A Reminder on Effort and Persistence
— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential
The second youngest in our patchwork family of six has recently schooled me.
He is quite detail oriented in his love for basketball, and as you may have guessed from the icon-image for this post, a fan of the work ethic of one Stephen Curry. I played a bit of basketball in my highschool days and wasn’t completely horrid - for an East German anyway.
However, as Jaden pointed out to me, my shooting motion - particularly from three - is rather atrocious. Not something I ever thought I need to look at - but with the COVID stay at home reality, the two of us have had a chance to shoot some hoops. When Jaden analysed my form, it turns out my release point from distance is more above my head than in front of my face, which makes for overall lousy accuracy. So Jaden challenged me to improve my shooting motion and showed me better form and technique.
So here I am, for the first time in probably well over a decade or two, learning a completely new physical skill. With just about everything else I can build on something I already know. But now I am on the court working against muscle memory of something I thought I knew how to do. It seems that is actually worse than working on a new skill from scratch. And suddenly I was getting really irritated - 2 minutes in maybe - with the ball, and the hoop, and the surface of the court - who of course were all at fault instead of considering I could be upset with myself for having relied on a shotty shooting motion for the last 25 years.
And I was struck, that our youngest, who I often scold for getting frustrated too early [“How can you say ‘I can’t do it’ when you have only tried it twice?”] must pretty consistently be experiencing similar frustration trying to learn new skills - to what I was going through in that moment. But I couldn’t just throw in the towel and walk off the court in front of Jaden, believe me, I wanted to ! So… I kept at it… and accuracy improved, and after a while the occasional shot event went in.
Now, I still have hundreds of reps in front of me if I want to hang with my sons - but it was a wonderful humbling reminder of how frustrating early failure is, how important repetition and perseverance are, and that even I need some early success and encouragement (thank you Jaden) to get over that initial hump.
Be encouraged and encourage others!
- Abraham Laboriel Sr.
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