An Honest Perspective

I blogged a while ago about keeping perspective with my progress.  I emphasized my discovery of the importance of honestly and accurately comparing one day to the next and celebrating even the small improvements.

I have discovered recently the importance of this in order to also see why I am not improving or what I'm not doing.

About 5 weeks ago I decided to develop a written schedule for my weekly training.  On any given day I have sets and reps of various things from forms to techniques to combinations to strength training.  Prior to having this written version, I just kept this schedule in my head.  I thought I was being fairly diligent....check that...I would have insisted I was being diligent.  To my credit, with some things I was.  Usually because they were always the first things on the list...or maybe because they were the things I liked doing the most.  Either way, these things weren't the ones coming into question because I could recognize the improvement.  But guess what....there were some things on my "mental" schedule that I had convinced myself I was being consistent with....but I really wasn't.  There were some things that I was consistently not getting to, as planned.  Most likely because they were the things that I didn't like as much and were at the end of my "mental" list.  I would tell myself I'd make up for them later in the day....then would forget....and then forget altogether that I had missed them.  But my perspective was that because I intended to do these things every day....that I was doing them every day.  That simply wasn't true.  And without officially tracking this in some way, my perspective was way off.

Once I had a written schedule where I would actually check things off, it was a real wake-up call with how skewed my perspective had become.

A great example is my horse stance.  My "mental" schedule was that I was doing a 1-2 minute hold every other day.  My written schedule clearly indicates that I am only doing this once a week!  So no wonder my stamina with Horse Stance isn't improving.  Even though a few weeks ago, had anyone asked, I would have insisted I was practicing regularly.  Again, because I intended to do this regularly...and because I wasn't actually logging anything to refer back to....my perspective was that I was doing this regularly.  

Keeping an honest perspective also applies to how I am doing something.  Even if I were practicing regularly, if I'm being lazy with my effort or if I'm not using proper form (to the best of my ability at my current level), then I can't really claim diligence with my training, can I?  Consistency with form or technique can easily be seen by taking a video or using an indicator like bean bags, in the case of horse stance.  With some sort of visual indicator, I can see if my practice is mindful and if the quality is there.

If there truly is consistent practice and it's of good quality, there will always be improvement.  Always.  So if there actually has been no improvement (and please remember my original blog about acknowledging even the smallest success!)....the answer isn't likely that I’m some sort of anomaly.  I’m probably not the one and only single person in the entire universe that tries everything with total diligence and consistency, yet still sees no improvement.  The more likely answer is that I’m not being completely honest with myself about the effort and consistency I’ve actually applied.

Moving forward, I've decided to take this a step further and actually start logging numbers and reps.  If I ever question the lack of improvement in something, I want to have a quick, and accurate, reference to see what sort of effort I've been putting in and if an expectation of improvement is even warranted.

To be clear, this isn’t about making myself feel badly about missing things or getting a bit behind.  Stuff happens. Injuries....illness....the unexpected.  But what I do want to avoid is getting frustrated or upset about not seeing improvement where I really shouldn’t expect any. It’s about being honest with myself...and with my instructors for that matter.   They can’t help me either if they don’t know the whole story.  

If I can't keep an honest perspective, I'm missing a huge factor in being able to succeed.