{"id":16909,"date":"2020-05-21T09:09:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/?p=16909"},"modified":"2020-05-21T09:09:38","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T14:09:38","slug":"the-most-important-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifamnews.com\/en\/the-most-important-dance","title":{"rendered":"The Most Important Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This article originally appeared in SALVO (www.salvomag.com<\/a>) on May 14, 2020; it is reproduced here with permission. \u2013 Ed.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Last Dance<\/em>\u2014this spring\u2019s ESPN documentary covering the 1997-1998 Bulls\u2014has been phenomenally successful. In part, it owes its popularity to the dearth of live sporting events available to watch during the COVID-19 pandemic. But it\u2019s also testament to the continued fascination with success, and specifically with what it takes to succeed at the elite level of professional athletics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Last Dance<\/em> focuses on the career of Michael Jordan\u2014his childhood playing basketball with his brothers in the driveway, his explosion onto the college scene at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and his early draft pick to the then-dismal Chicago Bulls in 1984. What the documentary does perhaps best of all is to tell the story of Jordan\u2019s work ethic, his perseverance, his drive. All of his coaches and teammates tell the same story\u2014he was good because he never stopped working. He never had an \u201coff\u201d game, one wherein he simply wasn\u2019t trying. Every game mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Last Dance<\/em>, it is clear that he saw failure as an opportunity for his team to improve. In the 1997 Nike commercial \u201cFailure,\u201d<\/a> [1]<\/a> Jordan tells the camera, \u201cI\u2019ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I\u2019ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I\u2019ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I\u2019ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a commonly known truth in athletics, and also any number of other fields: to succeed, first you have to fail. Probably a lot. Many are familiar with the \u201c10,000-hour rule,\u201d first popularized by psychologist Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers<\/em><\/a>. Gladwell argues that what makes for greatness in people like Bill Gates, bands like the Beatles, and others, isn\u2019t just an innate talent\u2014though that\u2019s certainly part of it. Most of the \u201coutliers\u201d that Gladwell identifies also have an early opportunity to put in massive amounts of time at their specific \u201cgift\u201d or skill set. Gates, Gladwell demonstrates, had early and frequent access to computer technology. The Beatles\u2019 all-night performances in Hamburg, Germany, gave them the practice they needed to become one of the greatest rock bands in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not just any kind of practice will do. As Vince Lombardi famously quipped, \u201cPractice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.\u201d Or as Gladwell says<\/a>, \u201cThose 10,000 hours must be deliberate practice: focused, intensive, and organized.\u201d [2]<\/a> \u201cWhen Michael Jordan practiced basketball,\u201d Gladwell continues, \u201che did not practice the same way JV high-schoolers practice. He sat down and specifically identified his weaknesses and systematically went about improving them. In the beginning of his career, he was a lousy jump-shooter. By the end of his career, he was one of the best jump-shooters in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to be good at something, you have to put in the effort. You have to be willing to learn from your mistakes, and study to improve on them. Most accept these truths in other fields\u2014athletics, computing, music, and the list goes on. Might there not be a lesson for families in here somewhere? Certainly, seasoned parents have put in far more than 10,000 hours at their job of raising small children. Most spouses have put in more than 10,000 hours at being married. But there is a difference, one suspects, between absent-minded and preoccupied shuffling from work to home to dinner to bed, or of chauffeuring children from one activity to the next, than there is in the deliberate, high-intensity practice of marriage or parenting of the type required when multiple family members are trying to engage at their work (be that job or education) in one space, at the same time. This is \u201cdeliberate practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a personal example, I believe I\u2019m actually improving at being both a wife and mother during this quarantine. This belief flies in the face of countless memes circulating the Internet right now. Am I not supposed to be bedraggled, worn out, drinking chardonnay from a coffee cup by 11 am? I\u2019m tired, to be sure, but I also have no choice but to engage in the very deliberate practice of my family. I see them all day, every day. If I want to survive this\u2014and not just survive, but thrive\u2014then I need to study my children, my other family members. What makes them tick? What causes them to flare up? Is the way I\u2019m dealing with my preschooler\u2019s tantrums really effective? In previous months, I may have just shoved him into his car seat, crying, because we were late to pick up his big brother from school. No longer. I now have all the time in the world to focus on what works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people know that to be good at something, you have to work very hard, very long, and very deliberately at it. You will fail\u2014a lot. Yet, many also assume that somehow relationships should be different. Marriage should just be easy. Parenthood? Well it\u2019s harder, but surely not on par with NBA basketball. Too often, people give up on their marriages, write off their rebellious children as lost causes, throw their hands in the air at a tantrum-throwing preschooler, or turn their backs on a difficult member of their extended family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these are the most important relationships of our lives. They deserve the same undivided attention, the same massive time commitment, the same intentionality and focus that Michael Jordan brought to basketball. Yes, you will fail\u2014a lot. Don\u2019t beat yourself up. Accept it, grow from it, and embrace your God-given family roles.  And then figure out where you need practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cMichael Jordan “Failure” Commercial HD 1080p,\u201d YouTube<\/em> (December 8, 2012), available at https:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=JA7G7AV-LT8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Rich Rosier, interview with Malcolm Gladwell, Linkage<\/em> (February 18, 2011), available at https:\/\/linkageinc.com\/leadership-insights\/malcolm-gladwell-talks-about-the-secrets-of-success\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How to Make the 10,000-Hour Rule Work for Your Family Today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":16918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"How to Make the 10,000-Hour Rule Work for Your Family Today","format":"standard","video":"","gallery":"","source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override":[{"single_blog_custom":"","sidebar":"","second_sidebar":"","share_position":"","share_float_style":"","post_date_format":"","post_date_format_custom":"","post_reading_time_wpm":"","zoom_button_out_step":"1","zoom_button_in_step":"1","number_popup_post":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"","single_post_gallery_size":""}],"trending_post_position":"","trending_post_label":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[510],"tags":[3615],"class_list":["post-16909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-the-last-dance"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Most Important Dance - 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King is the Managing Editor of IOF's journal, The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy, the United States\u2019 leading journal of family-policy research. In that capacity, she writes, edits and corresponds with editors and contributors to ensure that each issue provides the most relevant and accurate research and policy analysis available. Nicole holds a B.A. in English as well as M.A.s in English and Political Theory. She has contributed to The Front Porch Republic and Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, among others. 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