Practice (is) Everything is Practice

During Yoga practice, I was doing a headstand and I tumbled ever so gracefully out of it, in other words I fell. Reflecting on what happened the first thing that came to mind is that I learned what not to do but in further reflection I found out what may have aided my hasty decent. During the headstand a thought kept coming up that I was going to fall. Self-fulling prophecy, as the old saying goes; “if you think you can or can’t, you’re right”. Proved that one once again.

The people I coach ask me all the time, “how do I get better?” Looking for the secret or short cut to this elusive path. I tend to loosely state “one stroke at a time”. It isn’t so much about what you do, necessarily, but what your attitude is about your actions. So, what does this have to do with my “failed” headstand? It wasn’t a failure, it was play, it was an attempt, and each attempt is a step forward, it was practice.

"Practice is everything. This is often misquoted as Practice makes perfect." ~ Periander

Improvement involves the three P’s;

• Perseverance- keep doing something despite of difficulty or delay in achieving success.
• Patience- is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.
• Practice

Everything you do is practice. If you look at it any other way, you are not only setting unreasonable expectations of yourself, but you are assuming you can predict an unpredictable outcome. When a hit song tops the charts, a book becomes a best-seller, an athlete does something no one has done before, it’s easy to see the occurrence in an instant and ignore everything that preceded it.

"Success comes through rapidly fixing our mistakes rather than getting things right the first time." ~ Tim Harford, author of Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

How do you get better? Just like you learned how to walk, talk, put food in your mouth without missing. One fall, mumble, messy face at a time. You have been doing it your whole life and look at you now. We endlessly experiment, play and learn. The faster we learn to look for ways to fall the less falling will happen because we will finally realize that we are continuously falling, we just don’t know it because it looks like standing or for the purpose of this article, success.

What are you practicing today? You know my answer, everything!

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The UN-Comfortable Zone

by Coach Mike

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

We typically avoid situations that feel scary; fear and anxiety overwhelm which can cause us to typically search for relief from those uncomfortable feelings. The feelings we experience are our irrational side working to keep us “safe”. If accept the feeling instead of allow time to understand it, it gets stronger throughout our lives. The feeling can become so strong that it can overpower us, and we find ways to numb that feeling, like avoiding conversations or situations, eating “comfort foods”, using drugs to forget our worries, etc…We live in a world of comfort. House is cold turn up the heat; house is too hot turn on the AC. Hungry? Grocery store/restaurants are everywhere. I could go on but look at your everyday life and imagine how you avoid being uncomfortable.

Take a COLD shower…brrrrr

Close your eyes and imagine standing under the shower head and turning on the cold water. What did you just experience? That is uncomfortable, right? What makes it uncomfortable though? For me, it’s the feeling on my skin and how my body reacts by starting to shiver and breathe erratically.

Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable…

This is a paradoxical statement but that is exactly what I did. I asked myself, “How can I make this experience more comfortable?” For me, focusing my attention on my breath and evening it out allowed me to draw focus inward where my body is still warm. In that moment I no longer felt the cold water beating on my skin but a sense of calm and warmth. This is something you can do. At the end of your normal shower turn it all the way to cold and stand there for 10 seconds. What is uncomfortable for you and how can you make it more comfortable?

“The only thing you have control over is your reaction.”

What has something so simple allowed me to practice?

1. Being present: Just standing under the shower knowing that I’m going to turn on the cold water my thoughts go into overdrive and it allows me to practice listening to them in a safe environment and flex my “focus” muscle to stay present.
2. Managing fear: Acknowledging the fear and listening to it allows me to release it by proactively changing my perspective and instead of fear I decide to react with joy.
3. Taking small steps: Joy of taking a cold shower didn’t happen overnight. I started with 10 seconds and disliked it very much. However, by sticking with it and adding about 5 seconds each time I was able to compassionately work with myself and now my whole shower consists of cold water.
4. Kicking my own butt: Getting uncomfortable allows me to demonstrate by example my initiative to kick my own butt instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Doing something you are resistant to, every single day, builds mental strength and over time this discipline becomes a habit that echoes in every area of life.
5. Break up the habit: Life is often a series of habits followed by other habits. Doing this allows me to practice getting uncomfortable, break up the habit and then work through the new situation.
6. Tolerance: Having a cold shower has helped me train my mind to not react to changes within the body, like leg cramps, itchy nose, or sore back. This tolerance has extended over to other aspects of life. For example, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I have learned to ignore the rush of adrenaline in the body and react properly.
7. Being humbled: Cold showers humble everyone and serve as an amazing way to give myself an occasional psychological kick in the butt. We are all the same, and you are not better than anyone else. As powerful and strong you consider yourself, we are all human beings. The cold shower has the power to humble everyone.
8. Acceptance: Overcoming this situation on a regular basis has helped me practice acceptance of the fact that there are things beyond my control and that life is not always going to go my way. This has helped boost willpower, build tolerance, and allows me to practice accepting the things that life throws at me.

Finding simple ways to move outside your comfort zone on a regular basis allows you to practice being comfortable with being uncomfortable. So, ask yourself this question. What makes you uncomfortable? How can you make it comfortable for you?

If you want more information regarding the health benefits of cold showers just Google it, you too may start this practice.

The Elephant & the Rider

I’m reading this book entitled Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. They reference NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s lovely analogy about the Elephant and the Rider to represent the two systems at work in our brain. The emotional side is represented by the elephant and the rational side is the rider. The rider of the elephant looks to be in charge, but when there’s a disagreement between the elephant and the rider, which do you think wins?

Dan and Chip, talk about directing the rider (rational brain: responsible for planning and direction, but can get paralyzed overthinking things) and motivating the elephant (emotional brain: prefers quick gratification over long term, but gets things done). Have you ever noticed that when you are tired you tend to make choices you don’t’ really want to? Imagine changing the direction of an elephant. This task would be exhausting. This might explain why it is difficult to stick with a diet for any extended period. Your elephant wants to constantly go for things you are used to while the rider is attempting to steer towards the healthier choices. You can keep it up for a little while, but the elephant wins in the end. If you want to make sustainable, meaningful change, the rider and elephant need to work together.

Direct the Rider

The rider loves to contemplate and analyze, doing this with a negative bias, focusing on problems over solutions becoming easily frustrated by uncertainty. How do you direct the rider? Follow the bright spots, see what works and clone it. Script the critical moves. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. Point to the destination. Change is easier when you know where you are going and why it is worth it.

Motivate the Elephant

The elephant is easily spooked and hates doing things with no immediate benefit. It is stubborn, needs reassurance, and is quickly demoralized. But it is powerful, tireless and difficult to actively direct. How do you motivate the elephant? Find the feeling. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make it somehow felt. Shrink the change. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the elephant.

Shape the Path

Without a clear vision of the destination, change will not happen as the elephant tends to follow the path of least resistance. This means focusing on the surrounding environment to make change easier. How do we shape the path? Tweak the environment. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So, change the situation. Build habits. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free” and doesn’t tax the rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.

Those are the Facts

I would like to share my point of view and how I apply this and get the rider and elephant to work together. Here is a personal example; a few years ago, I completely changed my diet because I wanted to be a healthier version of myself. In order to initiate the change, I read material put out by bright spots, by people who struggled with becoming healthier. This allowed my rider to formulate a plan. From the material I was reading I found out that some foods caused inflammation in my body. I visualized myself purposely giving myself bruises. This visualization caused an emotional reaction motivating my elephant. The change to becoming healthier was now directed at cutting out all the foods that could cause my body inflammation. Shaping the path, I started with throwing out all the foods in my kitchen that could potentially cause inflammation and learned to make a few easy things to help remove any obstacles from my path to becoming healthier. How powerful is this? One day I wanted sweet potato fries and I was too tired to make them from scratch. I took a drive to the grocery store and found a bag of frozen ones and read the ingredients which contained some inflammatory items and the elephant kicked in and said “NOPE” and I ended up making them from scratch.

Now, whenever I find my elephant off tract or my rider spinning wheels, I ask myself, “How can I get the elephant and the rider moving together?”

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