[postlink]http://newbestmotivator.blogspot.com/2009/07/downhill-challenge-best-motivation.html[/postlink]
One year I went alone on a three-day ski trip, with a plan to concentrate entirely on improving my skiing. On my first run down the mountain, I slipped and fell on a patch of ice. From then on I became vigilant, tensing up in resistance whenever I spotted ice, and, unfortunately there was plenty of it. I was about to abandon the project and come back some other time when real skiing was to be had, when suddenly it occurred to me that I had been operating under the assumption that real skiing is skiing on snow. I laughed with what Ben often refers to as "cosmic laughter," the laughter that comes from the surprise and delight of seeing the obvious. If I was going to be a New England skier, I had better include ice in my definition of skiing I redrew the box in my mind, so that now I had it that skiing is skiing on snow and ice. As I started down the next run, my physical self coordinated easily with my new way of thinking. I welcomed the ice. As every skier knows, resistance to ice can take you on quite a painful downward slide, whereas traversing ice as thought it is a friendly surface will usually deliver you gracefully to the other side.
Mistake can be like ice.If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.
One year I went alone on a three-day ski trip, with a plan to concentrate entirely on improving my skiing. On my first run down the mountain, I slipped and fell on a patch of ice. From then on I became vigilant, tensing up in resistance whenever I spotted ice, and, unfortunately there was plenty of it. I was about to abandon the project and come back some other time when real skiing was to be had, when suddenly it occurred to me that I had been operating under the assumption that real skiing is skiing on snow. I laughed with what Ben often refers to as "cosmic laughter," the laughter that comes from the surprise and delight of seeing the obvious. If I was going to be a New England skier, I had better include ice in my definition of skiing I redrew the box in my mind, so that now I had it that skiing is skiing on snow and ice. As I started down the next run, my physical self coordinated easily with my new way of thinking. I welcomed the ice. As every skier knows, resistance to ice can take you on quite a painful downward slide, whereas traversing ice as thought it is a friendly surface will usually deliver you gracefully to the other side.
Mistake can be like ice.If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.