I love Mya Harrison. She is an awesome performer, did you know her mother taught her how to tap dance from a book in a library? That was before she took even more lessons and worked really hard to become the performer she is today.
Make no mistake. It was and still is H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K.
You can actually see how hard she trains at Dancing With The Stars.
But you can also see how happy she is when she gets into the blissful zone.
Before I knew from my superstar idol Martha Beck that practice is essential to be a world class anything, and that can amount to an average of 10, 000 hours of practice.
Puke.
Roll around floor.
Die.
Martha in her new book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, to paraphrase invites us to review our memories of truly wonderful play, it was actually "deep play" that involves mastering something difficult that offers great fun, for one reason, challenge.
Challenge is key in play!
Contrastingly, there is an insidious teaching in Asian Upbringing. That if you don't 'get' things quick, and useless. It doesn't help that many people and TV series focus on geniuses who take almost instantaneous time to master anything.
Those who work hard become side kicks, or unimportant.
But if what Martha says it is right, that is probably why many of us are depressed because we are no longer playing and challenging ourselves with greater things, and allowing ourselves time and space to explore our own genius.
A lot of kids that I have been so lucky to meet and coach give up as they prematurely hijack their inner genius believing that they won't get there anyway, they aren't born geniuses.
To steal a line from my favorite cartoon The Incredibles: "Everyone is special. Which is another way of saying no one is..."
We have a problem being ordinary citizens.We have a problem with practising/playing our way into mastery.
Well honey...TV is not reality. It takes time to find your genius. TV and stories is edited to warp time into instants to suit the mass short attention span. What people omit is the hours and hours of trial and error to get something right.
Anyone and everyone who got good, practiced.
Practice makes perfect. ( I know, I hate that line too...)
I was not careful with what I practiced. 8 years ago I'd seem to be the novice of Master Depressed. I got into a groove of practising how to get even more depressed, topping another's problems saying mind was worst.
Well I won ultimately, but at a nasty cost.
What are you practising? Are you practising to be the genius you or you are practising what society says you should be?
Beware what you practice.
Simple Exercise:
Find a gift within the many gifts that you have, you know what it is.
If you are numb to your gifts, try something that you always wanted to do, especially if it is something that you admire in others.
Do it. Play it. Practice it.
Can this gift be used to solving your problems? You'll never know....Play & See.
I am practicing being a self taught illustrator.
I am practicing the ukelele.
I am practicing now as a writer.
I am practicing happiness by rolling myself out of bed to work this blog.
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