Do you possess the patience to develop mastery?
Some advice I was offered years ago on worrying about starting something new, was “all the things you worry about most likely won’t happen, and all the things you should worry about hasn’t shown itself yet. So why worry?”
Seems fitting…..especially on the first day of Acton Academy North Shore.
Turns out the biggest worry of the day was about the Guide getting a result:
making sure the day went well,
was fun,
was everyone working well together,
that some things got done.
One of the recommended books for parents to read is Mastery by George Leonard.
It jumps right into a story about a person who decides to give tennis a real go, training three times a week with lots of coaching thrown in.
After months of coaching the person is getting frustrated that they haven’t noticed progress and are still being coached just to practice the fundamental shots, not even backhand or serves, let alone running around the court returning shots.
They ask their coach when will they be able to play in competitions.
The reply “about 4 years”.
Then they ask “when can I play my friends and beat them?”.
The reply “about 1.5 years”.
Then they ask “why?”
Because it takes a long time for the fundamentals to become automatic.
If you were asked to touch your head with your finger, it would be a very easy task to do, yes?
But once upon a time, it was nearly impossible. First, you needed to learn how to move your hands in a way you wanted them to work, you needed to understand language to know what a finger and head was - there was a lot of fundamental motor skills and comprehension of language - a monumental amount of work for someone so young and years of training to make happen
When you spend some time with graduates of Acton Academy, you realise that the path for people to be able to create a place with their own culture, to be able to collaborate together and build courage and the discipline to self govern, isn’t something which can be taught.
It is something which has to be lived and has to be noticed all of which takes many years to master.
This is where the role of the Acton Academy Guide comes in. It is to show or point out what to take notice of. For example, with a group challenge, something some want to do and some do not want to do - a very good question comes up:
Why do I have to do something I don’t want to do?
Because even if you find your ideal life, there will still be problems which come along that you will not want to deal with, that you will have to deal with!
Wouldn’t you prefer to have the character and the constitution necessary to deal these problems?
The Guides role is to ask if the Learners are at Acton to only do fun stuff (which is easy) OR are they here to develop character (which is hard)?
Will you have the courage to risk embarrassing yourself to be part of and grow the tribe (something bigger than yourself) or sit out to not be part of something and not be part of the tribe.
What is the worse that will happen?
What’s the best that will happen?
Do you desire the ability to face any problems that come your way in the future or do you plan to hope problems just go away?
When given a chance, children with the right tools, books to learn from, games to act out working together and discussions where other heroes were put between a rock and a hard place had to overcome and make tough decisions - they can amaze us, but this doesn’t happen overnight, it takes some time to develop and master.
Now the worry isn’t when will it happen? It’s do we have the patience to sit back and enjoy watching it happen….because it will.