Practice Changes Everything

Humans are able to manipulate their environment through their skills. They are able to exert their mental faculties and translate these faculties into actual physical change; they are able to shape the world around them through the proper application of an appropriate skill.

Skills exist in two metaphorical places - intellectually and physically. The intellectual aspect of skill gives it its character; it gives it its rhythms, its own particular style, its own manners. The physical aspect of skill allows the intellect to translate its will into the world.

This interplay between the intellectual and the physical is, like all relationships, not perfectly balanced. One can have a high level of skill intellectually - through knowledge, second hand experience, confidence - and have a relatively lower level of skill physically. Generally, the lower level skill-aspect bottlenecks the other, dragging it down. Thus, even though one person may have great physical potential, he may not be utilizing this potential to its fullest due to intellectual limitations.

Thankfully, there are ways to make a skill-aspect catch up to its counterpart. The way is through practice.

Practice elicits images of repetition and of drilling. One can even relate the word 'boredom' through practice. However, it is only through practice, whether entirely separate from an actual skill's application, or in the midst of a skill's application itself, that a skill can be improved.

Practice instills in the mind confidence and creates thought patterns as to how certain actions be done more efficiently. It drills into the mind the certainty that one is good in a certain skill, or at the very least, that one can do a skill properly.

Practice trains the body to connect properly to what the mind wants so that the action becomes second nature, freeing up valuable space in the brain, allowing it to perform at higher efficiencies.

It is through practice that the two skill aspects catch up to each other; if one is deficient in a certain aspect, one can focus on that particularly. One can increase knowledge through proper study and careful observation, mental actions which increase the repertoire of content applicable to the skill in question.

At the core of practice, however, is discipline. One has to practice constantly, or else its effectiveness will be limited, for the mind responds well to routine and repetition, and the body is able to memorize movements and even sensations related to performing a skill. Discipline allows an individual to continue regardless of external influences or internal conflicts; no excuse is accepted, no moods allowed to interfere with the process of practice.

Hence, practice increases one's ability to turn one's intellectual vision into physical reality.