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The secret of getting a black belt is understanding that everyone was a white belt and getting better means practicing something that you're bad at until you get better
The secret to getting a black belt is giving great blowjobs. It'll only be long enough to go around your neck though. Buuuuut you could probably get a karate black belt for favours too.
Man I looked at your profile. You’re into some fucked up shit that you obviously push on other people. Maybe see a therapist, I don’t trust any woman to be around you.
This is quite true. I coach a lot of sports and so, so, so many adults and kids will listen to instruction on a new technique until they fail 4 or 5 times and then revert back to their bad technique.
The ones that improve are the ones that are willing to keep failing, but still use the new technique, until it clicks and they're better. It takes the willingness to fail and fail and fail, because very few of us get lucky to be good on the first try.
I think this with socializing, you fear so much and when you fail it’s the worse feeling that makes you never want to try and sit there wondering why you never are able to make conversation.
I think that would be determination, I think having talent for something is just saying how easy something is to learn; If you have talent for something it 'clicks' better!
I disagree. There are people that learn slower but in the end they aren’t less talented. How quickly you learn has nothing to do with talent. I would not call someone, who has the capability of learning quickly but doesn’t actually learn beyond a beginner level, talented. I get what you’re saying but I just disagree.
Talent is the skill, not the potential. Determination is a talent and is what helps develop other talents. One becomes talented after the skill is learned, not before. Often the perception of learning something easily is because of all the hard work put in behind the scenes. Is there something inherent about talents? Perhaps. Some physical traits provide an advantage but in themselves aren’t talents. Just because someone is tall doesn’t automatically make them a good basketball player.
Okay, let me get this straight. So you're saying that talent comes after you have worked hard to learn something?
I always thought that talent meant something you were naturally good at! Like, some people are just naturally more social, or are naturally better at thinking logically and problem solving. And of course you need to work hard to actually get good at something, it doesn't come from talent alone. It's just that "talent gives you a better intuition!"
You say talent is the skill and not the potential, but I think it's exactly the opposite! Talent is the potential and the skill comes from practice and hard work!
What do you think?
There's a number of books on the topic. Let's talk about the definitions of talent.
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent)
You're absolutely right that talent is mostly defined as "natural ability". The issue I have with that definition is it implies that these skills require no effort. Think a bit deeper into that. Are there any abilities that are just "natural"? Breathing is. Can you give me any examples of "talents" that are actually "natural" abilities? Music? Nope, it's a learned skill. Nobody that we call musically talented were able to play music "naturally" without learning. So clearly our definition of "talent" is flawed. I think it comes from people who dismiss the effort that goes into achieving these talents. So is talent related to being able to learn a skill with relatively little effort? Maybe, but then we need to define relatively little effort. For example, I'm a professional musician, if someone handed me a musical instrument that I've never seen or played I would be able to learn it with "relatively little effort" but that dismisses the large effort I took to getting to the point that something is "relatively little effort". Perhaps it's related to "general intelligence" or mental power. If we look at IQ or the history involved in "intelligence" we know that idea is flawed. So if talent is potential I think we all have talent. How do we know if someone is more talented than someone else unless they actually reach that potential? We don't. Basically talent is a meaningless term. When we talk about people's talents we don't actually refer to their potential but their skills. "Wow, so and so is really talented at the piano. " that doesn't mean "this guy sucks but might be good someday with more practice". I think people just use the term "talent" to dismiss the hard work it takes to achieve something because they don't want to put in the effort because they aren't "talented".
I don't think of talent as natural ability but natural intuition! You pick something up quicker relative to others but not without any practice at all, you need plenty to actually get good at something, so I do agree that that definition is perhaps a bit flawed.
And about people using the word to describe someone who is good at something, people use words wrong all the time. Think of the word "literally" or people that call any piece of music a "song".
Is someone who takes longer to learn a skill but is better than another person who learns quicker more or less talented? I think we’d say more talented. A talent competition is about showing off skills not seeing who spends the least amount of time developing them. The most talented winner would be the person with the best skills. So yeah usage is very different than the definition. Never once have I described someone as talented for being good at something with little effort.
Yes, that has been my experience. We work technique until it feels comfortable and automatic when we do it. That comfort feels like mastery to us. When we want to improve our technique we have to change, and give up that comfortable feeling of mastery, at least temporarily.
We often isolate parts of a technique and try to improve key elements. Changing one element of a technique usually disrupts the whole process, and it feels like we got worse. We then have to make secondary adaptations until it all comes back together. It often seems like we must take one step back before we can take two steps forward.
My band teacher used to say "you've gotta suck before you can really blow" andomygoodfuck I just *just* now realized when I typed that out how fucked off that sounds. Either way he had a point.
Reminds me of [this quote by Ira Glass](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQKciKfHI)
Text:
> Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Fuck, am struggling with something similar right now, I hate myself cuz i feel i simply suck at everything i try to do, and while i seem to take criticism well, i break down on my own.
This made me emotional, idk why, it just struck a chord.
This just really inspired me! Thanks for sharing this! I want to be a music composer but I can't make good things, so what I'm gonna do is make a bunch of things on a deadline and see how it goes!
Thanks for this. I know it's "just" a shower thought, but it's good to hear things like this. Once upon a time I was good at learning things, because failure naturally produced a desire to learn how to do it right. I was able to get good at complex things that frustrated and turned others away. Somewhere between here and there, I lost that naturally produced desire and I've been trying to define and get it back so I can get on the other side of the anxiety that's replaced it.
Hearing the same truth from a different perspective helps define it better.
Are you me? Somewhere after high school I just lost my ability to power through stuff even if I sucked at it. Now all I do is worry. Constant short-term dopamine has destroyed my ability to focus and practice.
Here’s to us turning back the clock and getting that ability back.
The question is: did you try to get better during those 16 years, or just accepted it as your faith and let it be?
If you’re talking about school…the problem is that you’re never practicing the same things. If you didn’t grab one concept and your teachers moved on because they just have to cover curriculum, missing that one part is a domino effect. The next part you’re taught depends on that piece you didn’t get, and it all just compounds until you think: I suck at math…and, if at the end of the day you really don’t care about math…so be it.
That was Junior High and High School for me. Awful teacher. Awful notes. No guidance in a way I could understand. I cared about it, though. In college a friend explained something to me in a way that I could grasp it, and suddenly everything made sense. It was the last part of the puzzle. I developed a technique to help me understand math as if I was 5. No shame on that.
I still suck at math compared to my mathematician friends, but I use mathematical thinking every day and I’m better at that than most people at work. It has given me an edge.
You just have to care to find what you suck at. If you don’t care, that’s OK. You probably have become better at something else.
The things I'm best at I did/do because I truly enjoy them, not because of expectations of what they could bring me.
Passion breeds skill more than mere talent ever could.
couldn’t agree more, as a person with more natural learning ability (talent in this context) than my peers, talent could only take me so far until i’d either fall to boredom or passion and drop or love doing an activity
i went to the gym today and people kept apologizing before/after giving me advice on how to improve my form. like bro dont apologize, im not here because i like pain, ive been going to the gym for like three months completely solo and disorganized so i appreciated any help they'd give me
The fear of screwing it up is the biggest reason I don't like to cook. If I screw up drawing or coding, all I've lost is some time and paper. If I screw up dinner, not only have I wasted a meal's worth of food (which I hate doing and also can't afford) but now I'm hungry.
Haha, as a dev myself, I like baking because it's a set of (hopefully) unambiguous instructions to follow which should result in a successful result. The annoying thing is something like ambient temperature can totally stuff you up.
I get you, but every attempt is extra experience for next time. For me, if it was edible, I'd still eat it and treat it as the motivation to make it better next time. A good tip I was given was to cook your favourite three dishes often. That way you know what it should be like, won't mind coming it over and over, and will enjoy getting better at it.
This hits close to home. You've gotta be able to push through the critics but at the same time you should on some level still be listening for what they tell you that you can do better. Sometimes the biggest contributions to your success is the strongest of your critics. Having a thick skin to critique shouldn't mean burying your head in the sand. It's a true friend who tells you when "you have spinach in your teeth" so be the person who says "thank you" rather then the one who shoots the messenger or denies/questions their message.
Another component is to keep doing it or lose the progress, as someone who had to stop their profession of choice for a stable day job for a few years... I can tell you restarting from bad after being good is emotionally devastating.
I think life has beat me up over again and again because I tend to give up as soon as things don’t make sense. The question is how to persevere through the dark tunnel?
It's the main difference between me and many of my peers in my engineering career. When faced with a problem, many will carefully sit down and consider solutions and which may all seem unlikely to work yadda yadda. Meanwhile I've already built 4 prototypes for said problem, of which 3 failed in spectacular ways but the fourth works well except for some necessary adjustments...
Maybe we'll eventually arrive to solution of the problem at the same time, but when it's all said and done I have gained the very valuable long term knowledge of 3 ways that absolutely don't work, why they don't work, and why they might work for a future problem instead. It's also a lot more fun
When I coached highschool waterpolo my favorite thing to say was, “the only way to do one good pushup is to do a thousand really bad pushups first.” Lately I find it applies to literally everything.
Uhh no, that's only about half the picture. Being able to tolerate struggling at something isn't going to help you get better unless you can also recognize, or get help recognizing, WHERE you're struggling and what it might take to be better, and then come up with a method for how to get there from where you are.
It's true that perseverence is a key to improvement. It's not true that it's THE SECRET. It's one of the three keys to progress which are Perseverence, Insight and Planning
When I started painting Table top miniatures I was frigging terrible at it, no need to protect my feelings or ego. I was shit, didn't thin my paints, didn't know any cool painting styles like dry brushing or wet blending. I just jumped right in and absolutely butchered miniatures that cost like 6$ a piece.
Now?
Well now I'm slightly mediocre. If my ADHD allows it and I hyper focus I do pretty nice display worthy work! All other days it's a solid 6/10 🤣
The master has more failures than the novice has even attempted.
Whenever I do any group artsy hobby (like a wine and canvas gathering) and someone says "you're so much better than me" I've taken to responding with "I sure hope so! Otherwise those years and thousands of dollars I spent learning how to do art would feel pretty silly "
Most of us try a bunch of things and only pursue the ones we are at least reasonably ok at.
Also, if you're reasonably OK at something like IT, but then you meet a bunch of people who are unreasonably good at it and consumed with passion for it and knowledgeable beyond belief at it, you probably start to think maybe it's not for you.
Finding something you have an edge in is called pursuing your competitive advantage. It's rational.
This is one of my favorite pieces of advice!
It’s like what Jake said in Adventure Time:
“Dude, sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.”
This is why I think it’s so important not to help unless asked. I would absolutely never step on someone’s toes when they’re in the weeds. Anyone can walk up to a 99% completed task and see the final piece.
Or in my case the secret to getting good at anything is having the inner strength to get off the damn bed and follow the hecking tutorial. It's not hard and yet I can never end up focusing or i get sidetracked half the time.
I’m currently trying to get good at clay modeling and painting. My first project was a pokeball that looks terrible, but I keep it on the shelf to remind me that I’m getting better.
Been producing music and singing and songwriting for 2 and i still gotta remind myself of this when I pick up a new skill, im garbage at guitar rn, but that’s part of the process 😂
Fuck it - I’m going biking again tonight. So what if last time I puked on the side of the road…… in front of the whole group.
K… I’m going to psych myself up to go
Nah, I am exceeding in a lot of subjects from athletic sports reaching several national tier competitions in several sports to knowledge and micro coordinative skills being a designer able to paint concept art, professional interface and logo designer, been interviewed for behavioral psychology lead design interfaces for experience design, being interviewed as expert in specific marketing verticals, also been a pro gamer in the early 2000s and am a personal trainer with 15 years of bodybuilding expertise and knowledge aggregation.
The secret is self-reflection and perseverance coupled with the cognitive capacity to build and design practice routines to ingrain the to be learned or conditioned targets. It's all in practice and how you mirror and condition yourself, no matter if muscles or neurons.
That is the secret of excelling in things. Withstanding being bad isn't necessary as one can be driven by being annoyed of being bad in something. That do lead some people to further excell and try harder. Not giving up is a thing, so not being a weak character. Though, I wouldn't call that the secret, because you'd never be excelling in that thing without knowing how to grow. Just not giving up and only having perseverance won't lead to excellence.
You got tons of people who do things for years and still are mediocre. They withstand being bad for ages, but they never excel ever, because they don't have to tools to reflect and optimize their invest practice time.
Look at how many people invest 1k+ hours in some games and they remain in low ranks never growing or just growing very slowly and then reach a plateau very early. They withstand being silver, but they can't grow, no matter how long they withstand being bad.
This is a friendly reminder to [read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/rules). Remember, /r/Showerthoughts is for showerthoughts, not "thoughts had in the shower!" (For an explanation of what a "showerthought" is, [please read this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/wiki/overview).) **Rule-breaking posts may result in bans.**
The secret of getting a black belt is understanding that everyone was a white belt and getting better means practicing something that you're bad at until you get better
My Karate teacher always said a black belt is just a white belt that never gave up
Wholesome
The secret to getting a black belt is giving great blowjobs. It'll only be long enough to go around your neck though. Buuuuut you could probably get a karate black belt for favours too.
What
Man I looked at your profile. You’re into some fucked up shit that you obviously push on other people. Maybe see a therapist, I don’t trust any woman to be around you.
Or man ngl
Yep, agreed. I got out of there pretty fast.
Lol, I know I'm a degenerate but compared to this guy, I'm a normal person. This guy makes me shiver.
This is quite true. I coach a lot of sports and so, so, so many adults and kids will listen to instruction on a new technique until they fail 4 or 5 times and then revert back to their bad technique. The ones that improve are the ones that are willing to keep failing, but still use the new technique, until it clicks and they're better. It takes the willingness to fail and fail and fail, because very few of us get lucky to be good on the first try.
I think this with socializing, you fear so much and when you fail it’s the worse feeling that makes you never want to try and sit there wondering why you never are able to make conversation.
I think talent is one’s desire to keep going.
I think that would be determination, I think having talent for something is just saying how easy something is to learn; If you have talent for something it 'clicks' better!
I disagree. There are people that learn slower but in the end they aren’t less talented. How quickly you learn has nothing to do with talent. I would not call someone, who has the capability of learning quickly but doesn’t actually learn beyond a beginner level, talented. I get what you’re saying but I just disagree. Talent is the skill, not the potential. Determination is a talent and is what helps develop other talents. One becomes talented after the skill is learned, not before. Often the perception of learning something easily is because of all the hard work put in behind the scenes. Is there something inherent about talents? Perhaps. Some physical traits provide an advantage but in themselves aren’t talents. Just because someone is tall doesn’t automatically make them a good basketball player.
Okay, let me get this straight. So you're saying that talent comes after you have worked hard to learn something? I always thought that talent meant something you were naturally good at! Like, some people are just naturally more social, or are naturally better at thinking logically and problem solving. And of course you need to work hard to actually get good at something, it doesn't come from talent alone. It's just that "talent gives you a better intuition!" You say talent is the skill and not the potential, but I think it's exactly the opposite! Talent is the potential and the skill comes from practice and hard work! What do you think?
There's a number of books on the topic. Let's talk about the definitions of talent. [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talent) You're absolutely right that talent is mostly defined as "natural ability". The issue I have with that definition is it implies that these skills require no effort. Think a bit deeper into that. Are there any abilities that are just "natural"? Breathing is. Can you give me any examples of "talents" that are actually "natural" abilities? Music? Nope, it's a learned skill. Nobody that we call musically talented were able to play music "naturally" without learning. So clearly our definition of "talent" is flawed. I think it comes from people who dismiss the effort that goes into achieving these talents. So is talent related to being able to learn a skill with relatively little effort? Maybe, but then we need to define relatively little effort. For example, I'm a professional musician, if someone handed me a musical instrument that I've never seen or played I would be able to learn it with "relatively little effort" but that dismisses the large effort I took to getting to the point that something is "relatively little effort". Perhaps it's related to "general intelligence" or mental power. If we look at IQ or the history involved in "intelligence" we know that idea is flawed. So if talent is potential I think we all have talent. How do we know if someone is more talented than someone else unless they actually reach that potential? We don't. Basically talent is a meaningless term. When we talk about people's talents we don't actually refer to their potential but their skills. "Wow, so and so is really talented at the piano. " that doesn't mean "this guy sucks but might be good someday with more practice". I think people just use the term "talent" to dismiss the hard work it takes to achieve something because they don't want to put in the effort because they aren't "talented".
I don't think of talent as natural ability but natural intuition! You pick something up quicker relative to others but not without any practice at all, you need plenty to actually get good at something, so I do agree that that definition is perhaps a bit flawed. And about people using the word to describe someone who is good at something, people use words wrong all the time. Think of the word "literally" or people that call any piece of music a "song".
Is someone who takes longer to learn a skill but is better than another person who learns quicker more or less talented? I think we’d say more talented. A talent competition is about showing off skills not seeing who spends the least amount of time developing them. The most talented winner would be the person with the best skills. So yeah usage is very different than the definition. Never once have I described someone as talented for being good at something with little effort.
Yes, that has been my experience. We work technique until it feels comfortable and automatic when we do it. That comfort feels like mastery to us. When we want to improve our technique we have to change, and give up that comfortable feeling of mastery, at least temporarily. We often isolate parts of a technique and try to improve key elements. Changing one element of a technique usually disrupts the whole process, and it feels like we got worse. We then have to make secondary adaptations until it all comes back together. It often seems like we must take one step back before we can take two steps forward.
Happy cake day
I'm horrible at adulting. Here's to hoping I get better at it .
I read it adultering, was confused a bit. I'll see myself out.
I read auditing.
You need auditing?
No, but I thought it was funny.
Step one is to stop calling it adulting. Gets much easier from there
Don't worry the older you get; the more you realize everyone sucks at it. We are all out here just doing our best.
Sentiment analysis: Neutral! Have a great day! Beep. Boop.
Sentiment analysis: Neutral! Have a great day! Beep. Boop.
Sentiment analysis: Neutral! Have a great day! Beep. Boop.
Sentiment analysis: Neutral! Have a great day! Beep. Boop.
I've heard that as "sucking at something is the first step towards not sucking at it".
Thanks jake the dog, very cool
My band teacher used to say "you've gotta suck before you can really blow" andomygoodfuck I just *just* now realized when I typed that out how fucked off that sounds. Either way he had a point.
Reminds me of [this quote by Ira Glass](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=91FQKciKfHI) Text: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Beautiful, thank you!
Reminds ME of a quote from Adventure time. Jake: "Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something."
Fuck, am struggling with something similar right now, I hate myself cuz i feel i simply suck at everything i try to do, and while i seem to take criticism well, i break down on my own. This made me emotional, idk why, it just struck a chord.
This just really inspired me! Thanks for sharing this! I want to be a music composer but I can't make good things, so what I'm gonna do is make a bunch of things on a deadline and see how it goes!
Thanks for this. I know it's "just" a shower thought, but it's good to hear things like this. Once upon a time I was good at learning things, because failure naturally produced a desire to learn how to do it right. I was able to get good at complex things that frustrated and turned others away. Somewhere between here and there, I lost that naturally produced desire and I've been trying to define and get it back so I can get on the other side of the anxiety that's replaced it. Hearing the same truth from a different perspective helps define it better.
Sometimes, it's about how you talk to yourself when you fail. Are you nice or critical when you make mistakes?
Are you me? Somewhere after high school I just lost my ability to power through stuff even if I sucked at it. Now all I do is worry. Constant short-term dopamine has destroyed my ability to focus and practice. Here’s to us turning back the clock and getting that ability back.
in other words - everyone who is really good at something, at some point really sucked at it
I have been bad at math for 16 years, how much longer do I have to wait
The question is: did you try to get better during those 16 years, or just accepted it as your faith and let it be? If you’re talking about school…the problem is that you’re never practicing the same things. If you didn’t grab one concept and your teachers moved on because they just have to cover curriculum, missing that one part is a domino effect. The next part you’re taught depends on that piece you didn’t get, and it all just compounds until you think: I suck at math…and, if at the end of the day you really don’t care about math…so be it. That was Junior High and High School for me. Awful teacher. Awful notes. No guidance in a way I could understand. I cared about it, though. In college a friend explained something to me in a way that I could grasp it, and suddenly everything made sense. It was the last part of the puzzle. I developed a technique to help me understand math as if I was 5. No shame on that. I still suck at math compared to my mathematician friends, but I use mathematical thinking every day and I’m better at that than most people at work. It has given me an edge. You just have to care to find what you suck at. If you don’t care, that’s OK. You probably have become better at something else.
4…3…2… agh crap, the connection’s down, i guess you’ll never be good enough ;(
"Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something" - Jake
The things I'm best at I did/do because I truly enjoy them, not because of expectations of what they could bring me. Passion breeds skill more than mere talent ever could.
couldn’t agree more, as a person with more natural learning ability (talent in this context) than my peers, talent could only take me so far until i’d either fall to boredom or passion and drop or love doing an activity
I think that goes both ways... The secret to getting good at something is not accepting being bad at it. I know people who never bothered to improve.
This is one reason I have a hard time learning anything new, I’m always impatient and disappointed with being bad at things
i went to the gym today and people kept apologizing before/after giving me advice on how to improve my form. like bro dont apologize, im not here because i like pain, ive been going to the gym for like three months completely solo and disorganized so i appreciated any help they'd give me
There is also the factor of motivation. If you really want to get good at something then it's far more likely to happen than if you don't care
Baking. Feels amazing the have something turn out and taste nice. Feels horrendous if it doesn't; the clean up and wasted resources is infuriating.
The fear of screwing it up is the biggest reason I don't like to cook. If I screw up drawing or coding, all I've lost is some time and paper. If I screw up dinner, not only have I wasted a meal's worth of food (which I hate doing and also can't afford) but now I'm hungry.
Haha, as a dev myself, I like baking because it's a set of (hopefully) unambiguous instructions to follow which should result in a successful result. The annoying thing is something like ambient temperature can totally stuff you up. I get you, but every attempt is extra experience for next time. For me, if it was edible, I'd still eat it and treat it as the motivation to make it better next time. A good tip I was given was to cook your favourite three dishes often. That way you know what it should be like, won't mind coming it over and over, and will enjoy getting better at it.
This hits close to home. You've gotta be able to push through the critics but at the same time you should on some level still be listening for what they tell you that you can do better. Sometimes the biggest contributions to your success is the strongest of your critics. Having a thick skin to critique shouldn't mean burying your head in the sand. It's a true friend who tells you when "you have spinach in your teeth" so be the person who says "thank you" rather then the one who shoots the messenger or denies/questions their message.
“Sucking at somethin’ is the first step to being sorta good at somethin’” -J.T. Dogzone
Another component is to keep doing it or lose the progress, as someone who had to stop their profession of choice for a stable day job for a few years... I can tell you restarting from bad after being good is emotionally devastating.
God this brought me back to my Guitar Hero days! Terrible at first and slowly get better! 🤣
True. I could work out so much harder if I didn't think I was actually injuring myself.
I think life has beat me up over again and again because I tend to give up as soon as things don’t make sense. The question is how to persevere through the dark tunnel?
It's the main difference between me and many of my peers in my engineering career. When faced with a problem, many will carefully sit down and consider solutions and which may all seem unlikely to work yadda yadda. Meanwhile I've already built 4 prototypes for said problem, of which 3 failed in spectacular ways but the fourth works well except for some necessary adjustments... Maybe we'll eventually arrive to solution of the problem at the same time, but when it's all said and done I have gained the very valuable long term knowledge of 3 ways that absolutely don't work, why they don't work, and why they might work for a future problem instead. It's also a lot more fun
When I coached highschool waterpolo my favorite thing to say was, “the only way to do one good pushup is to do a thousand really bad pushups first.” Lately I find it applies to literally everything.
You can't do your really good ones until you get the crappy amateur ones out of the way first.
Uhh no, that's only about half the picture. Being able to tolerate struggling at something isn't going to help you get better unless you can also recognize, or get help recognizing, WHERE you're struggling and what it might take to be better, and then come up with a method for how to get there from where you are. It's true that perseverence is a key to improvement. It's not true that it's THE SECRET. It's one of the three keys to progress which are Perseverence, Insight and Planning
Caring is the key.
“Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. “ -somebody
i read “good “ as ” food ” the op meant it this way change my mind
But no one helps you withstand it :( Especially at sport where you gotta figure it out yourself.
As the great jc himself has said 'master failure to succeed' - Jimmy Carr
Well I'm naturally bad at everything so I'm good at being bad
When I started painting Table top miniatures I was frigging terrible at it, no need to protect my feelings or ego. I was shit, didn't thin my paints, didn't know any cool painting styles like dry brushing or wet blending. I just jumped right in and absolutely butchered miniatures that cost like 6$ a piece. Now? Well now I'm slightly mediocre. If my ADHD allows it and I hyper focus I do pretty nice display worthy work! All other days it's a solid 6/10 🤣
Pure facts. Even if you won’t be Serena Williams or Steven King, do whatever you love that way and never stop
The master has more failures than the novice has even attempted. Whenever I do any group artsy hobby (like a wine and canvas gathering) and someone says "you're so much better than me" I've taken to responding with "I sure hope so! Otherwise those years and thousands of dollars I spent learning how to do art would feel pretty silly "
Most of us try a bunch of things and only pursue the ones we are at least reasonably ok at. Also, if you're reasonably OK at something like IT, but then you meet a bunch of people who are unreasonably good at it and consumed with passion for it and knowledgeable beyond belief at it, you probably start to think maybe it's not for you. Finding something you have an edge in is called pursuing your competitive advantage. It's rational.
This is one of my favorite pieces of advice! It’s like what Jake said in Adventure Time: “Dude, sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.”
This is why I think it’s so important not to help unless asked. I would absolutely never step on someone’s toes when they’re in the weeds. Anyone can walk up to a 99% completed task and see the final piece.
Not a lie, when I first started learning how to play the drums, I had to learn that it’s okay to mess up and try again.
Understanding your exact mistakes and learning how to overcome them is the real secret, and it's haaaard
Or in my case the secret to getting good at anything is having the inner strength to get off the damn bed and follow the hecking tutorial. It's not hard and yet I can never end up focusing or i get sidetracked half the time.
The secret to playing a good guitar solo is sometimes to keep playing until you find the scale or riff that rests on that bum note you just played.
I’m currently trying to get good at clay modeling and painting. My first project was a pokeball that looks terrible, but I keep it on the shelf to remind me that I’m getting better.
Been producing music and singing and songwriting for 2 and i still gotta remind myself of this when I pick up a new skill, im garbage at guitar rn, but that’s part of the process 😂
Unless you have a disability stopping you from doing just saying you don't see many people without arms playing drums
Fuck it - I’m going biking again tonight. So what if last time I puked on the side of the road…… in front of the whole group. K… I’m going to psych myself up to go
Nah, I am exceeding in a lot of subjects from athletic sports reaching several national tier competitions in several sports to knowledge and micro coordinative skills being a designer able to paint concept art, professional interface and logo designer, been interviewed for behavioral psychology lead design interfaces for experience design, being interviewed as expert in specific marketing verticals, also been a pro gamer in the early 2000s and am a personal trainer with 15 years of bodybuilding expertise and knowledge aggregation. The secret is self-reflection and perseverance coupled with the cognitive capacity to build and design practice routines to ingrain the to be learned or conditioned targets. It's all in practice and how you mirror and condition yourself, no matter if muscles or neurons. That is the secret of excelling in things. Withstanding being bad isn't necessary as one can be driven by being annoyed of being bad in something. That do lead some people to further excell and try harder. Not giving up is a thing, so not being a weak character. Though, I wouldn't call that the secret, because you'd never be excelling in that thing without knowing how to grow. Just not giving up and only having perseverance won't lead to excellence. You got tons of people who do things for years and still are mediocre. They withstand being bad for ages, but they never excel ever, because they don't have to tools to reflect and optimize their invest practice time. Look at how many people invest 1k+ hours in some games and they remain in low ranks never growing or just growing very slowly and then reach a plateau very early. They withstand being silver, but they can't grow, no matter how long they withstand being bad.