The problem with holding a grudge

…is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else.
It might be the competition or a technology or the lousy things that someone did a decade ago. None of it is going to get better as a result of revisiting the grudge.

Congratulations

  

        

FALLING ON YOUR BUTT 20,000 TIMES

“A study of figure skaters found that sub-elite skaters spent lots of time working on the jumps they could already do, while skaters at the highest levels spent more time on the jumps they couldn’t do, the kind that ultimately win Olympic medals and that involve lots of falling down before they’re mastered.”~ Geoff Colvin from Talent is Overrated
Colvin brilliantly tells the story of Shizuka Arakawa, who won the gold medal in figure skating at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Apparently she rocked some crazy move called “a layback Ina Bauer”—which basically required her to bend backward “almost double with the feet pointing in opposite directions—leading into a three-jump combination.”
Now, when most of us watch something like that it simply looks IMPOSSIBLE to do. (And, for most of us, it pretty much is. 🙂 But Shizuka, who won the gold at twenty-four, had been training for NINETEEN years—consistently pushing her edges. Falling down again and again and again…
Colvin calculated the number of times she probably fell and says: “Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from.” 
So, back to you. Are you playing it safe and doing what you’re already good at? Or, are you pushing your edges—willing to fall on your butt 20,000 times en route to your own personal greatness?

Behind the scenes

 follow @Restylish on Instagram