Beginning: Why You Need to Know What You’re Doing

“If you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.” ~ Moshe Feldenkrais

“Awareness is the first tool of change.” ~ Arturo Peal

Sometimes you can play the game of fake it ’til you make it. You can make it up as you go along, and hope that it all goes well. I’m not an enormous fan of winging it. My MO is to plan, plot, and prepare. In the past year, I have let go of some of that. I do feel a little more at ease taking life as it comes when there simply is no other option. Winging it is still a last resort for me.

Practice helps
I believe there is something really powerful about the art of practice. Through discipline we continuously improve and build an awareness that helps refine our skills. The goal of practice isn’t to be perfect; it’s to be the best version of ourselves at every moment. When we are aware we are always in a state of learning. It’s a virtuous cycle: the more aware we become, the more we learn, and the more we learn, the better we become in our chosen field.

Choose your direction
It’s that idea of our chosen field that came to find when Arturo shared Moshe Feldenkrais’s famous saying, and then added his own thoughts about awareness as the prime tool to generate change. It’s an especially relevant concept for teachers. Teaching is a performance, and yes, you absolutely need to roll with the punches. However, it’s much easier to roll with those punches if you know what you’re doing, at least in a broad sense if not specifically. When I was in business school at Darden, I could always tell who was a seasoned master case method teacher. Their delivery, commentary, and ability to steer the conversation without stifling the students’ creativity always impressed me. Their practice over many years made all the difference.

I consider all of the times in my life when I’ve been really frustrated, when I’m just not sure what to do next or how to get out of the rut I so much want to leave behind. There’s nothing that gets me down more than the feeling that I’m spinning my wheels to no avail. These moments find me most often when I just don’t know what I’m doing. This feeling attacks my confidence and sense of ease. If I can just take a deep breath, crank up my awareness, and recall when I’ve been in a similar situation before, I can begin to find my way one step at a time. My confidence builds, my ease returns, and I begin to do the work I want to do.

You can prepare to adapt
Preparation and improvisation don’t need to be mutually exclusive. I’m beginning to see that our ability to effectively prepare while also being able to handle unexpected change is the very best way of living. To take our lives in the direction we want them to go, we need to know which road to take even if we don’t know all the turns that will crop up along the way. Our preparation helps us choose the right road. Our ability to adapt helps us navigate the inevitable twists and turns.