I was at a conference recently and, as often happens at these things, a former Olympic gymnast came in to give a talk about excellence.
Oh, that doesn’t happen that often? Well, it happened at this one.
This guy, Peter Vidmar, won a gold medal with the US gymnastic team in the 80s and he’s parlayed that into a speaking career. He seemed like an odd choice to me at first but once he started talking the connections made sense. Aiming for the Gold, aspiring to excellence, go business people go! That sort of thing.
He was funny, charming, and he could swing himself around on the pommel horse like he was born to it.
You know where I’m going with this, right?
He wasn’t born to it. He PRACTICED. A lot. Way more than it would be practical for a non-Olympian hopeful to practice anything.
But it was awesome to see the results of that sort of practice and since I will never have to perform on a pommel horse *, I can just take the practice thing and run with it.
And knowing the years of practice that went into his demonstration really drove one of his comments home. He was talking in a general way about practice and how it helps, when he did that call and response set up that every speaker tries to do.
Peter: “And as you know (sing song voice) ‘Practice makes…’”
Audience: “PERFECT!”
Peter: (smiling) “Permanent!”
It took a few seconds for us to laugh at ourselves. The cliche ‘Practice makes perfect’ is so ingrained that it is practically meaningless, no amount of practice will make you perfect at anything. It’s a level of control we can’t begin to aspire to.
But permanency? That is something we can work toward because even semi-permanent puts us ahead (semi-perfect doesn’t sound good at all).
It gave me a whole new framework for my Taekwondo practice, for encouraging my 8 year old to keep at his handwriting homework, for getting my five year old to put his own shoes on. If we practice those things, they’ll become part of us**. Something unshakeable.
I like that.
So, I’ve committed to daily practice of my Taekwondo. How about you? What are you making permanent?
*I may be going out on a limb here, but I think at 37 I could take gymnastics off my to do list ( had they ever been on there).
**Okay, skeptic, I know where you are going already. Yes, we *can* make bad habits more or less permanent too. But if we recognize those habits we can replace them with something else to practice into permanency. I guess it depends on awareness and the desire to change.
