Repetitions are essential if you want to improve at something.
Wanna build muscles or get better at pushups?
Repetitions are your friends.
Do pushups after pushups after pushups.
Eventually, you’ll build muscles and get better.
Of course, there are nuances to care for, but we can skip them for the sake of today’s topic.
The same goes for any other thing, be it drawing, dancing, speaking Mandarin, or meditation.
You’ll get better eventually with repetition.
But beware of what you repeat.
It doesn’t matter to our mind or body what we repeat.
If it’s something good, great.
But what if you repeat the wrong shit?
What if you keep telling yourself you suck at Math because you wrote a bad test back in the days and the stupid teacher made a stupid remark?
After dozens of repetitions over time, you created awesome reinforcing loops.
It just sucks, that this one is bad.
And who knows what that tiny thing triggers.
Maybe your self-esteem goes down with every repeat.
And it’s not just physical action, nope, just talking and thinking about something on repeat will reinforce it.
Or you repeat bad parts of your childhood, school, or even traumas.
Every time you talk about it, it gets reinforced.
Do you think you will overcome it if you’ve been talking the same thing for the last 20 years?
That’s the dark loop.
You don’t wanna go there.
So, try not to get there in the first place.
Every time you repeat the Thing, you get close to the loop.
Do you want that?