Get out of the vacuum.

Too often I think people will approach some new skill or task from a very academic standpoint.  We will start working out, learning an instrument, or learning a sport and get ourselves past the fundamentals, practice alone or hit the gym regularly, but never take it any further.  True mastery won't happen in that vacuum chamber.

You must periodically break out of the normal routine.

I can practice guitar till my fingers fall off, pick my guitar sensei's brain for every bit of knowledge, and I can hit the river daily working on various tricks, but unfortunately that is only going to get me so far. Every once in a while we need to bring out our talents into the public eye. Even better, the competitive arena.

Bringing our passion out into the public eye changes the whole game. Playing on stage or at an art show, attending a martial arts or sports training clinic, and just having other witnesses in general can have a huge effect on our development because we will experience the thing we know and love so much but in a different context. Instead of focusing on challenging fingerwork or learning new moves, we must suddenly address psychological pressures and learn to rely on all of that practice as anxiety, unfamiliar surroundings, and distractions all add new elements to our experience. We have to allow our brains to accept the fact that the things we have studied are ingrained as knowledge and not just something we learned how to mimic or choreograph. There is a huge difference between being able to perform a task, such as play a passage of a piece or pull a sweet stunt, and actually understanding every component of that passage or trick to the point that it becomes knowledge. 

Think of it this way: most people can do basic math in their head. You KNOW that 2 + 2 = 4 because it has become ingrained knowledge. The very process of basic mathmatics has been repeated so often and in so many places you know you can rely on it. Because of how ingrained it is and how often and frequently you have had to solve those types of problems, similar problems tossed at you out of the blue don't even phase you, even though you probably never actually tried to memorize and study those problems. For example, 200 + 200 = ?.   Did you ever memorize 200 + 200?  Probably not, but you immediately transferred your knowledge on the spot as soon as you read it. But were you able to do that as a child right after learning 2 + 2?  Probably not. You probably had a feeling about what the answer was, but being put on the spot with new territory, going into the hundreds, added a bit of anxiety and stress to the situation. But after you got the hang of the new context, all of the old skills became somewhat more solidified.

Bringing it up to the next level

I am not a competitive person. At all. If someone wants to get it on and prove they are better, I'll let them waste the energy. That said, competition is good, even for people like me. Especially for people like me.

Competition will force you to evaluate your skills in a new light and outside of your own little vacuum  bubble. It can be both humbling and elevating. When we don't do as well as we had hoped in a competition we must look back and analyze why the results came out the way they did. Was it because we were under-prepared? Over-confident? Did we under-estimate the competition? What did others do that we could work on to improve our own outcome?

Competitions can also be very invigoration.  I recently did very well in a kayaking competition, much to my surprise. I actually expected to be dead last because it was my first time competing and I thought everyone would have been better. I actually did very well considering the pressure, the audience, and the fact that I was competing against some pretty serious guys. It was the ameteur division, but hey, these were serious amateurs! What happened after doing so well was that I found more energy to focus on improving even more. Doing well in a competition can really help us learn to build on our strengths.

As I write this I am getting ready for another competition up in Cody, WY. It will be an experience of many firsts for me. I will be on an unfamiliar river. It will be my first slolom race. I will be my first section of Class IV kayaking as a playboater. It will be the first time I record my kayaking adventures on video. It's going to be fun and I'm going to learn a lot, whether or not I win.