Self limiting beliefs, and how they could be affecting your ability to improve

A long time ago, when I did my first February improvement plan/critique for a coaching client, it was actually for a cuber who I'd known for a number of years already

Definitely an outlier, since most of the people who take me up for my work are cubers I'm not at all familiar with, but from time to time I do get someone I'm a little familiar with, and even more rarely a long time friend who wants my help

Truth be told I actually quite enjoy working with people who I already "know" a decent amount, because I'll have more context about their cubing situation, which means I can tailor my advice much more than I could someone else

Anyways, a little background on them. I'd seen them at competitions for the last 3-4ish years, though very on and off 

Over the years they certainly made improvements in their times, but were always the type to never really make a final, often missing cut off for a number of events, and in general their interest with cubing waned and seemed to be mostly in it for the connections they had previously made

I remember how a lot of my conversations with this person would play out when we reached the topic of getting fast and high level speedcubing as a whole

This "invested speedcuber to casual cuber" friendship dynamic is probably quite familiar to at least some of you

Anyhoo, long story short, more often than not I would be met with excuses of not having enough time to do/learn x, finding x cubing concept beyond their grasp etc etc any time our conversations would turn to getting fast(er)

Self limiting beliefs 

Needless to say, when I was contacted for a one step improvement plan, I was a little surprised, but also very willing to take on the challenge as I always am 

(Note: From my anecdotal experience, I've found that the newer someone is to cubing, the more receptive they are to taking on new advise and putting in the hours. I've found that around the 5ish year mark is where the spark can somewhat die, and overall improvement tends to stagnate...

Out of all the fastest speedcubers in the world that I know, 95% of them made a big mark within their first 3-5 years of competing, and those who start accomplishing things after that mark are definitely outliers, especially the ones who have had several year spanning careers in spite of their late start)

Oh, and the cubers who end up getting really fast also just so happen to have few, if any, SELF LIMITING BELIEFS

The advice I ended up giving was something to the effect of "Don't let self limiting beliefs get in your way"

If they end up following my advice, they will absolutely improve. That being said I don't have the absolute highest of hopes since they've already built up about 5 years worth of less than ideal habits

When limiting beliefs lead to mistaken identity

Truth be told, damage had already been done. When you have self limiting beliefs about what fingertricks you can and can't do, what level of complexity you're willing to deal with in your F2L, and how you solve you cross, it can very quickly manifest into habits

Anyone who knows anything about habits, especially those who have had a bad habit or two in the past (I know I sure as hell have), THEY ARE A BITCH TO BREAK

What's even worse, however, is that habits can very easily begin manifesting into your identity 

"Algs just aren't for me, I'm all about that intuition!"

"I'm just a sloppy turner!"

"I work better under pressure, that's why I do all of my assignments at the last minute"

"I don't have a problem, I just love playing video games br0"

The list goes on and on, but I think you get the idea

Now, I don't necessarily think that every cuber should try and mold their entire solving style around Feliks' or Max's or Philipp's, especially if you legitimately aren't that interested in being as fast as you possibly can be

When you are interested in being faster however, cognitive dissonance starts to take place, which in and of itself is going to give you mindset problems in competition

And that's not even getting started on the fact that doing less efficient things "on purpose" is only lowering your ceiling potential. Of course, the higher your ceiling potential, the harder it will be to get there, but why sell yourself short from the get-go? Especially when changing bad habits later is that much harder and that much less likely to happen

Going back to the person I was working with, they tended to solve their cross on left instead of bottom because they found the fingertricks for that easier, since there's less D turns and you don't have to think about how you avoid y rotations

F2L they did with cross on bottom, and honestly for the most part they had good efficiency

PLL however, I noticed that they used one RUF Gperm (and no, it's not the R2' F2 R U2 one or its inverse), as well as an RLUDBgen Gperm (which I suspect is because they "can't do Uw moves")

Because most of their self limiting beliefs had manifested into building a solving style around rudimentary fingertricks, my improvement plan was basically "learn this, this, and this for x y and z turns"

But also with the meta lesson of "Don't limit yourself based on the fact that you can't currently do something"

Although this may seem contradictory to before, I did tell them to mold their style around what the fast people generally do

Obviously a certain level of personal preference is always going to exist, which is why Feliks and Max don't use the exact same OLL and PLL algs

However, look at every 3x3 solver in the top 100 and I guarantee you that none of them are using an RLDUBgen Gperm

You have to learn the rules and the science of cubing and build a solid foundation, before you can learn when to break the rules and explore the "art of cubing" as it were. Outside of the box thinking only works when you know what goes inside the box to begin with

And the sooner you start working with the right tools and advice inside the box, the better and easier improvement will be in the long run :)