Lessons From Three Juggling Balls

I’ve always wanted to improve and be my best at whatever activity I was interested in pursuing. My earliest memory of this was in the fourth grade. Everyone at my grade school was interested in trying out for the school’s juggling show. It was a bit of a popularity contest as you would form a group and perform a juggling skit in front of the whole school if you made the cut. In order to make the cut, you had to juggle three balls 20 times in a row, without dropping a ball. A couple weeks before the tryouts, we began juggling during gym class.

Besides just wanting to make it into the school’s juggling show, I began to actually like juggling in gym class. It was tough at first. We started with two balls, passing them back and forth, from left to right hand. Once we got the hang of the timing of when to throw the balls (at apogee, the point where the ball is at its highest), we began practicing juggling with 2 balls in one hand. This was extremely difficult for me with my left and even my dominant right hand. We also began trying to juggle three balls. You start with one ball in your non-dominant hand and two in your dominant one. You begin juggling by throwing the front ball in your dominant hand up and to your other hand. Once that ball reaches apogee, you throw the ball in your non-dominant hand up and over to your dominant hand, and so on.

I remember, I couldn’t even make it past two successful juggles in a row before dropping a ball. The balls would hit each other or I would throw them way of course and run to try to catch them. The moral of the story is, come tryouts, I was not able to juggle 20 times in a row. I felt terrible and remember watching the juggling show that year just wishing I was up there. However, I realized that I was just hoping that I would be able to juggle 20 times in a row with only practice from gym class. Hope is not a strategy.

For me, that amount of effort was not going to work, and I realized that. I had this burning desire to get better at juggling so next year I would make the show. I remember having these thoughts the day after the show, and I was not upset at all that I would have to wait another year to do the show. Instead, I saw it as an opportunity to have a lot of time to practice. I asked my parents to buy me three juggling balls, which they did, and I began practicing, all over the house. I practiced juggling everyday for the whole next year, missing only a few days. At first, juggling was tough, frustrating, and I wasn’t seeing much progress. This is typically how things feel when you first start out, but I found that if you just keep trying, you will push through this frustrating period and start to get better.

After a few months, I was easily able to juggle 20 balls in a row. I really began enjoying juggling. I started seeing how many times in a row I could get, going past 100, and starting to walk around to begin practicing what a juggling performance could involve. By the time the tryouts came around for the fifth grade juggling show, I easily juggled 20 balls in a row and was one of the best jugglers. The teacher who ran the show even had me watching some of the tryouts to pass or fail other students. I joined a group of my friends to begin developing our choreography for our performance and eventually did the show.

I don’t remember too much of the actual juggling performance, but I do remember failing in fourth grade, all the training for the next year, and making it into the fifth grade show. This reveals that the journey of working to improve is what really gave me fulfillment, growth, and a better understanding about myself. The performance was just fun. Goals are important to have, but they can change. The means in which you achieve those goals is often more enjoyable and valuable than achieving the end result of the goal. Initially, my goal was to make it into the juggling show to do the show in front of the school. However, my goal changed to improve at juggling and just enjoy it. Getting into the fifth grade juggling show proved to myself that I can improve through consistent hard work. This built my confidence as I had experience and evidence that I could improve. Since then, I’ve always had this burning passion to improve at this that I was bad at and/or interested in. This just seems like one of my character traits now.

Three juggling balls altered my life forever and taught me a lesson that I still use today. To get better at anything you have to want to improve, put in consistent work, and have an unwavering belief in yourself that you will achieve your goal.

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