day no. 14,907: to be great is to first be bad

"To be great at something, you must first be willing to be bad at it."

I have noticed lately a tendency in my children to give up before they begin. They desire to be good or even dare to be great at something and yet at the first hint of adversity, they deflate and assume the worst about themselves.

In light of this, we have adopted the terminology, "If you want to be great at something, you must first be willing to be bad at it."  No one is great right out of the gate except for a few savants. For most people, what you perceive as fluid grandiosity is actually the product of years of difficult grit and determination.

As a family, we often enjoy watching Danny MacAskil videos. He makes everything look so easy... until the end. At the end of each of the polished Red Bull production videos, they show clips of him attempting one of the more difficult tricks you've just seen in the video. But in the clips, you watch him fail and fail again. You watch him grin and bear it. You watch him dig deep and sigh deeply in frustration of wanting something so badly and yet falling short. It is good to want something desperately and to fail at achieving that thing. It is good for developing resolve and character. 

I point out to my kids that Danny MacAskil failed more times than he succeeded if we add the clips together. But he kept at it and he was willing to be bad at that trick long enough to become good, even great at it. 

In order to be great, one must first be willing to grind.