Be Like Water – Bruce Lee, Improv Comedy, and Dealing With Change

“Be Like Water” is a quote from the legendary martial artist, Bruce Lee. To “be like water” is not just a great martial arts skill, but also a great technique for performing improv comedy and also for dealing with change in business and life. This video will explain the whys and how of “being like water.” (Transcription below)

Transcription

Wazzzza. Yeah that’s my really bad Bruce Lee Kiai!

Today we’re gonna take a principle from the world of Bruce Lee and show you how you can deal with and respond to change and the unexpected by being like water!

So I like Bruce Lee because I like his movies but I love his philosophy. See I actually have a background – I’m a little wet – in the martial arts. I know, you look at this chiseled physique and think “martial artist!”

But it’s true. I’ve trained in martial arts for about twenty-five years and I love Bruce Lee, his philosophy and he’s got some great quotes about really martial arts. But those quotes translate beyond that. And one of my favorite quotes by him is to “be like water.”

What he says is that take water. It can drip, or it can crash. Now you put water in a tea pot, it becomes a tea pot. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes a cup, you put water in a bowl, and it becomes a bowl. Be like water.

See water is strong but it’s flexible. And that is really the key I found to performing great improv comedy.

[Improv clip] Oh boy. Here we go. Once upon a time there was a man who loved to go outdoors and just be in nature. He loved to go into caves because he just liked to be secluded by himself. So one day he went to his favorite cave and he discovered something so interesting, he discovered something so boring. It was a set of encyclopedias and he’s like why are encyclopedias in my cave? These were not here before. When suddenly from behind the cave came this man who said, well came a woman, a beautiful woman who said well, I brought these encyclopedias because I heard you like knowledge, I heard that you like women with books. [end clip]

See with improv, the performers who did the worst were the ones who stay totally rigid and fixed. They’d start out their game or scene with an idea and they’d be totally not “like water.” They would be rigid and they would stink!

So in improv, the ability to be like water is super-helpful. In life, the same applies.

Now you may have plans, schedules and agendas and that is great and that is very useful. But at some point things are gonna change or things are gonna go wrong. Now in those cases, if you stay totally rigid, you’re going to get yourself in trouble. You’re going to stick on a path, you’re going to be like the tree that gets knocked over in a storm as opposed to the grass that just flows.

If however you can be adaptable and flexible and when things change, just change direction. Go with the flow, go with the plan. You can redirect yourself back to the original plan if that makes sense but it might not.

So just like Bruce Lee, don’t stick to your fixed path. Just like I do in my improve comedy game ding and just like Bruce Lee does in his martial arts, remember the key to being flexible and adaptable is to be like water.