Mistakes are necessary

Mistakes are necessary. Falls are necessary. Failed attempts are necessary — they teach the body how to react, show what can happen if something goes wrong. This makes the next attempts safer.

For me, as a former straight-A student, failure used to just be failure — disappointment. Though it’s actually strange to expect you’ll get something right on the first try — something you’ve never done before, never knew how to do.

The power of small steps

You skate every day. Maybe without tricks, just spending time on the board. Surfaces change, inclines, moods, the world around you. And this teaches important things too — things you can’t learn just by stepping on a skateboard.

An adult with a weight of responsibilities doesn’t learn as fast as an agile teenager. But by doing a little every day, you build a base that keeps moving you forward — even when it feels like you’re not really learning anything.

This is about compound interest. About the power of small steps. About how it matters more to expand your horizon a little at a time than to try landing tricks right away.

Space in your head

When you start learning a new movement, there’s chaos in your head. Until there’s space to understand what it’s made of, you can’t do it. No amount of courage or coordination will help.

You have to repeat the movement until it becomes simple. Until it starts breaking down into parts you can actually think about. Only then can you start to control it, fix it, improve it, try variations. Before that — impossible.

I used to think repetition was boring. But it turns out: when you repeat the same movement over and over, not only does it find a place in your head, you start to see how many variations are inside it. There’s so much more to learn within a single movement.