Five Minute Fridays – If I knew I could, I would…

The Gypsy Mama has a cool feature on her blog. Every Friday she sets a topic, and anyone who wants can write a blog post inspired by that theme and link it back to her blog.

There’s just one stipulation: you have to write for five minutes only and…not go back and revise or edit afterwards.

That seems like a good exercise, so I thought I’d join in once in a while, and this is my first ‘while’.

Today’s theme is ‘If I knew I could, I would…’ and this is my response:

If I knew I could, I would…

That challenge has never really meant anything to me. I’ve always been able to do more or less anything I turn my hand to. Sorry if that makes me sound smug, but it’s true.

My problem is, doing something excellently.

Because I was always able to get to an acceptable standard with no effort, I never really learned to expend effort. I remember a teacher once saying to me ‘You’re just doing enough to keep me satisfied, aren’t you? I know you’re bored really though, so why not ask me for something more challenging to do?’

It was a wonderful gesture. But it was too late – I had set myself into a pattern where I didn’t even notice the boredom any more. What else was there to strive for – if I was getting all the answers right, what more could there be?

There’s a theory going round at the moment that we can all achieve pretty much anything we want simply by working at it for 10,000 hours. I read recently about someone who’s learning golf to test this theory. He doesn’t have any natural golfing talent, but he’s working at it for 10,000 hours to see where he gets to.

So the real question is, what do I care enough about to devote 10,000 hours to? If I knew the outcome would be amazing beyond my imaginings, what would I put in the time, effort and self-discipline to do? What would you?

To read more 5-Minute Fridays, click here.