Sunday 12 February 2012

Incremental Progression

The Sihing Class I ran on Friday reminded me of the key role incremental progression plays in mastery. There are no shortcuts, the harder you work the more you will progress. An hour of practice can produce great results but finding an interrupted hour for mindful practice can sometimes be the single most challenging aspect of mastery. Fortunately, it is almost impossible not to be able to find ten uninterrupted minutes a day over six days to apply to mastery. As I continue to tell my students - if you can’t spare ten minutes a day to kung fu, I’ll show you how to set your alarm clock to go off ten minutes earlier. Any limits to how we apply ourselves to our training are in between our ears.

My Sihing students were exposed to a sample nine minutes of the future final twelve hours of their black belt grading on Friday. It was not only an eye opening experience for them but one for me as well. These past five months I have been spending the majority of my time honing the skills of my five candidates who were promoted to black belt at our Chinese New Year Banquet. Seeing my current Sihing class mentally breaking down over those nine intense minutes brought into focus how far my last five candidates developed over their grading year. I definitely get spoiled working so closely with a group whose focus was narrowed upon achieving mastery. It is very inspiring and motivating to be reminded how far one can progress when they dedicate a portion of every day toward their goals.

Incremental progression is the key.

“Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.” - Jim Rohn (1930 - 2009)

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