Chicken or the Egg?

When a player in sport is in form it is a funny thing. An in form batter will consistently score a lot of runs, a footballer will score lots of goals, a basketballer lots of points, etc. Once in form, he or she maintains an undeniable confidence within themselves; a belief that the next shot will go in, no matter what sort of pressure the opposition applies. And to reaffirm their confidence, the shot goes in. So it’s easy to see how form stays once it is there. But what starts it? How does a sportsman hit a rich vein of form?  Was it a string of good wins that filled the team with confidence or was there a newfound belief or positive attitude reached before the first win? Which came first?

As they say 'form is temporary; class is permanent' and going out of form is a similar process: just replace belief with doubt, and success with failure. Some months ago I felt like I was on a hot streak of writing good blogs. The whole time I was trying to write an epic trilogy of a story to post. However, by the time I finished it, after weeks and eventually months of stalling and slacking off, I lost confidence in its quality. This caused me to lose faith in my blogs and in turn the quality of my blogs dropped.

But should I be surprised? The quality could be directly related to my lack of belief...but I think there is another step that I’m ignoring. Back then I had blogs lined up for posting and I put in a lot more work into them, so it’s no surprise they were better than this one, which is lucky to get one edit. So after losing a bit of confidence due to one failure I stopped putting so much effort into my work and feel sad about how I’m not writing like I was back in the good old days.

So form may be temporary, but the point of that saying is the second half - Class is permanent. I think Tiger Woods sums it up best with this quote:

“He works so hard off the court to be prepared, to go the distance to win. It's just frightening how hard this guy works.”

He is talking about Roger Federer.

- Eden (while listening to Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles)