I grew up skateboarding. It was my escape plan. It took me places. I learned mastery from skateboarding. I learned to hide injuries from my father, cos’ the pain of the falls are less than the wrath of my father.
I recently watched a video of a girl learning to do tricks on a skateboard over a 12-month period.
It’s incredible. It’s like watching a time-lapse video of a plant grow. She made incremental gains, some bad falls, and also some giant leaps.
But what was striking was the recurrent comments made by others about the video:
I worry that we have been hyper-conscious. In literal ways, the mirror is overy-reflected back on ourselves (Read this: Point Your Camera to the World). We can’t help but obsess about how our hair looks on a Zoom call.
An aside: This is also why if you are learning to practice a speech, despite conventional wisdom, the worse thing to do is to practice in front of a mirror. The focus isn’t about you. It’s your audience.
We all need to find a way to lose ourselves, and get deeply engaged into things that make us come alive.
Here’s one my best mates, psychologist and ex-Navy officer, Eng Chuan, learning to skateboard at age 57.
Daryl,
This resonates with me a lot. I love the advice of “lose yourself” in something that makes you “come alive.” I feel that when I’m at my worst, it’s when nothing feels ‘alive’ (aka I’m just not interested in learning, growing, synthesizing).
How are you able to be so prolific? I so admire your ethic, as someone who also works in the field of psychotherapy, to not only publish books, but give interviews, post blogs, and find a way of bringing it all together. How do you do it?
Chris
Hi Chris, thanks for your kind comments. I was just thinking over lunch, about how hyper-conscious we have become of ourselves… How does one walk with a perpetual mirror bouncing back at us?
Re: Prolific:
– I’m not so sure about this.
– someone who is prolific is like organisational psychologist Adam Grant.
– I’m a slow thinker… I’m stuck in the midst of trying to complete a manuscript, which is taking me, at this point in time, more than 2 years… 🙁
– I try to have a system i.e., certain protected time to write. For some, they write what they know, but for me, writing is a way of knowing, at least for me. Writing is also a way of depositing someone besides my mind what I’m thinking about…
Sorry it has taken this long to reply! (caught up in a sea of spam comments).