How many hours do you spend practicing something? Playing music? Practicing fitness routines? Meditating? Cooking?
How many hours in the course of a 12-month period do you think an athlete spends practicing?
It is common for athletes to spend several hours a day practicing for a specific sport or event, and they may spend additional time eating and resting in specific ways to prepare for competition. Over the course of a year, those hours could easily add up to hundreds. Over 500 (10+ hours per week) is probably a reasonable guess depending on the sport, age, and the intensity. Now, compare those hours to the time they spend actually playing in the event, game, or competition. In track and field, for example, some events take less than ten seconds to complete, yet athletes may prepare for them over the course of hundreds of hours.
Without practice, athletes could not perform at their best or move toward their potential. They may even become stressed and frustrated because of poor performance. What if you were to show up for the game of life without a practice plan? What do you think would be some of the likely outcomes? Over time, frustration, fatigue, anger, and depression might set in. And when stressful emotions and physical symptoms like these arise, they can bring with them a host of possible unwanted consequences.
Time spent in practice is development. This leads to a game situation in which thoughts, feelings, and actions are more controlled, planned, and calculated. Time spent in practice prepares one for the multitude of possibilities and situations that may arise during a game. During practice, teams examine the strengths and weaknesses of the opponent, develop strategies and techniques for facing certain circumstances, and rehearse with great repetition their reactions and responses to a wide range of potential scenarios.
What would happen if you spent a similar amount of time preparing for life’s big games? What if you practiced how to be in relationships? In a way you might already do so, as every one of your relationships can be considered a practice arena for rehearsing new skills that help you to be a better teammate, partner, co-worker, etc. Much of your performance in relationships is related to how you practice for them, how you set the tone with the way you think about what occurs within relationships. You may be stuck in a pattern of self-defeating plays, because you haven’t been given a playbook with ideas for how to do things differently.
There are lots of playbooks out there to refer to, but sometimes a guide, like a coach, can be very helpful in helping you to practice some different plays for life. As a therapist, I facilitate a process of practicing for life. We may discuss trying new “plays” in the form of communication skills, different coping skills for stress including an exercise routine, or taking “timeouts” and doing nothing sometimes, maybe even learning to meditate. The idea is that if you are engaged in regular practice of self care such as learning new things, taking care of your body, paying attention to your spiritual self, and addressing things blocking you that you may not be aware of, then you are inevitably developing toward your potential as an individual and as a person in relationship to others.
We have all kinds of relationships. In terms of sport, there are those with the sport itself, to coach, to referees, to teammates, to spectators. More widely in our lives, we have relationships with intimate partners, parents, children, siblings, friends, co-workers, bosses, and people at the gym. A first step in making these relationships as helpful and stress free as possible is to be engaged in regular practice of drills with yourself (exercising your body, nutrition, mind exercise like reading, spirit drills like meditation, relaxation, imagery, and drills to make you aware of your “stuck” places such as talking to a therapist.) As you engage in your personal practices for development, you inevitably become an improved partner to all those with whom you associate.
You have a relationship with practice. Do you enjoy it? Do you make regular time for it with discipline? Do you do it with intensity and focus? How is your relationship to the idea of practice? I encourage you to work on yourself as a practice, to work on your relationships as a practice. Part of the beauty of participation in sport is that is acquaints us with the idea of practice for big games. Outside of sport, we can continue to embrace the idea of practice- practicing for the big games of life, practicing to be our best in relationship to others.
