I'm learning Georgian, the language. It's a nightmare! It's hideous. This squiggly alphabet that is like no other. These weird consonants, that sound like someone is performing a Heimlich Manoeuvre upon you, and that they string together in groups of three.
I do two online, one-hour classes a week and it's torture. At 45 minutes, I'm begging for it to end. Trying to read this weird language, every word takes me ages. I feel like a 6-year old kid back at school and I'm bottom of the class, the dumbest!
But I keep going. Why? Because I have learned that it is all about reps. All that stuff about aptitude and talent and looks - it's all just marketing BS. That is the stuff we fall prey to when we don't want to do the reps. The promise of a short cut. This I have learned. In truth, ability comes down to reps and consistency - nothing else.
Slowly, I can read Georgian. Very slowly, I can speak it. Little by little, millimetres at a time, I make progress.
I wanted to share this story with you. Bioenergetics and Reichian exercises are programs that run in our body. If you do the reps, if you run the programs - you get the result. If you stop, you don't. It's all about reps. It's all about consistency.
For me, it helps to see clearly that there is no other way. Like that, I don't give energy to my mind's fantasies about short cuts and alternatives and I can just do my reps.
(This piece was originally sent to participants of my online courses, The Journey and Reichian Breathwork, as part of my “Monday Motivation” email series).