There’s a Tai Chi master in Israel, called Nir Malkhi. He heads Israel’s biggest school for “internal arts”, a family of Chinese Martial Arts that broadly fit in the Kung Fu category. He has been teaching for decades. His students come to learn discipline, focus, a practice. They also learn how to defend themselves in hand to hand combat using Tai Chi. Tai Chi, that practice with such slow and graceful moves that Chinese retirees famously practice it in parks every morning.
Tai Chi works well for self defence, says Master Malkhi. He also demonstrates. Master Malkhi is very ill but before he fell ill, he wasn’t someone you wanted to up against. He was powerful, centred, fast. His Tai Chi demonstrations were convincing. You could see it.
One thing people often forgot is that Nir Malkhi grew up as a fighter. He served in the IDF’s equivalent of SEAL team 6. He was a hardened, well trained killer. Tai Chi had absolutely zero impact on his ability to fight. In fact, he would probably beat the average guy up using ballet or Lord of the Dance moves just the same. That’s not what he told his students, though. You can fight with Tai Chi, he said. That wasn’t the truth. He was at the end of a complex journey, enjoying the fruits of his labor, confusing where he was with the road he had taken. His students, devoid of his training and background, couldn’t use Tai Chi to save their lives – literally.
The worst type of career advice is given without the context that brought you to where you are.
It’s beyond failing to recognize luck, even though thinking luck had nothing to do with your success is a major symptom for losing your relevance. Most people who’ve reached a certain level of success or material possessions fail to realize that their enlightened advice is diametrically opposed to their lived experience. Bill Gates recasting himself as a philanthropist (latest revelations notwithstanding), Steve Jobs telling people to “stay foolish” while running his company like an intelligence operation, Naval telling people to Not Chase Status. Maybe it’s a symptom of lack of thinking about thinking. It’s surprising, because it’s bad advice offered in good faith by smart people, but there it is.