Bruce Lee’s Journal Affirmations (and Other Notebook Habits)

“Above all, I am hoping to actualize myself to be an artist of life.” – Bruce Lee

You and I most likely know Bruce Lee (1940 to 1973) for his action-filled martial arts films. However, he was also an unappreciated philosopher of his time who constantly articulated his thoughts in his many journals – to constantly grow through life.

In fact, many of his quotes that we know today, such as the one on the top of this page, truly came alive as a result of these deep philosophical reflections.

Unbeknownst to many audiences, Bruce Lee faced significant pushback from Hollywood, which preferred white characters to play lead roles and used yellowface or Asian characters for stereotypical roles.

Knowing that, it becomes easy to rationalize why such a man would turn to his daily journal or notebook to draw inspiration, reflect, and stay focused on his goals despite the setbacks. This post is part of my ongoing series analyzing the journals of successful people. In this post, I aim to closely study his journal routine and journal entries so we can draw insights and lessons from them and incorporate some of those lessons into our journals.

Key takeaway: Bruce Lee used journals for affirmations, reflections, and daily planning – the same mind, different page jobs. Borrow the split: one place for who you want to become, another for what you did today.

Types of Journals and Notebooks Bruce Lee Kept

Bruce Lee did not keep one diary. He used different notebooks for training notes, reading, affirmations, and private reflection – each with a job.

The Many Journals of Bruce Lee – day timers, daily journals, notebooks, and planners.

As I was searching the web for records of Bruce Lee’s journals and notebooks, I kept finding more and more types of journals that he maintained throughout his lifetime.

Near the end of my online research, my list included many different types of journals and notebooks that he maintained, including day timers, daily journals, workout logs, large notebooks, and even written drafts of a book in progress. This list also made me realize that if such a man who was swamped in his daily life could find time to write so neatly and meticulously in his journals, then why should an average person – or even I sometimes – ever complain or have excuses about not having time to write in our journals? The same variety of journals showed up when I later studied Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison – each kept multiple types, all serving different purposes in their work.

Running through that variety is a strand of notes he wrote to himself about willpower, emotion, and reason, which he sometimes went back to and rewrote. I come to those below. Octavia Butler wrote to herself the same way – the affirmations she wrote inside her 1988 commonplace book read like a vow rather than a wish.

The Journal Affirmations of Bruce Lee

Two documents often get blended under “affirmations”: seven self-discipline statements in a 1968 pocketbook, and a signed “My Definite Chief Aim” sheet – treat them as related but distinct.

Two different documents tend to get blended together under the word “affirmations.” Seven self-discipline statements survive in a pocketbook dated 1968. A signed sheet headed My Definite Chief Aim is a separate page, written in January 1969, when Lee was 28. If you came here to find out which of the lines circulating online are real, I have set out the provenance of both documents in the seven documented Bruce Lee affirmations.

Journal Affirmation of Bruce Lee – My Definite Chief Aim

On that sheet Lee set out what he wanted: to become the highest-paid Chinese superstar in the United States, to give exciting performances and high-quality acting, to achieve world fame beginning in 1970, to possess $10 million by the end of 1980, and to live with inner harmony and happiness. The Chinese Historical Society of America holds the signed page as object L2021.4.042, dated January 1969. He died in July 1973, so the period he set himself never ran out, and the record does not show the money target being met. What the page shows is a man writing down where he intended to go.

The Journal Reflections of Bruce Lee

Beside the short affirmations, the pocketbook carries longer reflections on willpower, emotion, reason, imagination, memory, the subconscious, and conscience – each naming a faculty he wanted to train.

Alongside that page, the pocketbook carries seven longer statements, one each on willpower, emotion, reason, imagination, memory, the subconscious mind, and conscience. Each one names a faculty and commits to a habit for training it, which is a very different thing from wishing for an outcome.

The wording is not original to Lee. It follows “A Creed for Self-Discipline” from Napoleon Hill’s The Master-Key to Riches, published in 1945, which Hill presented as the work of an unnamed student. Lee copied it into his own pocketbook. That tells us what he chose to rehearse rather than what he composed, and I think it makes the pages more interesting rather than less. You can read the full text and its Napoleon Hill source alongside the transcription problems in the estate’s published versions. Facsimile pages are reproduced by The Marginalian.

Three handwritten pocketbook spreads from Bruce Lee’s papers, reproduced by The Marginalian.

Putting an emotional problem into a written sentence, rather than leaving it to circle in his head, runs through the whole pocketbook. Marcus Aurelius did the same thing on campaign, telling himself how to handle anger and impatience over and over in the private notebook we now call Meditations. This practice of externalizing internal thinking mirrors the approach taken by Einstein, who similarly used his notebooks to systematize and iterate on complex theoretical ideas – treating the journal as a thinking partner rather than merely a record.

The Journal Routine of Bruce Lee

Lee carried a pocketbook, and the 1968 one holding those seven statements is the best-documented example of it. The Brontë children went smaller still – the little books they hand-stitched as kids were about the size of a matchbox. From my online research, I quickly realized that he wrote in his journals whenever he deemed necessary – like a self-aware student constantly articulating his thoughts and ideas. Furthermore, his journal entries – which include training routines, phone numbers, poems, affirmations, and philosophical reflections – are proof of his holistic thinking mind.

Bruce Lee writing in his Journal. Location: Unknown.

Lessons Learned about Journals from Bruce Lee

Upon close observation of Bruce Lee’s journal, I was reminded of the simple – and hard to practice – principle of the discipline of keeping a daily journal. The surviving pages do not give us an attendance record, and I would not claim he wrote every single day. What they do show is that he took the transcribing of his thoughts seriously, and kept coming back to the same problems on paper.

More specifically, these are the lessons that we can learn about journaling from him:

• Have a Burning Desire to Improve Yourself – as a martial artist, Bruce Lee always pushed and extended his physical and psychological boundaries. As a result, the journals became a natural way of doing that for his mind and workouts for his body.
• Articulate Your Mind on Paper – often we like to think that our brains are smart, and they can articulate and organize themselves. Unfortunately, that is not true and that wasn’t true for Bruce Lee either. He understood the importance of articulating his thoughts on paper and so should all of us who are trying to better articulate the many ideas we have in our brains.
• Journal as an Extension of You – almost every page in his journal seems like an extension of what he lived, breathed, and strived for. His pages were filled with training, martial arts, acting, and his specific goals. All of this reminded me that journals should be an extension of us. Yes, we should put ourselves on paper and eventually find ourselves through our daily journal writing and reflections. Simply put, discover yourself through the art of daily journaling.

Bruce Lee’s approach echoes the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., whose journals and writings similarly became both a refuge from oppression and a tool for crystallizing vision.

I hope this post gave you wisdom, motivation, and some actionable next steps that you could incorporate in your own journaling routine. Lee’s discipline reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s approach to building habits through his famous virtue-tracking journal. If you came looking for the seven statements themselves, or want to check a quote you saw in a clip, that is what the record actually supports. Affirmations are one notebook job among many – compare options in how to choose a journal style, or write to a later self with future-self journaling. As I continue to improve my own journaling routine, I aim to study a lot more journals of others. I hope to hear your stories about journals in the comments below.

If you want occasional notes on how training journals and short affirmations can stay honest (not motivational wallpaper), my newsletter is for that. Subscribe here and the first email arrives within the hour.