by Stacy Karacostas
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. -Malcolm Gladwell
I love outdoor “extreme” sports. I’ve whitewater kayaked and skied hard slopes and backcountry for more than 20 years now. A few years ago I returned to mountain biking after about a decade off.
Having done the other sports for so long it’s easy for me to get impatient with my biking learning curve. I want to be as good as my hubby and the rest of the guys—but I’m just not. I don’t have their years of biking experience or the skills and confidence that go with that.
While I’ve had some amazing days on my bike, I still regularly have bad days like the one last weekend…
I wasn’t very focused on biking since I was in the middle of a brand launch and had just had my folks in town for a week. Within 15 minutes my front tire hit a big, pyramid-shaped root I should have seen and stopped dead.
My body, on the other hand, kept flying forward until I somehow managed to stuff the end of my handlebar into my thigh creating a palm-sized, immediately Technicolor bruise. Then, not 10 minutes later, I stuck my handlebar end into almost the exact same spot again (OW!).
No matter what my rational mind says in those moments (it’s okay, you’re learning; practice makes perfect, you’ve got a lot on your mind, etc.), my emotional side can get really frustrated, fearful and freaked. But I’ve learned I can’t let a couple mistakes and bruises keep me from having fun and being “successful”—whether I’m biking or growing my business.
Believe me; I’ve “crashed” enough times trying to market and grow my businesses over the last 15+ years to cause more than a little emotional and pocketbook pain. Thankfully I’ve learned a few tricks for getting past those bad days, staying positive and creating ongoing success as an entrepreneur.
1) Practice really does make perfect. Sure, I’ve known how to ride a bike since I was a kid. But mountain biking requires a whole ‘nother skill set that’s taken a lot of time to learn. So when I fall I just remind myself that I’m practicing not failing. Same holds true for marketing and growing a business. I might have grown up working in and running businesses, but I had to learn a whole lot more when I started my own.
2) Some days are always gonna be better than others. I can have an amazing day biking where I land jumps easily and cruise over obstacles I’ve never even tried before. Then, the next day I can’t even ride an easy trail without crashing…And that’s okay.
Just like some days I’m uber-productive and write a bazillion articles, work with multiple clients and launching a new product. Others I can barely get one task completed. Rather than beat myself up for my bad days I celebrate the good ones.
3) A little coaching goes a long way. A few years into mountain biking again I was ready to quit. I ended every ride beaten and bruised from trying to keep up when I didn’t have the skills needed to succeed. I certainly wasn’t having much fun.
Finally, I bit the bullet and invested in a weekend mountain biking camp at Whistler Mountain. I came back a new rider and—bad days notwithstanding— I wreck a lot less because I have the skills to truly enjoy riding now.
I do the same in my business…I regularly take classes, invest in coaching programs, attend conferences, buy products, and hire experts to teach me what I don’t know. So I’m way more successful way faster, with fewer bumps and bruises along the way. And it’s a heckuva lot more fun to run and grow my business since I’m not struggling blindly to keep up without really knowing what I’m doing.
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