American Idol

Jan works with a guy who is supposed to sing on American Idol. So she told me he was going to be on the local TV news at 7am today, singing at a bagel shop as part of some thing they do where their roving reporter goes to local businesses and events early in the morning. They're at the bagel shop and dressed up in their bagel suits, dancing around and we're waiting to see her co-worker.
You can guess what happened. No singer.
She called me from work to tell me that the guy had overslept. Now, here's a guy who's excited and "really looking forward" to his big chance. Talk about self-sabotage. I think I'd have had three alarm clocks, hired people to call me and come to my house to make sure I was up.
How often do we do things like this to ourselves? And why? I've seen this a hundred times in my teaching career. People get right up to where they are about to succeed and then, poof, they quit. Is it a fear of success or responsibility? And there's the people who take lessons and don't practice at all. It seems some of them walk out the door and don't give it a second thought until they come back for class. Sure there are some who do and even some who make it anyway despite not practicing and all, but they are few and far between. The capper is when they blame us, as teachers, for their failure. I even had a mother ask me why her son wasn't promoted once and when I asked her how much he was practicing she looked at me with an incredulous look and said, "Practice? We don't let him practice." Hmm. Wonder why I didn't promote him.
One of the great things about martial arts is that it gives us an opportunity to know ourselves better. Get a little introspective, you may be surprised.