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January 1, 2000
Our next door neighbor was having a small, neighborhood, New Year's Day party. They’re an extremely sweet and talented family, three kids -- one boy and two girls. The oldest boy is John. He’s about ten years old and is a real nice kid, but a bit of an intellectual, not playing on any sports team.

The other two girls are more athletically inclined and one of the girls, Rose, indicated she’d be interested in learning how to juggle. So, I ran back home, got some juggling balls and was showing her the basics of juggling.

At some point John, the boy, came in the room so I asked him the obvious question, "John would you like to learn how to juggle?" He answered, “No, I could never juggle. I’m not coordinated enough. I'm a klutz.“ This kid, as smart as he is, at just ten years of age, is trapped by his own self-belief, his own self-concept. And you knows he’s right if he allows that belief to rule his life. So I said, "John, do you have an extra five minutes a day?"He said, “Sure."

So I said, "Let me run home and get you some juggling balls and if you can spend just five minutes a day in practice, you can learn to juggle in a week." I went home got the juggling balls and in a short period of time he was doing pretty good, actually better than his sister, the athletic one.

It’s shame that we start defining ourselves, putting ourselves in boxes, and start wearing that a straight jacket of ideas, as early as 5 and 6 and 7 years old. Unfortunately for many people we also never attempt to get out of the box again.

At little aside to this story. I had John's dad over to the house one night and we were talking about skiing. He mentioned that he was a certified klutz and couldn’t do anything like that. The irony is that he’s an emergency room doctor with excellent skills when it comes to gunshot wounds and stabbings and every sort of emergency that might walk in the door. He is a tremendously skilled person, and yet he still uses the label, certified klutz, and guess who has picked up the lingo -- his son, John.

I kidded Dave at the time, and I said, "Oh yeah I know when I walk into an emergency with blood gushing out, I’ll make sure I ask for the klutzy doctor. Is Dr. Klutz in the ER? We have an emergency."

What’s the only difference between being a highly skilled emergency room doctor and a highly skilled skier? Practice, practice, practice. Just as John measures himself against the kids who have played ball every day of their life, so Dave measures himself against the skier who have been skiing for 15 years.

As Henry Ford once said,
" Whether you think you can or think you can't -- you're right."