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Practice

To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. You "never arrive"; you spend your life mastering disciplines. You can never say, "We are a learning organization," any more than you can say, "I am an enlightened person." The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance. Thus, a corporation cannot be "excellent" in the sense of having arrived at a permanent excellence; it is always in the state of practicing the disciplines of learning, of becoming better or worse. (Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline)

It was reported that the great American author Sinclair Lewis was once asked to give a lecture on writing to a group of college students: "Looking out at this gathering," he said to the assembled students, "makes me want to know how any of you really and truly wish to become writers." Every hand in the room went up. Lewis looked at them for a moment and then folded his notes and put them away. "If that's true," he said, "then the best advice I can give you is to go home and write." And he left the room.

You can't hire someone to practice for you. (Kevin Eikenberry)

My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, that it follows from it that, in working associations into your pupils' minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as much as possible. Couple the desired reaction with numerous constellations of antecedents,--don't always ask the question, for example, in the same way; don't use the same kind of data in numerical problems; vary your illustrations, etc., as much as you can. When we come to the subject of memory, we shall learn still more about this. (William James, Talks to Teachers)

A practice (as a noun) can be anything you practice on a regular basis as an integral part of your life--not in order to gain something else, but for its own sake. It might be a sport or a martial art. It might be gardening or bridge or yoga or meditation or community service. A doctor practices medicine and an attorney practices law, and each of them also has a practice. But if that practice is only a collection of patients or clients, a way of making a living, it isn't a master's practice. For a master, the rewards gained along the way are fine, but they are not the main reason for the journey. (George Leonard, Mastery)

Unlike rubber bands, we humans become stronger through constant stretching. If we stretch a rubber band too far, it will either break or weaken and lose its elasticity. When we stretch beyond what may seem to be our limits--when we take daring risks--we may not succeed, but we become stronger. We never go back to the same shape we were in previously.

There's another secret: The people we know as masters don't devote themselves to their particular skill just to get better at it. The truth is, they love to practice--and because of this they do get better. And then, to complete the circle, the better they get the more they enjoy performing the basic moves over and over again. (George Leonard, Mastery)

To take the master's journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so--and this is the inexorable fact of the journey--you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (George Leonard, Mastery)

For one who is on the master's journey, however, the word is best conceived of as a noun, not as something you do, but as something you have, something you are. In this sense, the word is akin to the Chinese word tao and the Japanese word do, both of which mean, literally road or path. Practice is the path upon which you travel, just that. (George Leonard, Mastery)

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