Learning By Falling

I am just about finished reading The Pilgrim’s Regress by C. S. Lewis. It is a fascinating book that has had me thinking and reflecting the entire time I have been reading it. Today while reading one of the characters, History, told John that the person who tries to learn to skate without falling down ends up falling down as much, or more, as anyone else learning to skate, but never really learns how to skate in the end. Genius, right? This goes right along with it being hard to win if you are playing not to lose. We must understand that falling is a part of skating, so we need to stop worrying so much about it happening and just skate.

No one wants to fall while skating and possibly get hurt, but the fact is, the more times we fall, the better we get at recovering, and the less painful it becomes. We need to focus more on what we want to happen, the successful outcome. No matter what we are learning to do, we need to visualize ourselves succeeding, over and over again. When learning skating, or anything new we need to be skating without pressure, without winning or losing. To learn to skate, or again do anything, we must get up after a fall. We can’t learn without falling sometimes – or often.

Byron's Babbles