Too many of us expect to tweak our normal routine and immediately see results. The truth is that most of the time we won’t see results for quite a while.
All my life I’ve heard, practice makes perfect. Yet again this is one of those erroneous beliefs we must unlearn. Many years ago I identified this error and discussed it with my firstborn and we then decided to change the belief from practice makes perfect to practice Is perfect.
Not long ago I heard yet another variation of this old statement. Les Brown said, “practice makes improvement”. Now that’s a much better statement than the original one.
To me the action of practicing anything is perfect because we spend much time discussing and deliberating on things and not enough time in the execution stage, the action and practice part.
The person I was in the past no longer is visible in my current stage. Becoming who I am today didn’t take a weekend, a couple books, or becoming discipline for a month or two. It took years. Years of reading, years of listening to audiobooks, years of waking up to motivational videos. It took writing my thoughts down, it took working on myself daily for years. It took a crazy amount of unconditional commitment, self love, forgiveness and truth. It took solitude. It took failure over and over without skipping a beat.
It took me being sick and tired of the life I was living. It took decades of practice and execution. I would say it took patience but to be honest, I never thought I would get to where I’m at and I had and have no idea where I’m getting to. It’s just a process that must take place for me. Therefore, I’ve never been in a rush. I just needed to change, to evolve, to mature to a greater level than I was.
The practice certainly didn’t make me perfect. The practice made improvements in myself and the practice itself was perfect because I took action and didn’t overthink it.
We are creatures who seem to love to overthink. The planning stage can be a very productive part of the plan. Nonetheless, overthinking actually keeps us unproductive, allows for assumptions and excuses to the point that sometimes we’re exhausted before we even get started.
I rather plunge into action than get caught up overthinking. I often coach my team to free up their future. If something needs to get done, don’t put it in a to do list, just spring into action and free up your future.
In conclusion, I think we can all agree that the statement of practice makes perfect is outdated and that we’ve outgrown such thought. However we surely know that practice makes improvements and that a default action is much better than sitting back. Hence practice is perfect.
Love y’all
Jimmy Perez 