No One Became A Pro Overnight
Like Rome wasn't built in a day, a pro skier isn't either
Anything in the universe that’s worth a takes time and dedication. Patience, focus and repetition are all key skills to becoming the skier or person you want to be. Myself and any other high level athlete, businessman, or successful individual has seen their fair share of set backs, and as I described in the last article, what you make of these setbacks ultimately determines your path to success or failure. Without determination, will power and being so lucky as to have learned the skill set I have, I would not be where I am at today. Skiing is a sport with a large number of factors contributing to the outcome of your day, such as; weather, gear, fitness level, nutrition, ability, decision making, resources for information, and so on. Figuring out the perfect combination of what you can control to meet what you can’t is an art and sometimes you’ll make the wrong decision, although I am here to try to help you minimize those wrong decisions and maximize your time and quality of fun on the slopes through a number of resources and tools.
Life is unpredictable and you’re ability to deal with that is key in a lot of situations in life, a healthy understanding of the contributing factors that create outcome is critical to navigating the maze efficiently. My courses and tips will help eliminate the scares of the unknown and equip you with the skills you need to pursue your own skiing dreams what ever they may be. It’s so easy to get impatient and move to a place of frustration and anger if you’re not where you think you should be, but getting angry or frustrated is not self serving or helpful to learning. Knowing who you are and living in the moment are also key to understanding the path that will take you where you are going.
Only once you’ve accepted where you are can you know how to get where you’re going. Once you’ve found your baseline you can determine the actions you need to take to get to your end skiing goals, or others. If you don’t know where your at or what your goals are, how can you expect to get from point A to point B? Be patient and remember that FUN is THE most important part of skiing, learning and making the most of your time on the hill. Know yourself, when you are fully conscious of what your skills are, you can make the best assessment of where to go.
When you’re in search of greatness on skis or just learning to ski, you push yourself. Day after day after day, and sometimes it’s easy to think about what you know you’re capable of in your soul and think that it is you. Healthy optimism is key to success, but so is living in reality. When you reach a certain level of capability in any situation, it’s easy to rely on your strengths and use your imagination to create a version of yourself that may or may not be in reality. From experience, when I’ve told myself that I can land a trick without having landed it I find that even the experience of landing the trick is less celebrated by me.
In breaking it down I see it like this; I can see myself being capable of doing a trick, I can see the steps possible to do the trick, I know I can do the steps to do the trick, so I’m capable of doing the trick. But that’s false until I’ve actually landed the tThis is an important practice to do with every trick, but sometimes it’s easy to let the mind want to will the trick or “thing” into existence without taking the steps. This is why being conscious of yourself is a key, there are days I know I can land double flips and days that I know I can’t. So I ski how I know I can.
Living within your abilities can also actually give you more motivation, although you may feel like you are extremely far away from where you want to be. If you focus on whats right in front of you your abilities to accomplish anything because endless because you can actually work on what you need.
All in all, when you want to give up, take a step back and remember it’s supposed to be fun. If you’re getting frustrated because things seem to be going wrong, or because you feel like you should be landing a trick and you’re not, take a step back and a deep breath. Remember why you’re doing this and the tools I described above. Ski within your capabilities, stay humble, focus on the steps right in front of you, do it for the right reasons, and have fun!
Remember if you’re not smiling, you’re doing it wrong!
Much Love!
-Scot Chrisman-
