Can I top my shit again?
That is the question. Can you push yourself farther and harder then last time, and how do you do it? Now it is not my point that it is impossible to do so, but rather are you really at your limit when you think you are, and what is to say you cannot go past even that. I was thinking about all the records being broken in sports for example (tangent alert):
Michael Phelps has broken his own records for fun, and before that Ian Thorpe was breaking them and it seemed impossible that anyone could go faster, but they do, they always do. It is not as if Thorpe slacked off on the last few meters of a race and thus did not improve his times. He always improved his times, and then now, a few years later Phelps is doing the same thing. Except he is making Thorpe’s times seem pedestrian. I have no doubt that Phelps is a magnificent swimmer, I do not believe it is his suit or anything else that makes him faster than Thorpe, it is just the knowledge that someone went 1:09:49 and that it sure as hell is possible to get to 1:09:00 and lower. Really it is all a matter of believing.
How do you push yourself in non sports aspects to be better, something that is not necessarily quantified as a time for a specific race? More importantly why do you do so? Personal satisfaction, a sense of pride and honor, or just wanting to see what you are truly capable of doing? When do you know that you have reached that maximum and point which you will never be able to equal, and how do you deal with the implications that you will never scale those heights?
I am really interested in reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Outliers” his basic premise is that you need at least 10,000 hours of training in something before you can become truly professional at it, and that IQ alone does not determine a whole lot. In an interesting interview with Stephen Colbert he revealed that probably the biggest reason Bill Gates believes he has become such a successful computer developer/writer etc is that when he was 13 his school bought a computer terminal and he was given a chance to use it.
Watch it below
3 comments:
if i ever were to realize i couldn't beat myself anymore i'd get so frustrated that i'd look for something else to do where i could. there are so many amazing things out there..
what about pushing yourself mentally J? and the like, how do you give up on that?
i meant that too... lost in translation? i don't think one should give up on that freely ever
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