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Dear <<First Name>>, 

My sister and I were sharing memories of our school art classes. She said the teacher often flung her art book out of the window. I gasped as my sister is good at art. She then clarified the kids who were bad at art, had their books torn and flung out of the window! I’m sure I was one of those kids. Despite these harrowing childhood memories, I’ve recently enrolled in adult drawing classes.

Every week when I show up at my class I grapple with ‘being comfortable being miserable’. This cutting truth nugget is from Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art. Miserable really captures it. The frustration, the wanting to give up and the ghastly comparison-itis.

What surprised me was when the boredom set in. International Best-Selling Author Yuval Harari’s recent podcast interview helped me figure out why. Harari says it’s harder to deal with the subtle pain of boredom that the heroic pain of say an artistic crisis. Boredom is the shadow side of practice that learning requires. More than anything, boredom can break you. It’s an abstract pain, and we reel back from the job at hand and immerse ourselves in distractions.

So why stick with learning? I have been ruminating on this week after week, as I gird my loins for yet another class. In my experience some things help. Even the smallest sense of progress. This feels like a breath of wind under a flailing learner’s wings. A good teacher can really help. My Art teacher is encouraging, kind and yet honest! She often points out the smallest improvement you have made.

Second shifting the story in my head. We often live our perceived truth in statements like I’m bad at art, or I’m bad at accounts. I’ve discovered some magic for this from my humour coach, the amazing Kate Burr. To replace I am bad at… with I am learning to be…

So, replacing I am bad at drawing, with I am learning to draw, or I am learning to be good at drawing. Affirmations framed with I am learning… are both gentle and believable for your subconscious mind. This is where the levers need to turn, to recalibrate self-limiting stories.

Finally, what cuts it in the end is deep practice. Deep practice is very different from the oversimplification of 10,000 hours of practice. It’s deliberate practice, focused and in chunks. Deliberate practice is getting good at being bad. It’s channelling your inner Willie E Coyote.

 
The running gag from Looney Tunes involves the Coyote falling from a high cliff. We then have a bird's-eye view of him disappearing into a canyon so deep, we lose sight of him and then seconds later a rising dust cloud signals he has hit the canyon floor. But Willie E Coyote always lives to see another day and another mad adventure. Deliberate practice can feel like this, never giving up, the relentless pursuit, and your ego being smashed to shards repeatedly.

The last word must go to my friend Carolyn Tate who says ‘Lot of mud before the lotus’. Sigh, muddy days ahead for my art practice. How about you? What are your best tips on how to learn?


Yamini

All images from https://unsplash.com/
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