2014.08.26 On Risk-Taking
“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” ― Randy Komisar, Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur
I am so worried that I wont be able to make heads or tails of my life. That I won’t make a difference, that my life won’t matter. I grind every day to make money doing something I have no real passion for. The only thing that keeps me going is staying up late working myself into the ground in the empty hours of the day
I frantically fill up the empty hours of the day with more work–an attempt to build something that I can eventually create a life of meaning around.
Am I being complacent? Am I playing it safe?
“Spend a little more time trying to make something of yourself and a little less time trying to impress people.”
breakfast club
Familiarity vs Mastery: Break the “I Know” Mindset
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”— Epictetus
Want to know the biggest block to growth? These two words:
“I know”
I constantly encounter this phrase from students in the classes I teach, especially where we work on our foundational movements. I hear it from fellow coaches when discussing how to improve class experience. I hear it from myself, even, as I receive critique and feedback about the things I need to work on, and see it sometimes in my practice as I avoid working certain skills.
In some cases it’s because we think we know better, in others its because we think we know more, and sometimes it’s because we think we know enough. And while this I Know mindset might block out unuseful, unsolicited advice, it also makes us blind and deaf to information that might actually help us grow.
The I Know mindset most commonly emerges in places where we long to appear competent, superior, or one of the group. It feeds on our fear of failure and shame, as well as our resistance to critique and lack of humility. It grows in our lack of self-awareness. And it kills any hope for achieving mastery–in your movement, work, and life.
Familiarity vs Mastery
The I Know Mindset is wild.
During class yesterday we worked on our jumping. As I began reviewing good form and walking through the lesson, one student pointed out that we learned jumping last week and that they wanted to learn something new. In response, I began setting up a number of different challenges. I walked over to a rail and asked-can you jump to this and land without falling? I pointed to the steps – can you jump up these steps, 2,3,4 at a time all the way to the top without stopping? Jump and land while ducking? Jump with one leg? Precisely?
It’s easy to confuse familiarity with mastery. My student understood the fundamental elements of jumping but lacked the ability to masterfully deploy his skills across a number of situations. His ‘I Know’ mindset limited his vision.
‘I know’ is often a declaration that we are superior to practice, that we have completed the circle, that there is nothing left to learn from the knowledge we already have.
Yes, developing brand new skills can be very exciting. It expands language, reveals new challenges, and, without doubt, can assist in helping overcome tougher physical, intellectual, and motivational plateaus.
But, if you are to truly master your movement or mind and achieve life-long, sustainable physical and mental fitness, you must be consistently developing both laterally and deeply. It requires coming from a place of constant inquiry and the rejection of the ‘I Know’. It requires constantly seeking out how to see differently, do better, create new things with old tools.
The work on our minds and bodies only completes when life completes.
Do Better
Ask Yourself: Where in your life are you saying “I Know?” What triggers it (desire to belong, to appear competent, boredom, etc)?
Find new places to test out old skills, new people to talk through established beliefs. Try different approaches, even if you think your approach is better.Take your skills and practice in a new location
“Five Paths to Unhappiness: Excessive Criticism, Complaining, Comparing, Competing, Contending” – Stephen Covey
“We have a large minority of people who simply do not want to do better. They don’t want to get married. They don’t want to raise their children in sensible normal conditions. They don’t want to work hard in order to achieve success. They don’t value education. They don’t believe in taking responsibility for their life choices. They don’t believe in self-reflection. They think someone owes them something. They feel entitled to other people’s success. Everything that is counter-productive and dysfunctional they gravitate towards.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Thoreau
2012.05.01 On Success
Success isn’t measured by grades or by positive commentary (or lack thereof), it isn’t measured in the number of drawings printed or the sleep had;
Success is having really enjoyed the last 7 days of work. It is having found the right words, the expanse of pride and joy felt when standing beside the final product, it is the generosity and dedication of eight other individuals who gave up time and sleep to see models completed, and the pleasure taken in having the opportunity to show and share my work and passion one more time.
#thesis