Thursday, February 11, 2010

Practice Makes Permanent!

I was watching the superbowl this week and cringed as I listened to the National Anthem. For some reason, Carrie Underwood did it live. Weird! I thought they usually lip synced the anthem to prevent the singer from falling on her face?…Not this time though. She definitely started it too high for her range…or too low…or something…Not sure. Actually it sounded like it was too low for her on the bottom and too high for her on the top! Maybe it just wasn’t her song. I always thought that she was a good singer. I mean…she’s pretty! (Isn’t that what a good singer is these days?…either that, or a drug addict/cutter…there doesn’t seem to be much in between- in the pop or country industry at least!) Clearly, poor Carrie worked for years and years on her sound. She likely had been practicing since she was a little girl. Oops…somehow she had been practicing a pinched off, screamy, nasal sound that was uncomfortable to listen too. Now, I understand that this may sound a little harsh, and also a little jealous coming from a singer who isn’t a famous grammy winner…BUT…my point is that sometimes people spend their lives working on something with no basis of knowledge about how to actually do it. In this case, she practiced singing that song in a way that was intolerable to listen to. They always say that practice makes perfect, but if you practice it all wrong, practice simply makes permanent!- permanently wrong!


This concept applies to everything that we do. Sports are the same! If I were to take a softball bat and work by myself in my back yard with a pitching machine 14 hours a day, would I become a great softball player?…probably not! I would likely learn to become really great at dodging out of the way of the ball due to the fact that I have no idea how to swing a bat. Without the proper training, practice is useless.

You may say that dating can fall into the same pitfalls. How many people date tons of people who are incompatible and mistreat them? Does this make them good at dating?…or only good at being bad at dating?…

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