Life Lesson # 1: One mistake or three mistakes

If I was a "writer", I would have said 'Life is a classroom and everyone you meet is a teacher. You can learn something from everyone you meet.' and so on. But I am a blogger so I don't do such sophisticated stuff. So I would instead tell you what happened the other day. :)

The incident is from my Karate class. So I was preparing for my blue belt test and as I am simply overwhelmed with work these days, it was affecting my Karate practice too. I was way too distracted and was repeatedly making mistake. I got a time off for that too..but thats another story beyond the scope of this post (I have a technical presentation in two days, I am practicing to answer the tough questions ;) ). Anyway, so I was repeatedly making mistake and my problem is (I guess its a problem with quite a lot of people) that I get hung up on those mistakes and ruin the rest of the technique or kata I am working on. So the instructor approaches me and tell me to relax and tells me something very profound. Something I want to share with everyone I know.

He said that you can either make one mistake or you can make three mistakes. The choice is yours. I was obviously completely blank at this point so he started explaining: "If you are doing something, its very likely that you will make a mistake. Everyone does. Now its your choice whether you leave it at that or go on to make two more mistakes. The second mistake is regretting your mistake in middle of your work which actually draws attention of your tester/spectators to the mistake. And the third mistake is to keep thinking about that mistake and hence ruin the rest of the work which you could have used to overcome that mistake. So its your choice whether you make one mistake or you triple it."

Yesterday, I had my blue belt test and I aced it (my examiner said that) not because I didn't make any mistake but because I didn't get hung over that mistake. Its a very difficult thing to do. I am so proud of myself at the moment. I could achieve that control over myself. So as of last night, I am a Blue-Belt in Kenpo Karate. Voohoooooooo..........