What’s the most underrated life skill?
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Juggling. Because there is absolutely no way to learn it without failing thousands of times. It’s not the dexterity, but the tenacity, that is of value. Not to mention the lessons of neither rushing nor overreaching that it teaches. Some balls must be left to drop.
If one fails and one tries again, one will make course corrections. Keep repeating that cycle, and one is bound to home in on success.
Psychologically, I think juggling is a fantastic skill to practice because one must fail a million times and keep going. Furthermore, one must learn to choose failure over a spastic success (and condition that behavior in on the fly.) By this I mean, one must learn to let the ball drop rather than lunging to make a frantic catch, because if you are always making wild reaches, you’ll never achieve a smooth, natural rhythm. In other words, a catch that keeps the ball in the air for one or two more throws is not truly a success if it trains a wobbly, unsustainable movement pattern. More generally, one must redefine what constitutes success or failure at a fundamental level.
