The problem if you take yourself too seriously, is that when you look back after 20 years, it will be much harder to accept how much you actually sucked.

If you try to not take yourself and what you do so seriously, it will be much easier for you to look at yourself in the mirror and to have a clear picture of yourself. It will be more easy to accept your own flaws and to deal with your mistakes.

A sense of humor and a decent amount of self-distance will make all of your practice much easier, more enjoyable and your progress to go faster.

So run away from every teacher who don’t like to laugh and never puts on a smile. Don’t start in a class where teachers want their students to stand in perfectly straight lines and demand them to address him or her with a Chinese (or Japanese) formal salut before asking a question.

All pompous, too formal, too ceremonial, types of instruction strips out the individuality and put the focus on formality instead of the students own personal progress.

Once, for more than 20 years ago, I asked a Chinese teacher about what I should do to become really good in the future. He smiled and said: “just practice”. He said it in a way as it was not that big of a deal.

And that is true. The only thing you can do is to continue practicing and try to discover more. There’s no recipe, no short-cuts, no secret ingredient.

But there are things you can do to make it harder for yourself, things that can slow down your practice, or even kill the joy of the practice itself.

When something feels too heavy – just take a deep breath and laugh at yourself. Friendly.