the Practical Skateboarder

Many years ago, I visited some friends and, as always, brought my skateboard along. At this point, I had been skateboarding for several years. My friends asked me to show them a few tricks and when I did, I failed on most of the attempts. One of my friends looked at me and said, “I thought you were supposed to be good at this.”

In their comment, my friend revealed a lie that we tell ourselves. We think that people who are good at something never fail. Everything they do works out now that they’re “good at it.”

This lie holds us back. When we think we’re good at something, and then fail when we try to get better, this is the lie we tell ourselves just before quitting. “I guess I’m not good at this anymore.” Then, instead of learning how to get better, we quit.

If you don’t care enough to get better, then sure, quitting is a good option. It frees you to invest your resources into things you do care enough to get better at.

But, if you care enough to get better, then get ready for the failures.

I’ve taken hundreds of falls to only land a trick once, and then try another hundred times before I land it again. Eventually though, 100 tries becomes 50 tries becomes 10 tries, and, eventually, I’m landing the trick within the first few attempts. Each failure is an experiment. I only figure out where to set my feet, when to pop the board, how to flick my foot, and all the other little parts of getting a trick right from each of the failures. If I believed failing meant I was not good anymore, then I’d never figure out how to get better and, eventually, learn the trick.

If you want to get better at skateboarding, the only way to do it is to fail most of the time. That’s where the learning happens. It’s simply part of the process.

If you want to get better at anything, the only way to do it is to first fail and then learn to get better. Failure reveals what we’re doing wrong so that we can do it better.