Practice, Practice, Practice

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2020 has been a difficult year and one of the ways that I’ve decided to cope with it is I want to have a hobby. I want to get a new hobby and do something fun in my personal life. But I want to talk to you a little bit about what this means and why I think it’s important. People ask me all the time,

like how do you master Solution Focused Brief Therapy and how do you get good at making a difference in clients’ lives using this approach? And my answer is always the same. Like you have to practice. You have to work at it. I read a book one time, like back when we could travel, I was sitting on a plane and I read a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers.

And in that book, he talked about the 10,000 hour rule and you have to do something for 10,000 hours to get really good at it. You have to apply to deliberate practice for 10,000 hours to get really good at it. And I also, I heard an interview by the drummer for, I think the band was, Led Zeppelin, and the drummer said I became a great drummer because I was willing to be a bad drummer for long enough.

And I think Solution Focused works the same. Like you have to be willing to be a novice for a while without quitting and build your skills. So I have decided to have a new hobby. I’m decided to pick up a new hobby and I’m going to be a novice. And I want to take you along this journey with me. And so you can watch me be a novice at this skill.

Today is going to be the very first day I’ve tried this hobby. You’re going to see the very first time I’ve applied this hobby in my life. I want you to follow this journey with me as I go from novice to hopefully some level of skills, I’m going to go out and show you what this hobby is and take you along this journey with me.

So let’s go. When I was a kid, I always loved archery, all kinds of archery. I was in Cub Scouts and we did archery, which is probably what made me fall in love with it. I was like a 10 year old and I just liked, you know, shooting this target practice thing. And then I saw Rambo and he had this compound bow.

And I was like, when I grow up, I want to get a compound bow and I want to do archery. So I went to a store and started looking at compound bows. And before I knew it, I had walked out with this cool compound bow. This is totally new to me. I walked in not knowing anything about this world.

So you have to show you guys the whole bow. I I’m so incompetent that it took me an hour to put five arrows into my quiver that comes on this bow. I’m told this is a good starter bow, but if you ever want to like increase what you do as an Archer, this bow can like grow with you. So you can have this bow for your lifetime.

I had no idea all the intricacies that go into archery, like the amount of poundage that you pull back on the string, and you have to have it measured against your arm, like all of these crazy things were told to me at the store. So I was super duper excited about this. I’ve been dreaming about having one of these, you know, for the length of my life.

I want to see how practice will impact my ability to hit a target. Now, I talk about practice all the time. People ask me like, how did you get so proficient at asking the kind of questions to your clients that lead towards change? And my answer is always the same. My answer is always practice.

But here’s the thing. I’m a complete novice at this. I’ve only drawn this string twice, once in the store, as they tried to like dial me in on how much poundage I can pull. And they were explaining to me going back to what I’m saying about practice, explaining it to me that pulling a bow, you start using muscles that are only used when you pull a bow.

So even though you look like a big strong guy, you probably can’t pull the bow proficiently. And I’m like, yeah, whatever. And it turns out I can pull the bow pretty comfortably at a 40 pound level. And you know, to me, that number doesn’t mean anything. It’s just 40 pounds. And the people working in store telling me, like, I pull a bow at 55 pounds, I pull a bow at 60 pounds, they’re all telling me these things. I go home. I watch a video by the way, and I see this a 12 year old kid who says he pulls at 45 pounds and that’s kind of evidence what I’m saying. Like, if you’re a novice, you should just expect to start at the beginning.

And I am a complete and total novice at this. Over time of you guys following me and watching this blog, I’ll record some other videos of me shooting at other targets. I don’t intend to become some sort of big game hunters. So I don’t attend to be shooting animals or anything, but I’ll make videos of me shooting at other targets and things and see if my skill improves.

So, anyway, I just want to, I want to see, this is my very first shot, drawing a bow, shooting at a target, and we’re going to see how I do? Whoa. Wow. That was pretty serious. I didn’t come anywhere near my target. And you probably can’t tell, but we have a new fence up that I have now just put a hole in.

Ugh, another hole in the the fence! I’m going to be in so much trouble. I. hit the target! I hit the target! I’d love to show you this video of me, like walking down to the target and grabbing my perfectly grouped arrows. Obviously that didn’t happen. And I have a feeling I’m going to be a real pain in the neck to get those arrows out of the fence.

So you just saw it. This is my very first time pulling, but this is something I want to get good. This is something I want to do better and better at. And as you just saw, I’m not very good. I only hit the target once. I’m now a novice and I’m doing a novice thing and I hope I get better at it.

So remember, in order to get good at a skill, you’ve got to be willing to a novice for a while. And I think some of you struggled to do Solution Focused Brief Therapy because it’s hard for you to ask these questions when you don’t feel like you’re proficient at it, but in order to get good at it, you have to be willing to keep going. I may be an expert at one thing, but I’m a complete novice at this.

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