Currently, I am reading a book , entitled :"You already know how to be great" by Alan Fine. In it, he talks about his experience as a tennis coach and with good intentions, he was busy imparting more knowledge to his students. But, he found out that their performance did not improve but deteriorated instead.
Out of frustration, he asked one of the student to forget everything he has taught and focus on only a thing or two and the results was phenomenal. He later discovered that the interference - excess knowledge that the student has was the stumbling block to their performance. He fine tuned it and it became better and better with more students and other athletes benefiting from it.
So, we all seems to know what to do but why do we not do what we know?
Think of a situation where you already know a thing or two that you can do but you did not. Was it because you were busy acquiring more information and doing less of executing work? It seems like one is constantly on the drawing board but fail to implement the work itself. Time to get your hands dirty, that is the raw deal where the experience really kicks in.
1. Take small steps - Taking incremental steps allow us to fail safely and provide us with adequate feedback to work on our mistakes. We also need to recognise mistakes are part and parcel of success and to believe in a smooth sailing journey without mistakes is not only naive but also idealistic.
2. Faith - having assurance that the unseen things will come to reality. What is unseen at this juncture ?The outcome. We do not know for it has not yet come but because we have faith, we continue to work on the journey till it comes.
3. Energy - Call it passion as well , we need this crucial ingredient to stay on the track. We give 100% of our efforts to ensure it works and not lukewarm or half baked results.
4. Focus - Some call it concentration, this can be a little challenging but not impossible in this internet- driven society where we are constantly bombarded by news, fake news, drawing us to read, analyse and comment on it. It steals our time and attention from what we need to do on hand. Shut out your distractions and focus !
Out of frustration, he asked one of the student to forget everything he has taught and focus on only a thing or two and the results was phenomenal. He later discovered that the interference - excess knowledge that the student has was the stumbling block to their performance. He fine tuned it and it became better and better with more students and other athletes benefiting from it.
So, we all seems to know what to do but why do we not do what we know?
Think of a situation where you already know a thing or two that you can do but you did not. Was it because you were busy acquiring more information and doing less of executing work? It seems like one is constantly on the drawing board but fail to implement the work itself. Time to get your hands dirty, that is the raw deal where the experience really kicks in.
1. Take small steps - Taking incremental steps allow us to fail safely and provide us with adequate feedback to work on our mistakes. We also need to recognise mistakes are part and parcel of success and to believe in a smooth sailing journey without mistakes is not only naive but also idealistic.
2. Faith - having assurance that the unseen things will come to reality. What is unseen at this juncture ?The outcome. We do not know for it has not yet come but because we have faith, we continue to work on the journey till it comes.
3. Energy - Call it passion as well , we need this crucial ingredient to stay on the track. We give 100% of our efforts to ensure it works and not lukewarm or half baked results.
4. Focus - Some call it concentration, this can be a little challenging but not impossible in this internet- driven society where we are constantly bombarded by news, fake news, drawing us to read, analyse and comment on it. It steals our time and attention from what we need to do on hand. Shut out your distractions and focus !
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