Living on the Edge

In a web of blogs relating to each other via the topic of failure, I came across this quote from here:

"I’ve come to understand that if I’m not making mistakes it means I’m not trying hard enough, and I’m not pushing myself far enough."

It reminded me of my efforts to learn to snowboard a few years ago. I grew up skiing and cannot remember anything about the process of learning to ski. As far as my memory is concerned, it has always been a natural process. However, through high school, an urge to snowboard grew up in me. I finally decided to give it a shot the winter of my freshman year of college. The first time was when AJ, my roommate, and I went by ourselves on a Friday night. It was a complete struggle the entire night and I learned very little about how to snowboard. Due to my epic failure on the smallest slope, I never attempted to advance beyond it to any of the more difficult slopes.

Then came spring break. I went with a group out to Colorado for four solid days of snowboarding at Copper Mountain. I was still determined to learn how to snowboard because as I've stated, I do not give up easily. It turns out Colorado does not have very many flat slopes for beginners to learn on. It also turns out that snowboarding is easier with a mediocre decline than a minimal decline. The process of skiing makes it easier to go straight down the hill than to turn or go across it. Snowboarding is the exact opposite. The slopes in Colorado forced me to go beyond my comfort zone, pick up a little speed, and just go for it. I most certainly fell my fair share of times and I had some impressive wipeouts including one Superman launch down the hill in which I even managed to get snow in my goggles. However, by the time the trip was over, I was halfway decent at snowboarding. I even went down a black diamond before I left.

Just last month, I went skiing with my girlfriend, Jess. She had never gone skiing before so I had to actually think about what I do when I ski so I could relay the information on to her. It helped that the resort was out of snowboard rentals which forced me to go skiing as well. It turns out I still have my skills by the way. I only wiped out a few times and it came from me really pushing myself by trying stupid things. Back to the point, Jess learned some of the basics pretty easily, but kept having problems learning to stop mid-slope. This is an important skill to prevent one's self from running over somebody who wipes out in front of them. However, after a couple more hours on the bunny slope and she still was not getting it. Finally, I told her she was coming with my friend and I on the larger, more difficult slopes. The idea was essentially to push her to the edge where she started to lose control. Essentially, it was to scare her enough to really start trying. It worked amazingly well. Within a few runs, she was starting to turn far better than she had been.

Sometimes, we just need to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. When someone is in water deeper than them, their effort to keep their head above water greatly increases. If you are not challenging yourself, then you probably are not learning anything new. The purpose of school is to guide people along into new situations. However, when we are not in school, the responsibility falls on ourselves. So stop holding yourself back and start living on the edge!