When I was younger, a good five years of my life was spent skateboarding.
But I didn’t get into it straight away – I got into it via rollerblading, the far “less cool” cousin of skateboarding (unless you’re a rollerblader, then it still seems cooler. It’s a relative thing I guess).
When I was still a rollerblader, I remember going to an indoor skate-rink. There was a bunch of small ramps that we’d go over, and then one huge half-pipe in the back.
One day, Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirits is playing, and I must have been gee’d up, so I headed over to this big ramp. I decided I was going to learn to “drop in” on it.
“Dropping in” is when you go up to the top of the ramp, toe the edge, and go into it. You need to commit fully, because if you don’t, then your weight won’t be centered, and you’ll eat it.
I stood up there for what must have been five minutes.
For some reason – Maybe it was because the song had now changed to TLC “Chasing waterfalls,” – I knew suddenly it was time to go.
I leaned forward, over the edge, and almost instantly found myself on my face on the ground. I could hear the sound of all the kids gasping, watching, and pointing at once. But not really helping. Funny that.
I peeled myself off the ground, and hobbled off, ego destroyed, and sat on the bench for a while.
I lacked the killer instinct.
When you drop in, you need a killer instinct. In his book “The War of Art,” Pressfield teaches us that the “resistance” we feel is always strongest right at the end – right when I was about to drop in.
He teaches us that the “killer instinct” is what we need to destroy this part. To stay entered and finish the job. To not walk back down the ramp, and, to not botch the job in the final stages.
While it sounds gruesome, a lot of the times the goals that we have are well within reach, we just need a bit of the killer instinct to crush the internal resistance at the end.
