I don’t know if you ever played sports, or did the martial arts, danced ballet, played a musical instrument, or anything like that, but the one thing that the coach or the instructor emphasizes over-and-over again is that you must practice. You must keep retuning to the basics and do your techniques again and again.
 
Most people don’t like to do that. They just want to get out there and DO IT. This is especially the case in say a physical activity like the martial arts. Once a student is getting better at the craft, all they want to do is to unleash the advanced techniques. They want to show off their skills. They don’t want to look like a beginner and do the basics.
 
The problem with this mindset is, however, all of the advanced techniques, in any skillset, are based on the basics. The more you perform these basic techniques, the deeper one grows in understanding. And, from this, the better their advanced techniques have the ability to become.
 
This understanding is not simply for the physical activities of life. It goes out to the all and the everything.
 
I know as a filmmaker, one of the biggest obstacles I have encountered is a cameraman who does not know how to use the camera with any level of proficiency. Pretty much, since day one in my emergence into the filmmaking game, I have witnessed how often the cameraman truly harms a project by not knowing how to truly use the camera. Why don’t they know how to use it? Because they do not practice.
 
Like I’ve proclaimed forever, one has to develop the ability to see what the camera sees. Not just what the human eye sees. But, how the camera captures the world, is a very different beast from what is seen by the human eye.
 
How does one do that? Practice.
 
I don’t know if it is simply based in laziness. Or, if it is based in an individual believing they are somehow better than they actually are. Whatever the case and the motivation, what occurs from one not practicing is that whatever is done, it becomes not nearly as good as it could have become if one had practiced.
 
So, this is just something for you to think about. Think about as you pass through your life. How much do you practice? How much time do you actually spend becoming the best that you can be by going back to the basic, and then moving up from there, doing and redoing, trying and retrying until you truly master whatever it is that you hope to achieve.