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Does Practice make Perfect?

Practice makes perfect

If you are on the path of self-growth and development, you will be familiar with the idea that practice is essential.  You may experience quick-wins, but if you are to have sustained and on-going growth, practice is a given.  Quick-wins are great.  They show you what is possible.  Then you need to put in the graft to make that possibility an on-going and repeatable reality.  You want to have it in your bones so that you have access to it at will.

Why is practice so important

In our busy lives, we often do not feel like we have time to practice.  There are always reasons why you do not have time to do something.  The question is, “Do you want things to stay the same, or change for the better?”  If you want things to be better, you want to set intention and then practice until that intention becomes manifest.

Without practice, the quick-wins do not become permanent change or growth.  Practice allows your body to set down the new wiring of your nervous system.  It also beds in the new pathways so that they are more likely to be used.  At the same time, the old pathways are being dismantled.  If the body is not using them, it has no need for them and so it breaks them down and recycles the parts.  That is why “perfect practice makes perfect”. This is an expression a friend and mentor of mine says and it has become a mantra for me.

Make the time to practice diligently whatever new habits you want to learn and embed.  Take the time to practice the technique right and you are supporting your body in creating new, more empowering habits and letting out-dated habits go.  This can be applied to physical activities such as running faster or further or mountain climbing, learning a skill like playing the piano or listening more deeply and embedding new mind-sets, for example, around money, work processes or health.

Intention

What are your desired outcomes? There is a pain you want to address- what are you willing to do to achieve that?  There is a problem you want to solve- what changes do you want to see? What practical steps are you going to take to get there?

You start from the inside out.  With emotion.  What is driving you?  A lack of confidence? Financial freedom?  Better relationships with your partner, children, friends, colleagues?  Clarity on life purpose?  More fulfilling work?  These are all emotive topics- particularly if you experience pain around them.

And these emotions drive your intention.  They act like a magnet that aligns you physically, mentally and emotionally.  From this place, you are more likely to take action.  But it has to be the right kind of action or you will not achieve your goal.

“What” do you practice?

So, practice with intention. Be specific and focus on your goals and desired outcomes.  Be intentional.  Whether it is a practical skill like martial arts or driving a car you wish to perfect or developing your leadership style or your competency as a solopreneur, intention and practice will be central to your success.

Learn from others what is required.  Have a mentor, teacher or guide.  Hone your skill.  Become an expert.  Practice whatever you require to excel.

The Challenge

You will meet challenges.  Your body resists change.  All biological systems strive for balance.  Growth and changing behaviour throw the system that is you out of balance.  So, the system fights back to maintain the status quo.  If you come at this from a perspective of patience and compassion, you will give yourself the time and opportunity to practice.  In time the new way of doing things will become the status quo.  And while it serves you, there is no reason to change it.  Once it stops serving you, change and growth are required to move things forward and take the next step.

Are you practising to be technically better? There is benefit in honing your practical skills so that you can perform well in any activity. Martial Arts is full of technical considerations. Life coaching requires a particular skill set that can be improved. Any activity requires practice of skills. Learn impeccable technical knowledge and practice endlessly those basic skills that are the foundation of all the advanced techniques. Writing with a pen, driving a car, golf swings, listening skills, dance steps- all have technical skills to practice. This is the “what” of your practice.

“How” do you practice?

“How” you practice is just as important as “what” you practice

It is not all about “what” you do.  There is also the “how” of your practice. By which I mean, what qualities are you using and cultivating when you are doing your practice? Are you developing cold and clinical execution or passion-filled expression driven by the emotion of the moment? Do you drive yourself to complete a certain number of repetitions or achieve something in a specific window of time? Or are you freer in your practice and go by what feels right?

In an earlier blog, I explained the 4 elements. This is a convenient way to describe qualities you might cultivate in your practice. Earth is more technical and precision based. Water more flowing and relational. Fire focuses on directness and driving through. While Air is lighter, creative and spontaneous.

How does the “how” you do something serve you?  You may want to be really efficient at updating your book-keeping but this approach may not work when building a vision for your business or dreaming up a family holiday.  Taking time to build rapport may be incredibly important in building relationships but serve you less when trying to meet a deadline or getting the kids to school.  Embodying the 4 elements can be a way of exploring the “how” of your practice so that you make the most of your time and get the most from each moment.

Perfect practice makes perfect

Only you can decide what is perfect for you.  There is no absolute right way or wrong way.  It is all about getting the results you want.  If life does not feel amazing, then there is room for improvement.  How can you tap into your own potential to create more of the life you want for yourself?  Are you earning the money you want?  Do you feel fulfilled in your work as you would like to?  Are your relationships with family and friends as you would wish?  Are your health, fitness and well-being at the level you want?  Does life feel balanced?  Or are you out of whack?

Over to you

So, look at the areas of your life that work and celebrate.  No, really.  Congratulate yourself on a job well done.  Savour the success- be it being able to pick up the kids from school and having quality play time with them during the week or feeling that your work contributes to society in a meaningful way to you.  You made that happen.  Celebrate that.

And those areas that need work, find out what will work better and practice.  Work out what you need to do and how you do it for greater success, well-being and happiness.  I’d love to hear what you’ve got planned.  And if you would like some support to work out what you want to be different and how to achieve that, please reach out.

Pass it on

If you found this blog useful, please pass it on to anyone you know who might find it interesting as well.  Thank you.

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Breaking habits- the biology, the metaphor and the action

Like all of us, you probably find it hard to change.  We all have those habits that do not serve us fully, that we wished we could alter to give us more worthwhile and life-fulfilling outcomes.  Habits are hard to break. Your awareness of them and the willingness to overcome them over time are inspiration to make great change and do whatever it takes to create the life you truly desire for yourself.  It is easy to get caught up in your head, in the words that tell you “don’t bother” or “it’s too hard” or “things are OK as they are.”  I’m assuming you want more?  Therefore, I believe you want to access your greatness and do things in your life that make your heart sing.

Friend and Foe

Habits are your friends and your foes in this game.  Friends because they can allow life-affirming habits to play out without much challenge or conscious effort.  Foes because other habits that drain your life energy and passion for life often move unnoticed, operating out of your awareness, leaving you powerless to take alternative action.

Habits and your biology work together to create each other. The wiring in your nervous system create your behaviour. And your behaviour creates the structure of your nervous systems.

Your body is wired and programmed to support you in your current patterns of behaviour. There are well worn pathways in your nervous system and therefore in your organs, cells and energy that go to make you, you. Those behaviours will have been created because they served you at some point in your life. You might have learned to be accepting or non- conformist in your youth because it allowed you to adapt and survive your circumstances. However, now, as an adult, you might find those behaviours create outcomes that no longer serve you. You might notice that different outcomes would give you more of what you want: agency, confidence, empowerment, intimacy and more.

Biology and Behaviour

To achieve this, you need to change your biology and the nerve pathways that create your behaviour. Sound overwhelming? Well, the good news is that you have control over your biology. You can practice new behaviours consciously until they become your new pattern of behaviour. A warning though. It takes consistent practice. However, it can be fun if you take a playful and light-hearted view of this process of change and transformation. Which is itself perhaps a change of habit that takes practice as well?

Dr Joe Dispenza says that “nerve cells that fire together wire together”. It’s a simple, catchy phrase that speaks the truth about building new habits of thought and behaviour. It implies your brain and nervous systems are dynamic playgrounds of change and learning. Nerve cells are connecting and disconnecting all the time as your thoughts and behaviour demand new biology. Conversely, your biology determines your thoughts and behaviour.

A helpful Metaphor

So, what is going on in our brains and nervous systems? I like to think of the pathways created by your nerves like roads for traffic. You have the super-fast motorways, the dual carriage ways and the slower country lanes. You also have the bridleways and footpaths and even the tracks. I love walking in The Lake District and the hills and valleys are full of these walk ways. The lesser walked paths and tracks can be almost indiscernible. It is slow going. The larger tracks are easier to follow and you can walk faster along them.

The more used pathways are larger, well- established and allow for faster speeds. Lesser used paths are smaller, less robust and less direct.  Therefore they support slower speeds. Well-established habits are the superhighways. New thoughts and behaviours are the tracks that are nigh on impossible to discern. To change a track to a motorway takes practice, purpose, patience and perseverance. And to turn an out-dated superhighway into lush green fields again requires the same “4 P’s”. In other words, it requires conscious effort applied consistently to build new pathways and behaviours and dismantle old, out-moded ways of doing and being.

This is why breaking habits is so challenging. Your biology is programmed to support well-established behaviours. They take little effort and happen automatically. To change that behaviour requires a lot of effort and it’s easy to slip back into old ways. Now you know why. Your biology is programmed to do so.  You can learn more here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8tTnLICHk4
Habits are designed to make your life easier. New habits are hard to put in place because of this simple fact. Therefore, breaking habits that no longer serve you can be challenging. Here are some ideas that might give you inspiration and motivation while you’re on the habit- busting/ habit making journey.

Biology and Behaviour inter-relate

Any athlete will tell you the same. On the build up to 2012 Olympics in London, Greg Rutherford, the Team GB gold medalist spent 4 years retraining his body to lead with his left leg rather than his right so that he could launch into his long jump without injuring his hamstring. 4 years!!!!!! Yet to get to Olympic standard that’s how long it took him to fully embody and courageously make that jump consistently for gold. Make no mistake, any habit is the same. Perhaps it doesn’t take 4 years, but it will take time and effort to create new habits. How do you respond to events in your life? How would you like to respond differently?  Will you practice the changes of habit required to make that possible?

Conscious Choice

Let me give you an example. One of my habits is that I can respond to loud people who are in my face by withdrawing, keeping my distance and refusing to engage with them. I recently interacted with a wonderful work colleague who at first triggered this behaviour in me. I allowed myself to be triggered until I noticed it. At that point I was able to do something about it.

So, I made a conscious effort to engage rather than withdraw, interact rather than keep my distance and be willing to connect rather than refuge to engage. Within moments the relationship was transformed, and we shared a lot of mutual learning, wisdom and experience as a result. I need to keep practicing this until it becomes my default, automatic and unconscious way of being and doing in the face of loud people. Until then, I can make the journey of transition easier by exercising self- compassion and recognising it won’t happen overnight. The outcomes of such choices are far more satisfying to me now, than the results I used to get. As I grow, my intentions change, the outcomes transform as a result and my choices are aligned to my values and life purpose.

So, what are the “4 P’s”?

Practice

To change the wiring of your nervous system you need to practice the behaviour the new wiring that behaviour requires. Otherwise that wiring will never take hold and your new desired behaviour will never become established.

Purpose

Align your new desired behaviour to values and life purpose that feels compelling and inspiring. I value connection, so my behaviours want to reflect connection. My life purpose relates to clarity, so I want to see and know people at depth, not just their surface level actions.

Patience

Failure and success are both great teachers. They show what you do right as well as point to where improvements are required. That is part of the process. As the new wiring becomes more established less, conscious effort is required. It is a work in progress and an unfolding process. Stick with it.

Perseverance

It’s easy to give up or allow yourself to be distracted by other things. When you’ve been on that amazing workshop or retreat or read that inspiring blog, you feel compelled to take action. Yet in the busyness of everyday life you forget to practise, and all that good intention gets lost along the way. Therefore, put structures in place to remind you. Remain accountable to yourself by allowing someone else to hold you accountable. Commit daily to your promise to yourself.

So that’s why habits are hard to break, create and maintain. The awesome power of your biology that makes habits so effective is the same thing that makes them a challenge to change. Yet, if you want different outcomes to circumstances, you have to change how you respond to them. And that takes practice, purpose, patience and perseverance.

The Yoda Moment

Habits are instrumental to the core of your being.  I believe we are born with great wisdom that gets covered up with thoughts, ideas and concepts given to us by others.  These ideas, thoughts and concepts become habits that mask some of our greatness, uniqueness and authenticity.  To uncover and reclaim them fully, we must learn new habits, life-affirming habits, habits that allow our magnificence to shine.  I love coaching and using the body and mind in coaching to effect these transformations. 

“We all came into this world gifted with innocence. But gradually, as we became more intelligent, we lost our innocence. We were born with silence, and as we grew up, we lost the silence and were filled with words. We lived in our hearts, and as time passed, we moved into our heads. Now the reversal of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from head back to the heart, from words, back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence. Although very simple, this is a great achievement.” —Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Whatever form of self-development you are engaged in right now, please know your greatness, uniqueness and authenticity is much needed in the world.  There are a wealth of resources available in the world today to serve you in uncovering those gifts and changing your habits is an essential part of that journey.

Over to you

How successful are you at changing old habits? What’s your awareness like at noticing old patterns. How is your willingness to change? What do you do to ensure success? How does this information make it easier/ harder? What’s your new perspective? I’d love to hear about your successes….. and your failures. How can I support you in your transitions and transformations? What do you need for greater success?

Pass it on

Please forward this article to someone struggling with breaking unsupportive habits. Alternatively, send it to people in need of support as they go through their own growth and get frustrated that it takes so long. Nothing is wrong it simply takes time…. and knowing that can make all the difference.

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