The Power of Repetition. Practice Makes Progress!

One of the best ways to learn to love well is to love yourself and the people already in your life. This includes your boss, that client, your in-laws, cousins, employees and the people cleaning the toilets at work or serving your coffee at the drive-through!

It's not always easy to treat everyone well because people can be unpredictable.

However, being a loving person is worth practising.

Nearly everything that we do well is due to practice which means repetitive behaviour. We need to do it many times until it becomes automatic.

How clever of God to give us a brain that can learn to do the right thing over and over and over again. It doesn't take a lot of energy once you get the hang of it. It's a little bit like learning to hit a tennis ball.

Casual vs Intentional Practice

If you only hit a tennis ball every now and again you probably won't be very good at it. However, if you do five minutes every day, like my dad advised, you will be amazed at how good you will get, in what appears to be a short time.

My dad taught me to practice tennis shots against a brick wall. I didn't have to rely on someone else to practice with. I went from no grade to A grade!

My mother got me to practice throwing netballs against the wall at school. Fast balls, slow balls, loop balls and bounce balls. Before long, I became a very competitive netball player.

Practice Is More Than Sports

How can we take the practice of repeating sports activities into other behaviours in life? Let me give you some ideas…

Practice apologising before you go to sleep at night. You will stop justifying your poor behaviour and feel like you can start fresh the next day. My mum always said it’s better to stay up and fight than to go to bed upset or angry.

Practice gratitude, saying thank you whenever someone serves or helps you. You become a nicer person to be around. People feel valued and appreciated when they do something to help you.

Even try to double your use of ‘thank you” throughout the day! Instead of being double trouble you will become known as being twice as nice!

Practice discipline and organisational skills by making your bed first thing in the morning. You will become more organised all day.

Practice health & wellness habits. Energise your body by jumping for 15 seconds as soon as you get out of bed to get your blood circulation pumping. You’ll feel more alive!

Practice body strength habits. Just lifting your own weight makes you strong. Start with wall push-ups, move on to seated push-ups to kneeling ones to planking or normal push-ups when you’ve built enough arm strength. healthline.com/health/push-ups-for-beginners#5-types-of-pushups

Practice Every Day Activities

What are the things that you can practise to make you good at everyday activities? What ways of thinking do you need to practice?

Practise setting goals. Practise using a diary. Practise keeping notes and ideas. Practice saving money. Establish habits to transfer small change into your savings account daily. Recycle cans and bottles and deposit the money you receive to a savings account. Practice expanding your vocabulary by learning and using different words.eg invigorating, fascinating and extraordinary. Practice saying kind things. Be intentional and prepare nice things to say to the people you’ll meet the next day. Write letters or cards of encouragement to people you don’t see every day. Show people appreciation for the mundane tasks they do that would be noticed if they were not done properly. Reach out to the IT department to thank them when everything is working.

Do The Right, Small Habits Often

Intentionally practising small daily habits are vital to living a more satisfying and meaningful life. It’s the patterns of our lives that help us to rise or fall. Certain rituals that we establish in our lives can produce some remarkable outcomes.

We are building our lives one day at a time, one hour at a time, one interaction at a time. We build a relationship one conversation at a time. What we do in each moment matters.

If you want your life to change, start by identifying high-value, low-value, and no-value habits. Once you know which of your habits fit into these three categories you can decide which ones to deliberately repeat, reduce or remove.

Repeatedly practice habits that support values that matter to who you are (or want to be) and the life you want to build.

Quotes on Repeat 

More Food For Thought...

"Repetition makes reputation." ― Elizabeth Arden

“Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” ― Zig Ziglar

"The eight laws of learning are explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition." — John Wooden

“Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex."  — Norman Vincent Peale

“The repetition of small efforts will accomplish more than the occasional use of great talents." —  Charles Spurgeon