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About a year ago, I watched a YouTube video of a little boy around the age of 6 or 7 asking “What do you practice?”. Has any of you watched it?
My post will be a spoiler, but I strongly recommend to watch it, anyway.
He says what you practice every day, you will get good at it. It is true. I would like to practice tennis when the weather gets warmer hoping to improve my skills. So in the video, he continues, “Do you practice joy in your life? Or do you practice a lot of complaining? Because if you complain, you will be very good at it”.
It was astonishing. It made me think what I practice everyday. I practice cooking which I like, reading, writing and talking for my work, and telling my children where to improve. I realized that I could have told them where they HAD improved, instead. It’s been 10 years since I started to practice telling them where to improve, so I am very good at pointing out the area of improvement and it is not easy to change my behavior. However, I believe that I can change it and this change is beneficial for all of us.
When it comes to change, it can be difficult to change the way of thinking and your behavior. For example, if I say I’d like to change my behavior by getting up 30 minutes earlier, it will be difficult for me. There are several reasons for this difficulty. I call reasons to stop you from taking action as “blocks”. When I say blocks here, they do not mean toy blocks such as LEGO blocks. Blocks can be thought of as obstacles or hurdles.
Those blocks prevent you from doing what you’d like to do. There are two kinds of blocks. One is called outer blocks and the other one is called inner blocks. Outer blocks can be money, time and other things and they can be solved by strategy. When it comes to my case, the warmth of my bed and my unconditional love for the bed are the outer blocks. And if I come up with a great strategic plan to take my bed away from me, or push me away from the bed, it can be solved. I hope.
As for Inner blocks, they can be your belief system, experience, and/or the voice which tells you something inside of your head. They give powerful messages that make you believe you can’t get what you want. I’ve never met anyone who is completely free from those inner blocks, so even if you notice that you have inner blocks, don’t worry. Everyone has one or many of them. So in my case, my inner blocks are my experience and the voice in my head. My experience tells me that I tried to do that in the past, but I could not do it, so it won’t be successful. My voice in my head tells me that my willpower is weak and I am not strong enough to win.
Let’s talk about the experience first. So I have an experience that failed in the past. It IS a fact. And I believe that the same thing will happen again this time. However, how true is it?
People learn from the past experiences. But sometimes the experiences stop us from trying. This is why past experience can be a block. What would you do if it was not true?
As for my voice, it says to me that my willpower is too weak to achieve my goal. There are many varieties of voices. I hear “I am not good enough” or “It must be too hard for me”. All of them are trying to stop you from trying. It is possible that those voices are trying to help you from reckless experiments, but again, how true is it?
What kind of voice do you hear inside of you?
If you realize your voice in your head might not be true, what would you feel? What comes to your mind?
I have heard someone saying that you are half way to reach a goal when you believe that you can achieve the goal. So if you are able to remove your inner blocks, your goal is almost there.
What do you practice this year?
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I would love to hear your story.
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