Fundementals Practice

[Bboy100]

Ok so, its come to my attention that practicing my fundamentals really hasn't been working for me. Basically, while i'm in actual interactions and not paying attention to them, even fundamentals I've been practicing for a long time crumble/change based on the context of my conversation.

For example, I've been practicing my walk for a good 2-3 years now (I've known the importance of this long before I ran into this site). At any rate, when I walk around throughout the day by myself, I mostly have a good walk. But when I'm with other people and I'm not paying attention, I'll often revert back to average or sub-par posture. Same goes for all the rest of my Fundamentals.

Additionally, it also depends on my environment/how I feel at the time. For example, if I'm feeling confident/outgoing/"in state", I'm more likely to have a good fundamentals then if I'm not.

Because of all this, it seems that just sitting in front of the mirror practicing my fundamentals isn't doing me much good. And there's often too much going on in other conversations (assuming they're engaging) for me to even remember to pay attention to my fundamentals. And even if I did, they would only temporarily be fixed. As soon as I stop paying attention to them, I'll revert back to normal.

So I guess what I'm saying is, none of the practice I do is actually sticking. Its not becoming natural to me/a part of who I am. Anyone had this problem? General thoughts on this?

 

[Man-O]

You have to spend a lot of quality time on something if you want it to become a habit. With quality time I mean you put a lot of hours in a short time frame + you really make sure you keep practicing and don't lose focus.
Chase wrote an article about 100 hours but even that might not be enough to attain the habit you desire.

I'd recommend focusing on few things at the time and forget about other steps because if you try it all it will all go shit.
Go out and talk with more people, be it girls or men and focus on some small stuff at the time before you go to the next step. Then time passes and you will have to train the first steps again while you've managed some other steps. This time it'll go faster and you have time to learn even more steps. It really takes time. I still have trouble focusing on the bridge between people's eyes, avoiding "scanning" while keeping the conversation and squenching and mirroring.

 

[ray_zorse]

You also need practice maintaining your fundamentals WITHIN AN INTERACTION, and the way to do this is to pick one or several to focus on: "While I'm in this interaction I will focus on maintaining good posture". Obviously, the interaction might go badly for some other reason, like your full attention isn't on what you're saying. That doesn't matter. You have practiced maintaining fundamentals within an interaction. With enough practice this becomes a habit, which frees you up.
Ray