Bruce Lee on Self-Actualization and the Crucial Difference Between Pride and Self-Esteem

Original article written by Maria Popova for The Marginalian

“The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.”

“Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner value with things in the world around you,” Anna Deavere Smith wrote in her invaluable advice to young artists. But how does one master the intricacies of that integration?

That’s what legendary Chinese-American martial artist, philosopher, and filmmaker Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940–July 20, 1973) explores in one of the pieces collected in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life(public library) — the invaluable compendium of his never-before-published private letters, notes, essays, and poems that also gave us the origin of his famous metaphor for resilience.

In an essay titled “The Passionate State of Mind,” Lee writes:

We can see through others only when we see through ourselves.

Lack of self-awareness renders us transparent; a soul that knows itself is opaque

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