I reached out to a few peers asking what I should write about.
One of the responses I received was:
I would like to learn more about how you deal with setbacks. What’s inspired you to overcome obstacles or see things through different perspectives.
TL;DR:
When I see them as setbacks, I whine and complain, then I will eventually breathe, detach, and zoom tf out, and hopefully see something different.
Long answer:
Then I remember something, sometimes it’s Elsa (“let it go”), sometimes it’s Stitch (does Stitch need to go in the ship? Can Stitch say goodbye?), sometimes it’s randomness that my brain has stuffed into the mental folder of this category (Rubik’s Cube, bicycling, driving, kettlebells, etc.)
Setbacks remind me that I had invested myself into the process and the outcome of certain parts of my journey. I have to remember to breathe and detach.
It’s like wanting really bad to get that …
– 5th rep of a kettlebell press in a set, but only having that 3rd rep clean and knowing that the 4th and 5th reps are going to be sloppy
– wanting to get all green traffic lights on the way home but missing the signal progression long before the end and needing to have all red traffic lights the rest of the way.
– nine out of nine on that one side of a Rubik’s cube, but then realizing it needs to get scrambled again.
I’m going to use the Rubik’s Cube (3×3) as the main example here.
Back in middle school, during a summer break, is when I learned from a book “Mastering the Rubik’s Cube” by Don Taylor.
It illustrated a “layer by layer” method to solving the puzzle. The layers are like slicing the cube at the horizontal lines = .
This means one side gets completed, then that becomes the bottom layer, then using movement patterns we position and orient the pieces in the middle layer, then position the pieces of the top (final) layer before finishing it with orienting the top layer.
It can be distilled into a 6 stage process, frequent observations of orientation, deciding which memorized movement patterns to apply to the goal of the stage, acting out the movement patterns.
Now, since we’re humans, there is a lot of unlearning after a phase of learning.
We work so hard for that first side to get completed.
Then we need to drill that problem solving process in order to bring it from unconscious inexperience all the way to unconscious experience, but that requries letting go (Elsa) of the current moment and using that experience to refine the next moment.
It’s not just a setback.
It’s also a new puzzle to solve, reframed to be deliberate play with a 104:100 challenge to skill ratio where the big goal is broken into scaffold levels that step up at that 4% increase on the new baseline. I would also need to find ways to keep me cross pollinating it to other disciplines.
K3 Combat Movement Systems
“3 Kings of Programming
1. Is it beneficial?
2. Is it fun?
3. Is it engagingly challenging?
If my goal is to acclimate to finishing that first layer of the Rubik’s Cube, then I am also practicing how to intentionally fail.
This is not like failing a PR lift at the gym, but more like planning and drilling the abort protocol before making the attempt.
I used to take what felt like forever sitting with a cube that had one side done, dreading the need to scramble it so I can do another rep.
So I changed that perspective again, using a perspective best described by a StrongFirst principle:
“Your setup is your first rep.”
Getting that one side of the cube is the setup.
The work for the rep is the scramble that follows.
Now, my mind is feeling like I’ve rambled far too long and I should probably stop here before this enters another long phase of rambling.
How could I have made this better for your experience so that I can improve for you before next time?
DrivingStrength 