way that is smooth (even romantic, suave and cool): use a kino turn in order touch to shoulder (no more powerful than pulling a door ajar) to engage their attention. Or, even better, get them to come to you just using eye contact. This is how a real player will operate: they don’t need to make too much effort people will just become magnetised to them.

Work on your personal magnetism today by switching on your passive value. Be well dressed, roll with a good crew of friends, have fun and enjoy your life regardless of who’s in it.

Sub-communicate that you’re a guy women want to know even before you say hello. This is how you can be an introvert (like me!) and still have amazing game because you’re exuding confidence.

3) “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

You may want to rival Hefner with the women you’re dating. You may want to find Eva Longoria shopping at your local mall and successfully ask her out. You may want to threesomes after raunchy threesome.

These are all goals: some more realistic, others less so. What they shouldn’t be about is a strict target that if you don’t hit it straight away that you beat yourself up over.

Telling yourself you have to go home with a girl tonight or else you’re a loser who’s always going to suck with women isn’t helpful. Why heap pressure on yourself or beat yourself up?

Do NOT get stuck in a negative feedback loop where you’re mentally reinforcing bad habits and mental thought processes.

Instead, take a leaf out of Bruce Lee’s book and have the goal as an ideal, but praise yourself for the process. As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

If you want to get three phone numbers, try your damn hardest to get the three: approach, approach, approach, and even if you end up with just one, then give yourself a huge pat on the back. Sure you may not have hit your ‘ideal’ target but what you have done is taken action, tried hard, tested yourself to your limit and learned a hell of a lot.

This isn’t about how many notches on the bed post you put up, it’s about how better a man you can be in order to be happier, more secure and confident a man as you can be.

Don’t expect to be the end result too soon: instead do an internal high five for going through the process. Ultimately, it’s more about the journey than the end goal.

4) “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”

You don’t have any wing guys to party with. You live in an area that’s kind of remote. You’re self conscious about your build.

If you think these are good reasons not to be going after the women, and the life you want, then I’m sorry but I’m not going to join your pity party. As I said to one former student (and now married) Gatsby, who lamented that, “I must be the most pathetic student you’ve ever taught.”

To which I replied, “And? Do you want a medal for that?”

Whatever your job, location or appearance, these ‘problems’ are only mountains (rather than mole hills) if you see them that way. Instead of thinking why you can’t do things: starting creating solutions. This is the 21st century and the Age of Google. Any problem you have, unless it’s a true health problem, has a SOLUTION if you research and apply said solution.

There is no excuse for not taking action except if YOU are holding YOU back. The information, the support system, and knowledge are there for you to fix your problem and turn you into a happier, more confident man.

To help you I’m going to kick start you:

If you worry about your lack of a wing man, turn up to events you enjoy solo and make an effort to bond with the guys in the room as much as the women. Also recognise that there is a thriving online community out there to help you out. You can check out ABCs of Attraction’s PUA Forums here.

Likewise if you live somewhere remote try Facebook or online dating and work on your logistics. Think if you’re happy being based where you are, or if you need to get an action plan together to move out. Take action and you will feel empowered.

As to your physical stature if you can work on it, great, by all means hit the gym to improve your Asian physique and improve yourself. But, if you can’t change it, don’t worry about it. Let it go and own every inch of your 5’5” height.

5) “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”

You don’t go out in order to show other guys on the forums how “awesome” you are. Getting a girl’s number in 30 seconds looks pretty cool: but chances are she won’t pick up when you try to give her a call.

Likewise picking up girls for a notch on your bedpost rather than connecting with women, treating them with respect and having women that want to see you again is a dumb idea.

Another is bragging to try to show how rich/ successful/ well networked you are. This isn’t attractive instead it seems needy: like you have something to prove.

People who are truly cool within themselves don’t feel like they have to prove that to other people or be obvious with it. Adopt a high passive value, but don’t brag. Hook-up with women but keep your integrity. Make a connection with a girl and feel great when she’s the one who can’t wait for your date.

So drop the act, get real, and be happier.

6) “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”

How do you become that attractive, romantic and sexual guy that every woman seems to want to hook up with?

Simple: you don’t try to be that guy. Instead, you choose to work on you and your unique potential.

Clearly I’m a little on the short side to be Brad Pitt, but that hasn’t stopped me from working on myself to become the kind of man that women are attracted to and want to meet.

That process has involved me learning from other people, spending years working out a system for attraction and giving my life an over haul. But what it hasn’t meant is going out and getting my hair dyed blonde, dressed all in Affliction and getting a tribal/Chinese tattoo.

I don’t feel like I need to be a douchebag, badboy, or even asshole to confident, happy, or good with women. Although at times, I’ve been a little of all three. You see, learning from others is positive: trying to be someone else is not.

Instead choose to get very cool with you. To be the best possible version of you that you can be. To be that man you always knew you were destined to have become.

Recognize that you’ve already got the raw materials to make a great guy: you’re just working a little on the presentation, smoothing around the edges and learning the skills to be confident in putting you across.

7) “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”

This reminds me of Bruce Lee’s previous pieces of wisdom:

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at

Getting your life together, having awesome passive value, and learning from your experiences makes all your blow outs, slip ups and imperfect openers worthwhile.

To use a cliché it is about the journey not the end destination. It is also never about that one girl, that first date or that one shot. It is about learning from your experiences, (your best teacher) and getting to know you better.

When you really know yourself, work on you and value yourself you’re also going to become more attractive, more successful and more like who you aspire to be as an off shoot.

It really is as simple, and as long term a project, as that.

So learn from Bruce Lee: but live your own truth, work at it every day, reward your effort, learn from your mistakes and that ‘ideal goal’ may not be as out of reach as you think.