Stop Viewing Yourself As Static

Hey there everyone, Happy 2012!  Almost a full week into the new year, this is the time where many of us are starting to realize we may have been overambitious in the new year resolutions some of us have set for ourselves (in retrospect, “sex demigod” and “Punchmaster” were a little lofty).  During this time I’ve seen people describe themselves in fixed terms; dumb or smart, strong or weak, clever or Hollywood producer.  This is stupid and a great reason to make excuses for yourself, whether you describe yourself in good or bad terms, instead of actually working toward your goals.

Trust me when I say that I’ve tried my hand at a lot of things considering my age.  I consistently practice martial arts, public speaking, debate, activism, and writing while maintaining schoolwork, my job, and something resembling a social life.  I am qualified to do completely random things (for instance, I am a marriage officiant) and also have experience in things ranging from standup comedy to male modeling.  This isn't to brag, in fact my point is there is nothing special or unique about me.  In pretty much all of these things, I have almost always started out with the lack of talent you normally see from Republican Senators and their ability to hide secret gay love affairs.

Now before I get too deep into this, I’m not saying that people don’t have certain limitations.  A blind person couldn’t be a sniper, someone with a moral compass couldn’t work for the CIA, and someone with talent couldn’t become an M Night Shyamalan.  But really, at what point does limiting yourself become a self-fulfilling prophecy?  You have so much potential and ability that setting limitations for yourself will just leave you an empty husk of human flesh and a monument to wasted potential, much like a TSA agent.  No one wants that.

More like "Touching Sensitive Areas," am I right?

It takes a lot of time to get good at something, and it takes even longer to initially stop sucking at it.  When I first started martial arts I would cover up after being hit only a couple times, when I started debate my arguments would crumble as quickly as my fighting defense in martial arts, and lets just say we all remember our first time having sex.  However over the years I’ve put in practice to change things around because consistent effort is the only way to get better at something.  Its so obvious, yet so often do we look past this.

Sure, sometimes we’re naturally good at things, but that can almost always be traced back to previous related experience.  For instance, when I started a speech event called impromptu, I was very good at it.  In fact, I earned third place in the novice division at my first tournament despite having only practiced one impromptu speech my entire life beforehand, and that practice speech was done so terribly and incorrectly that calling it an impromptu speech would be like calling 9/11 an airline safety drill.  In impromptu you are given seven minutes to both compose and deliver a speech based around a quotation, using various examples drawn from different subjects to illustrate your point.  How could I be good at this when I had such minimal practice in beforehand?

Its because the event was ideal for me.  I was an ace at this event not because I’m brilliant or because I sacrificed a goat to Cthulhu the night before the tournament (I didn’t start doing that until much later), but because of my previous experiences.  I have extensive experience bullshitting on the go, over-analyzing things, a lot of information I know is exactly the kind of obscure trivia-type facts that just happen to be perfect for an impromptu round, my experience as an activist already gave me a solid speaking voice, and my background in martial arts gave me the ability to physically threaten every other competitor before the final round started.  At that point, I had pretty much clinched the victory!  The Thai clinch, to be specific.

 disclaimer: Anderson Silva is a being from another dimension, immune to rules we humans hold ourselves to

The problem with this sort of previous experience is that it is often confused with natural ability.  For instance, studies (as well as common sense) show a strong correlation between performance in school and coming from backgrounds conducive to a good learning environment, such as being read to often and engaging in a bunch of brain stimulating activities.  However, instead of trying to get everyone on the same page in school, we put kids who do well in school into “gifted” programs where they will have much more educational advantages.  Their initial advantage, stemming from their background, will put them into a much more academic environment while those who grew up in less advantageous conditions will be stuck in normal classes.  This will lead to the former group being much more likely to be put into honors classes, taking AP and IB tests, getting into better colleges with better science orgies (way better science orgies), and eventually becoming intellectuals simply because of a small initial advantage in experience that made others think they were always destined to be intellectuals.

To further illustrate this point, lets take a look at UFC welterweight champion and #2 pound for pound fighter (according to most MMA fans), Georges St Pierre.  Want to know why he first started martial arts?  I’ll give you a hint: it’s a plot line to a lot of movies involving martial arts.  No, not to avenge his fallen instructor or win a tournament to donate the prize money to a local orphanage; its because he was bullied as a kid.  Instead of resigning to the idea he was weaker than US infrastructure, he began training in martial arts and is now one of best fighters in the entire world.  That’s the kind of back story that’s so cool it comes with its own pair of sunglasses and leather jacket.

In a hilarious twist of fate for bullies and douchebags everywhere, GSP also has more swag than them!

One of the hardest things about working toward a goal is that things aren’t like a video game.  You don’t level up after a certain amount of work; you simply get better gradually.  The increments in improvement from one day to the next are usually more insignificant than the self esteem of reality TV stars.  Not only that, but as you progress, those around you progress as well.  Its hard to realize how much better you’ve gotten when others have been growing around you too.  Trying to really conceptualize the fact you are improving can be as challenging and discouraging as trying to find something funny in a Carlos Mencia stand up.  A good method is to challenge yourself periodically in competition, or at the very least some sort of practice event against people whom you don’t normally work with.

As any other person, I’ve been both a champion and victim of consistent effort.  I’ve been able to work to be able to compete with (and sometimes even beat) people who would have previously left a me-sized puddle under their shoes.  There is no feeling like being able to rival someone on a level that used to seem unattainable to you.  Conversely, I have lost to people whom I used to be one roughly the same level with because of their hard work.

For instance, blogging sensation and internet bad boy David Zafra (who has a pretty baller blog about philosophy and film) and I occasionally grapple on the ground.  When we first started out, neither of us trained consistently on the ground and thus we were more or less equal.  He was able to use his better technique (he had tried a couple free Brazilian Jiu-jitsu lessons and crappled with his wife and his brother), while I relied on the sacred art of being bigger and stronger than him.  Each match could have been anyone’s game.  However, while I have always focused more on training striking, he has trained in grappling.  Now when we grapple, tapping me out on the ground is about as difficult a challenge for him as tying a particularly disagreeable shoelace.

 Unfortunately for me, in this analogy I am not Noam Chomsky.

When we lose to people, its rarely because they’re innately better than us.  Usually its because they have more consistent experience (though of course other factors like luck can come in as well, but that’s for another day).  If Zafra were to stop training in BJJ right now and I were to start, I would eventually be able to beat him, and then I’d eventually be able to outclass him.  Meanwhile, if I were to stop my training (which is currently Muay Thai, Jeet Kune Do, and cardio kickboxing) and he were to start, he would eventually be able to beat me in sparring, and then eventually outclass me.  Beyond this example, we’ve all been in a situation where we came back to something we used to do and just aren’t as good, unless of course we’ve had more indirect practice (like I described with the indirect practice that made me good at impromptu).

So in the end, I just want to impart the idea that you don’t do something because you’re good at it, but rather you are good at something because you do it.  Consistent effort pays off and what seem like natural talent can be misleading, like I described with “gifted” programs in schools and my experience doing impromptu.  So when you have a goal, stick to it and believe in yourself.  If you start now you can become better at anything you want.  My goal is to someday be able to write encouraging articles without coming off as corny.