The other day my son, Finneas, explained that he was trying to build a tower out of books in the basement, but it kept falling over. Then he said he remembered the blooper reels at the end of Danny MacAskill videos we watch and how we've discussed before that these show how hard he tries and how often he fails before getting the picture perfect take that we see in the polished, edited video beforehand.
I often tell my children, "If you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it first."
Then that same week, I came across this quote in a book I was reading,
“The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.” -- James Clear, Atomic Habits
Sometimes we fear failure, sometimes we fear the same ol' same ol'. We don't want to look bad, but we don't want to be bored with being ok either. We fail to be great because we can't handle the monotony that accompanies becoming great and often one of the key differences between the great and the only ok is that the great have the endurance to do what's required over and over without giving up or getting bored.
As Oswald Chambers initially taught me, "The good is always the enemy of the best." Being good enough is the most obvious reason to forego getting any better.
Then before preaching this last Sunday, I was speaking to Keaton about house projects and he mentioned a concept he embraced years back that has helped him tackle and complete many a DIY: "Plan to pay the dumb tax." This is easy to remember because it's not hard to associate paying taxes with dumbness as in, "I'm not paying your dumb tax." But that was not the point Keaton was making. He was pointing to a principle: the first time you do anything, you will have to pay the dumb tax. Whatever you do first, you will do poorly, at least compared to how good you will get at it if you have the chutzpah to do it again. Cuts will have to made twice before you learn how to do them just the once. Things will have to be unscrewed or unbolted and done over or in a different order before you're able to do them efficiently and just the once. The dumb tax is what you pay in order to learn enough to do it better the next time. All skills are learned and acquired by paying the dumb tax. All smart people have paid their dumb tax. The real dummies are the ones who never pay it.
Then today, I read this,
"If difficult goals could be achieved quickly, more people would be achievers." -- John Wooden, Wooden on Leadership
Seems like God is banging the same drum a lot for me lately. Perhaps this is a lesson I need to deeply learn: a mere taste of the medicine required to treat the malady of fear and pride,
"In order to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it."
And once good at it, to not grow bored with being good enough so that you fall below grade, but staying hungry and motivated and able to endure monotony in order to be a master at something.
Masters are not made overnight.
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