Category: politics

One of my favourite poems is ‘you get proud by practising’ By Laura Hershey.

Those tiny actions that you repeat every day?

They change you.

Your tiny daily actions change your muscles and posture—ever seen the way a cellist or violinist holds their head at the dinner table?

They way you regularly think changes the way your mind works.

People who do systematic work become increasingly technical.

People who learn a style of deductive reasoning such as lawyers become increasingly bound by rules and logic.

Your speech and communication habits change your relationships.

Have you ever noticed how many psychologists have similar communication techniques or attitudes?  Or how teachers adopt a particular metre when speaking to 5 year olds?

Have you ever been talked down to by someone when they should have been talking up to you?

Your tiny repeated actions don’t just change what you do everyday, they change fundamental aspects of how you are in the world. They change your identity and your internal processes.

So my advice, for anyone really is to pick something to learn.

Could be a language, could be a way of walking, could be a skill, could be a craft, could be a body of knowledge, could be a sport, could be just about anything:

But pick something, and work on it for 5 minutes on a regular basis.

In time, I almost guarantee you’ll be really proud of yourself and how far you’ve come.

And I’ll be proud of you, too.

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