Why do I choose to make practice so difficult?
We're about to connect some really old threads that have been in my subconscious for decades. We're going down the rabbit hole on this one.
Why do I choose to practice in extreme conditions? Short answer: it's been programmed in me since childhood.
Childhood Practice Memory 1:
There's one season of the cartoon Dragon Ball Z, one of my favorite shows as a kid, where Goku has to travel far away and fight some aliens who are way more powerful than him. On his trip, he has a Gravity Machine that allows him to train in higher gravity levels than on earth. It breaks and goes up to 100x Earth's gravity. Goku goes from not being able to move to training in 100x gravity like he's walking on air which then allows him to put a whooping on the bad guys.
Childhood Practice Memory 2:
Over the holidays, we were teaching my 8 year old nephew how to bowl. I explained the way that my brother and I learned as kids. Our grandfather had taught us a certain step by step method and then made us repeat this process. Talk about training in a difficult environment. Our grandfather was a strict German man who not only owned the bowling alley but also was one of the best bowlers around, and he was watching our every move. I had to be younger than my nephew when we did this, and it stuck with me all these years.
Childhood Practice Memory 3:
I had just changed soccer teams. My old team won pretty much every game we played, won our league and won a few tournaments. My new team was not nearly as good. I was probably the best player on the team, and I wasn't all that great. At a practice midway through the season, my new teammates were goofing around, and my coach was laid back and laughing with the kids. I don't think our team had won a single game at that point, and I completely lost it. I yelled at my teammates, yelled at the coach, said some inappropriate words for a kid my age and then ran laps by myself for the rest of practice.
What do these 3 seemingly random memories about practice have in common?
These formed my own internal belief system about practice which only became apparent to me very recently.
Today, I choose to actively practice in situations way more difficult than anything I'll experience in real life, so that the real world operates in easy mode in comparison.
There's a few ways that this plays out for me. I never really made the connection as to why I did things this way until now, but it all makes sense from this new perspective.
In yoga, my favorite teacher is a woman in San Francisco who has the most notoriously difficult classes I've ever encountered. I didn't realize this when I showed up to her class the first time for what would be the third ever yoga class of my life. She warned us that it was going to be an advanced class and instead of rolling up my mat and leaving, I vowed to myself that I would not let this woman break me. Over 100 of her classes later, I have not given up in her class yet, and she has pushed me further than I ever could have imagined.
I do breathing exercises in the sauna and steam room with the extreme heat and humidity. I meditate in loud gyms and on the subway. I read books that are way above my comprehension level.
I don't get mad at myself when I struggle in these situations. It's practice. We're talking about practice. The opposite normally occurs. I'm grateful for failing in these situations, because I now know my current breaking point and have a new baseline to surpass next time.
It's important to keep in mind that this only applies to practice. Don't drink and drive so you're a better driver sober. Don't pick a fight with your boss or significant other just to improve your arguing skills. Common sense helps here people.
One of the keys to having a growth-focused mindset is to always be looking for opportunties to improve. An easy way to accomplish this is to see how you react when the switch gets ratcheted up 100x and you can't get up off the floor. It also shows incredible inner dialogue when you are in an unwinnable situation.
If we want to get exponentially better at the things that matter most to us, practice harder.