What's wrong with easy?

Does it preclude excellence ?

„What is wrong with easy?“ is a sentence that has taken on enormous importance in my life.

I guess I had thought that the only accomplishments that would be worthy of earning acknowledgement and respect would be achievements that are hard to earn, and most importantly, through a painfully difficult process.

I don’t remember what it was that I recounted as having been easy and, therefore, unworthy of validity. That is when Terril, my kind listener, supporter and gently probing psychologist said: SO WHAT IS WRONG WITH EASY?

I definitely came from the school of thought that any failure was due to my own inability, my clumsiness, my lack of talent, my physical limits.

As I became more familiar with practice methods and breaking the task at hand into smaller components, I realized that even the components that were practiced could actually be broken down into even smaller components that would allow the learner to integrate all of the tiny, easy components together into an easy stream of micro components. Since all of them became easy, the sum of them would add up to being not just easy to perform , but also ENJOYABLE AND EASY!!!

Easy can easily be discounted

Easy and fun cannot lead to excellence

Anything that is worthwhile has to be complicated and hard

If the achievement is small it is not worth celebrating

Well, that “what’s wrong with easy” has turned into: If it is not easy the process is wrong!

A learned behavior captivates all the emotions experienced while acquiring the desired skill/behavior.

If the learning experience itself is filled with fear or frustration of any kind, it is much less likely to be performed with relaxed ease or pleasure.

If you are obsessed with achieving the goal behavior and coaxing the learner beyond capacity, then you cannot build a solid behavior chain. If the learner cannot internalize each increment of a chain of behaviors with ease then it would be unreasonable to expect the learner to execute the behavior under any kind of pressure or in a distracting environment.

Taking all this into consideration: Being able to perform hard things has to be easy and built as a chain of easily connected component behaviors.

If it is not easy you cannot relax.

If you cannot relax you cannot observe or think and be in touch with your sensations.

You cannot be expressive, you cannot be confident or authentic.

Authenticity breeds confidence. Confidence breeds simplicity. Simple and easy breeds success. Success breeds success.

Think about the process and not the result. Think about how many easy and fun experiences all strung together will make a veritable celebration of ease! The execution will be excellent

and easy and joyous.

Speaking for myself: I now know that it is not my fault that I was afraid, felt clumsy or inadequate: It was the way I was taught. I can truly see it .

This post is dedicated to Terril Gagnier and Dick Robertiello without whom I would not be who I have become,