When she trained kickboxing with six-time world champion Benny Urquidez, Shannon Lee never gave herself enough credit. “He would ask me to execute some kick or some move, and I would try it and blow it, and then I would say, ‘I can’t do it,'” she explains in Be Water, My Friend.
Urquidez, however, had a different interpretation of the events, Lee explains: “He would freeze and look at me with his piercing eyes and say, ‘Yet! You can’t do it yet.’ And he would say this over and over and over again to every complaint and frustration I would spew.”
Sometimes, the only difference between inevitable success and guaranteed defeat is a single, three-letter word. “Yet.” “It was positive framing, and it was firm.” Shannon says. The logic is undeniable. “If you just keep practicing, then one day you’ll get it.”
No, it’s not that you can’t do it. It’s just that you can’t do it…yet.
