Trying to navigate yourself on ice with a thin metal blade on your feet is a difficult task. Yet, most of us are more than willing and happy to get ourselves onto the ice with no precautions.

It’s finally here. The 1st of December, and due to already becoming accustomed to hearing Christmas music on the radio, you are well and truly embracing the festive spirit with no guilt. We no longer reminisce about our summer holiday and instead are getting excited about going out into the cold as we wrap up in our scarves, bobble hats and gloves with a warm cup of hot cocoa in our hands and take slow, evening strolls through cities where fairy lights hang and glisten in the trees on the streets. And most importantly, the outdoor ice rinks have been set up beneath an enormous Christmas tree, and it finally feels like Christmas is here.

What fascinates me most, is the fascination with ice skating! For Christmas wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t have a chance to go ice skating. But in actual fact, ice skating is a pretty scary sport! You are trying to navigate yourself on ice with a thin metal blade on your feet after all. Yet, most of us are more than willing and happy to get ourselves onto the ice with no precautions. Sure, we might stick to shuffling around the edges of the rink for a bit but that doesn’t stop us from getting on. Now would it be the same for any other sport you wanted to try? Say, rollerblading, snowboarding or skateboarding for instance? I’d imagine that most people who get onto the ice rink would exclaim that there’s no way they are capable of doing any of those! They’d shudder at the thought of the even trying. So, here’s 6 things that ice-skating can teach you about life, and I hope that once you read this, you’ll realise how capable you are of achieving anything you want to achieve.

1.      Go Head First

The best way to tackle anything that you’re not good at, is to just get stuck in there straight away. No procrastinating about it, finding excuses or trying to find an easier way around it. Just dive head first into the deep end straight away. Even if you have something to stabilize you at first, you have to get just do it.

2.      If You Fall, You can Just Get Back Up

It’s inevitable that you will fall to begin with, but guess what? You just get back up and carry on! In fact I’d even go as far as to saying that you SHOULD fall. For then, once that’s over you won’t be afraid of it anymore. In life, our failures are some of our most important lessons.

3.      There’s No Easy Way Around It

If you want to learn something new, you just have to DO IT. That’s all! And doing it is in fact the best way to learn anything. Sure, you can read about the techniques, watch someone else and get an idea of the basis of it. But it’s not until you do it for yourself that you’ll finally be able to achieve it.

4.      You Can Truly Do anything you Set Your Mind to.

So often in life do we find ourselves saying ‘I could never do that’, ‘I wish I was good at that, but I’m not’. So where did this confidence that we could get on a slab of ice – something that can be a serious professional sport – come from. Surely if we can do that, we can do anything else! Seriously. It makes sense doesn’t it?

5.      Practice Makes Perfect

You’ve probably noticed that the more times you ice skate, the better you get. That’s because you have to practice something in order to get better at it! I’ll also vouch that by the time your session on the ice has finished, you have managed to get off the rails and are free styling on the ice all by yourself!

6.      You Can Do It (you’re more confident than you think)

That leaves me with this final point. That you are far more capable, confident and able than you probably think. So when you’re hitting the ice this December, just think to yourself that if you can do this. You can do anything you set your mind to too.

Thumbnail image by Thomas O’Donoghue