Apply Fully What You Learn Or Intend to Use

Our muscles lose their tone through time. Unless regularly stimulated, our sinews lose strength, power and flexibility. To reduce the degenerative process, we need to constantly exercise them by making the muscles work harder. This applies to gross (large) muscles as well as fine muscles in our body. Having practised sleight of hand magic for almost 20 years, I think my hands are as delicate and strong as a guitarist or pianist.

Tonight, I enjoyed a 2-hour magic lecture by Japanese, Shoot Ogawa. He is a very talented, skillful and international creative performer. In the international community, his reputation for performing illusions with knuckle-busting, hardcore, sleight of hand is almost unparalleled. His specialty is with cards, coins and the Chinese Linking Rings (where metallic rings link and unlink at will). He continues to improve on existing ideas and raise the bar of difficulty and amazement.

After the lecture, I spoke with fellow magicians – mostly amateurs – and discussed some of Shoot's signature difficult moves. One of them said that using the move was challenging. My response was, if he had a use for it, keep practising that move until he attained mastery over it. Otherwise, it was a pointless move to pursue. You can keep fit running on a treadmill, but the view outdoors would be vastly spectacular. Or else, you can get fit swimming, cycling, trekking and paddling.

Too often we are caught in a relentless pursuit of our dreams – and that is fine. However, if you do not achieve some of these, eventually, you will invariably be disappointed. Why learn something unless you have a real use for it? Apply it, and discover more uses for it. If there is an easier, more effective method, consider learning and using it. If you attend swim correction classes, you will still need to practise the new strokes to reinforce the new patterns. Likewise, if you not apply any new technique for running your posture tends to adopt positions that are comfortable - sticking to what it already knows and recognizes.

Learn, unlearn, and relearn. Use it, or lose it.

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I encouraged two magicians to participate in a 10K race in October, and they signed up. They include the magician I challenged to increase his 8K-limit to 10K. I suggested that once they earned their first race t-shirt and medal, they might be keen to improve their timing. One of them was wearing Nike FREE shoes and he said that they felt like running relatively unsupported (barefoot?). He believed that he is benefitting from running in these shoes.