We have all heard the saying practice makes perfect. The truth is practice makes habits. When we practice something over and over, we trick our brain into doing something a certain way. Whether its perfect or not, we have caused a habit that is now instilled into us. The good news is habits can be broken and new habits can grow. I guess the question is what yields perfection? And how do you get to a point of perfection? Can practice get you to perfection? When you think about it the answer is probably no. An artist could have the most amazing art piece; to some it might look perfect yet to the artist there is always something that isn’t quite right. It may look flawless, yet it is not perfect.
I had spent months on a certain card move, and could never quite get it to where it should be. I then discovered I was doing it wrong the entire time. I had put in hours upon hours of energy towards something that was wrong, and now it needed to be changed. The problem was I had to retrain my brain, so I wasn’t doing the old habit that had been fixed into my fingers. It’s like I had to start over, start fresh. Experts say a habit can be formed or broken somewhere between 28 days and 3 months. It’s never easy to change a habit, it is going to take some time, and some discipline. The only way we can ever get to perfection is changing and making the habits that will get us there. Habits can be hard to change so we need to remember that it’s not going to happen over night, and we should never beat ourselves up about it. Like the card move, I had to find the underlying problem and then I was able to start working on how to make it perfect. It was never going to be perfect until I found the problem, and then I could rectify it.
We all need to constantly strive for perfection in our own lives, we need to constantly be looking at ways to improve our current situation. Learn new skills, take the old skills we have and put some work into them, always finding ways to improve in all areas of life. We need to take a step back and allow ourselves to be influenced by experts in our field, learn from them, and find out what makes them stand out from the rest of the crowd. Constantly working towards perfection.
If we start practicing for perfection we can easily go from a good to a MUST HAVE. To a point where you are so good at what you do, you turn into someone that is irreplaceable, someone that everyone wants, to be in demand because of what you offer. We can choose to be lazy and just be good at what we do, if we do that we will never truly reach the potential that we have.
Strive for perfection, cultivate the habits that take you from good to a MUST HAVE.
Andino