a gnarly transformation

have you ever had the chance to see someone progress at something from the starting point, when they are only so-so at a skill, to a place where you are amazed by whatever it is they were training for?! check this out...

my 'little' (but not actually so little) brother scotty, or youngin' as i tend to call him, loves to snowboard. he has always been pretty good, but so are a lot of people that live in the rockies like we do. last winter i remember going snowboarding with him and standing in the snowboarding park freezing my butt of taking picture of him doing this...

it took forever to get this picture and i remember being nervous for him to do this 'crazy trick'. once we got this picture we were all smiles and we thought he was the bomb!

i look back now and laugh at us. i laugh at how extreme i thought youngin' was for executing what i thought at the time was a stellar trick. that was only 6 months ago. he now lives in New Zealand and is able to snowboard all year round (as it is winter there right now). look at how far he has come in only 6 months, do you see now why i laugh at the above picture...

these pictures are kind of small unfortunately but i can assure you that they look pretty 'gnar' (translation: gnarly, meaning high on the scale of dangerousness and coolness) as the kiwi in my brother would say.

what exactly causes someone to be able to progress so quickly and continue to experience things in life that bring extreme excitement?

it may not be the classiest way of saying it but youngin' makes a good point, 'it's all about having balls to just do it'. for those of us without balls, guts will do just fine. if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone and do things that might be scary as all get out, you too will experience a gnarly transformation.