The Power of Repetition
Have you ever wondered how we learned to speak, to write, to be good at something? Does it depend on our environment or our genes have the bigger impact? Or maybe our financial situation is the determining factor?
A, B, C, …
The secret ingredient in everything we can and do is repetition. Few of us have vivid first-grade memories, but we can all agree that we wrote the letters one by one until we got bored. And as far as I know it is still so. And it will always be, because in order to master something to perfection we have to repeat it many, many times. But why is this necessary?
Memory
When we repeat an action, we actually create connections between the neurons in our brain. And the more repetitions we do, the stronger these connections become, until we get to the point where we perform the action automatically. And almost everything we do happens automatically. Before that, however, there were a lot of repetitions that took us where we are now.
Exercises
Any of us who know how to drive can confirm that in the beginning we drove very slowly and extremely carefully. After a while, and countless repetitions, driving became smoother and more enjoyable. And today we can do at least three more things while driving. How did we get here? Repetition, repetition, repetition.
We all know that the best athletes exercise for a few hours almost every day. They become so good at their sport that many of the things they do seem impossible to us. But this is normal for them because they have developed their skills to perfection.
Habits
With this information, we can learn literally any skill and turn it into a habit:
to speak another language
to drive
to be the best in our profession
to speak calmly and confidently in front of others
to get rid of our bad habits and replace them with positive ones
The great Jim Rohn said that "success is just a few simple disciplines practiced every day." And if we really want to be good at something, we only need to put in practice the power of repetition!