Your ability to master anything starts with your instructor (says Ira Riklis) and their skiing technique. Again, this could easily apply to life and business.
There is an art to mastering anything and it is in taking something from being recited steps to flawless execution of a task. If you don’t get the rhythm you need to do this, then you’ll fall.
Most teachers tell you a set of moves and set you thinking your way through a difficult task (in this case becoming a master skier):
- lower your left shoulder
- raise your right shoulder
- lean your torso in
- push your bottom out
- bring your left elbow
- lower your right elbow
- balance your weight evenly on your feet but bend your knees
- lean into the ball, etc., etc., etc …
But the point Ira Riklis makes is this: you can’t think your way through a ski turn at the expert level, you simply have to move with the rhythm (like dancing).
Here’s another approach to mastery:
Identify the ONE thing in your technique which stops you from getting the rhythmic motion you need. Work on that ONE thing so that it becomes something you can do from memory (muscle memory). In other words what was stopping you is changed and practiced until it becomes easy for you. Until you do it without effort and flawlessly every time. You dance.
Genius.