If we valued practice in our lives, I believe we would win more in the game of life. I believe practice is a safe place where we stretch ourselves, take calculated risks, enjoy falling on our faces, get back up again, and hopefully laugh at ourselves.
Soccer is one of my favorite sports to play. I like to practice it. I can honestly say I’ve damaged several garage doors, windows, and walls in my life. One thing I love about the sport of soccer is that there are no timeouts in games. Sometimes I’ve heard it phrased as a player’s game. Once the whistle blows, the players play the game. Coaches observe, substitute, and influence from the sidelines. Practice is for coaching; games are where we execute the plan that we practiced. Many times, players get into the game, and they aren’t confident in what they practiced and fall back into their comfortable ways of playing. That’s okay, it’s a process, and that's why we go back to practice before the next game.
When I coach people now, one thing I see is that they don't practice enough. They just assume everything is game time. They either don’t know how to practice or don’t believe in creating practice time. Imagine quitting a sport after just one game and then living the rest of your life saying, "I’m not good at it." Sadly, people do that. One of the most common answers to why people don’t budget their money is that they aren’t good at it. They played the budget game once and quit.
If you find yourself falling into this trap in any area of your life, consider whether you value time to practice more.