If I want to become better at something, I must accept poor results, especially in the beginning. Facing one's own mediocrity is the toughest part of practicin

If I want to become better at something, I must accept poor results, especially in the beginning. Facing one's own mediocrity is the toughest part of practicing. It's almost a magic process because you can spend so much time feeling like it's going nowhere -- even for days or weeks at a time -- but then somehow, one day, you're able to handily do things that used to seem impossible or out of reach. I don't know how it works, but I like it! [I] avoid certain things - to preserve a day by day individual status quo. Everyone does that to some extent. There are a few parts of the essay that talk about it: We can't write off the danger of complacency, growing rigidity, imprisonment by our own comfortable habits and opinions. Look around you. How many people whom you know well -- people even younger than yourselves --are already trapped in fixed attitudes and habits. A famous French writer said "There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives." Everyone fails, Joe Louis said "Everyone has to figure to get beat some time." The question isn't did you fail but did you pick yourself up and move ahead? And there is one other little question: "Did you collaborate in your own defeat?" A lot of people do. Learn not to. But my favourite quote is: You never get the impression that a cow is about to have a nervous breakdown.