New shit is hard. Regardless of how much life experience you have, being thrown into something without a frame of reference is going to make you feel like a novice. That's ok, because guess what, you ARE a fucking novice.

Life isn't like the movies where the great hero gets excepted into the wizard school/ninja dojo/secret society/robot lab/street racing gang and is just naturally better than most of the veterans. Life doesn't work that way.

I was thinking about something that happened today, and it got me remembering when I first learned martial arts. The guy teaching me also happened to have a degree in kinesiology. Needless to say, he was very fucking picky, to the point where I was getting frustrated.

I finally got a punch the way he liked it, and I was ecstatic. Thank Fucking God, I thought. We can finally move on. He wanted to see another one. Fine. I threw another punch. "Nope!" he said. "Terrible.Try again."

He saw the look on my face, and that was when he explained something to me that has stuck with me through the rest of my life, and that I have heard repeated by many people in many different businesses, arts, and sports.

The first time you get something, that is going to feel great. But after that, you will most likely ONLY REPEAT THAT GOOD RESULT ONE OUT OF TEN TIMES.

Now for certain things, that is going to be the norm. For other things, it could be more, or less. But the point is, you are going to have a starting point.

He continued to explain to me that afterwards, you will improve slowly. First you will get 1 out of 10 tries, then 3 out of 10, then work up to 7, maybe you hit a wall here, push through, and then eventually, it will become natural to you. Like breathing or walking.

Now, back to the title of this post. Holding frame. The first time I did this, I felt amazing. I felt like a new fucking man. Then what happened? I failed. I lost frame a lot. I felt pathetic. But I kept at it. I've been at it for 6 months.

Today at work, I was telling a story about an ex gf to some girls, and stumbled over the word her. Some coworker said that I had said him. I was in an immature enough environment that the other guys started joking about it. My confidence was at stake! *gasp! This is the exact reason that I had been afraid to talk to people for years. What a stupid reason.

What did I do? I said that I had gotten confused because she was a transvestite. That is was awesome because I always had something to keep both hands busy. I got a lot of laughs, the girls saw that I gave no shits about some lame ass trying to degrade my masculinity, and I got back to my fucking story.

Hopefully everyone spotted this as Agree and Amplify. This wasn't a particularly good one. BUT, the thing is, that today, I did it WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT IT. It was a natural reaction, like breathing or walking. No thought necessary. And I realized that I have been doing correctly most of the time for a while, without even noticing.

And that's the point of this post. Repetition creates improvement. Pretty simple, right? Yeah it took me six months, but I can be a slow learner. The point is to stick with it for as long as it takes.

So, lets say that you are throwing 3 punches a day, or approaching 3 woman a day, or maybe three potential clients. Whatever your goal is. How fast are you going to learn?

Not very fucking fast. If you are stuck on say 3 out of 10 successes, and you want to have 7 out of 10, how do you get there quickly. BY PRACTICING WHATEVER IT IS YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE. In most cases, that is the fastest way to get good at something. Reading is great, talking is great, but practice makes perfect.

So remember, at first, you are going to feel liberated, and insanely cool. Then, you are going to realize that you are competing in a mans world now, with men who have been behaving this way a lot longer than you have, and woman who have been hit on by guys with a lot better frame and SMV than you.

That's fine. Count your successes, forget you mistakes. Or fuck, count your mistakes too, so you can see how many out of 10 you can get. Make a chart. Graph your progress. Whatever you goal is, find a way to figure out if you're improving, and what you could be doing better.

Over time, you are going to find that your successes become more and more common, until they don't even register to you anymore.

It will just be you going about your day, being awesome.