How to stop feeling discouraged by faster cubers?

[Divineskulls]

Whenever I get discouraged or tired of cubing during a serious practice session, I sometimes watch videos of fast solves, not only to look at techniques and turning styles, but to realize again (as I do whenever I watch really fast cubers solve) that it takes hard work to get as good as they are at something. Everyone was where you are right now, at one point; no one can have a cube put in front of them, and without having seen one before, solve it. Improvement takes time and dedication for anything, no matter the skill one has going into the activity.

Lately, I've been very disappointed with my 3x3 times (13-14 seconds, 12 on good days). Because of that, I have been practicing and focusing on my weak spots and I can already see techincal improvement. But do you know what the best part about being at your level is? Your times will drop once you start learning new things. With the help of faster cubers, you can learn to stay away from bad habits and pick up good ones. The shorter the gap between learning to solve and finding friends in fast cubers, imho, makes for better improvement and times.

This is not just for OP, these post are for anyone new to speedsolving, or anyone who wants to get faster. I hope you get to where you want to be, and possibly even faster.

 

[Nilsibert]

Cubing is like most other things. There's always people that are better, and if they "fall back" to your level, they feel as if they're doing horrible. It happens to everyone. 3 months ago I was trying to get sub 40. Now I feel like I'm horrible If I get times over 30. It will happen to you too. I learned how to deal with it pretty early when skateboarding. I've been doing it for almost 10 years now and I'm 24. It can be pretty disheartening to watch 15 year old boys skating for 2 years and being better at many things than I am. Some of them even got sponsors. I realized that it doesn't really matter because the ultimate questions is; do I enjoy it? If so, that's all that matters.
The same goes for cubing. Have fun improving. You will improve. Especially if you are at around a minute, you should improve pretty fast with practice, and that's the fun of it. I'm almost sub 20 with fridrich, but the method doesn't provide any fun to me. So a few days ago I started learning ZZ. My times are back to 40(presumably, didn't time myself alot yet), but it's great fun to learn new things and get better at the subsets. Ultimately that's more important to me and I know ZZ can also be very fast, I can get sub 10 someday just as well as if I continued CFOP. It may take me longer, sure, but who cares? There is no time requirement. I've come to almost "hate" CFOP now, even though I'm almost twice as fast with it. Fun it the ultimate goal!

 

[5BLD]

Thinking about it, I think the only reason I felt it was that I felt left out. So yeah, trying to avoid it only makes it worse... Hmmh.