David Brooks lays out some sports instruction in his op-ed column, winding up with a weak effort to turn the admonition “focus on the task” into anti-liberal sentiment. In the process, Brooks takes a slap at psychotherapy (or its social influence), implying that it makes people narcissistic: “Not long ago, Americans saw the rise of a therapeutic culture that placed great emphasis on self-discovery, self-awareness and self-expression. But somehow the tide seems to have turned from the worship of self . . .” Thanks, David; we needed that.

(Vaguely) apropos: It’s not only pundits who like metaphors drawn from coaching. Training gives rise to powerful images, and we use them where we will. My own favorite, for psychotherapy, comes from skiing. It goes: “If you are way in the back seat, and you move up to a little bit in the back seat, you are still in the back seat.”

That sentence appears in The Athletic Skier, by Warren Witherell and David Evrard, in a chapter titled “80/20 : 20/80.” Witherall and Evrard say that when you change your balance, “The first 80 percent of correction provides a 20 percent gain in performance. The last 20 percent of correction provides an 80 percent gain in performance.”

Two weeks back, I found myself in a ski class. I had business in Maine. The snow was record-setting this year, and so between obligations, I fit in a day on the slopes. There must have been a promotion in play, because a group lesson came with the lift ticket—and there I was.

I’m a fanatical mediocre skier—addicted, but not naturally graceful. An instructor once complimented me on my balance. To carry so awkward a stance down the mountain was, in her view, a sign of some endowment. Still, I’ve stuck with the sport long enough to have inched my way into the advanced group. Even at that level, it’s the same damn thing. You cheat, you hold back, you don’t let your body head down the mountain.

The techniques of skiing have changed, because skis have changed in shape and composition. Probably half of what’s in the Witherall and Evrard book no longer applies. And then there’s local wisdom, Stowe versus Taos. How to initiate a turn, how to vary its shape, how to distribute forces on the skis—oddly, opinions on these issues differ. What remains constant in lessons is the encouragement, against all (non-athletes’) instinct, to stay forward. That’s why you face down the fall line, set your hands low and level, bend mostly from the ankles, and the rest — to get your weight over the skis. It’s never just one element, it’s all of them. If you obey everything the instructor says and then you jut your butt back, to hold your weight uphill—you’ve defeated the exercise. You need to do ten things right, which is to say you need to do the one big thing right, getting out of the back seat.

So much adaptation fails because it is partial — uncommitted. A husband will stop making endless small cutting remarks, limiting himself to a few really undermining ones. An alcoholic will slash his consumption by a third. An intrusive parent will phone four times a day instead of six, and then be hurt when the child seems not to notice. Nothing counts as change unless it can be experienced as change. It’s the final 20 per cent.

Of course, it’s the therapist’s job to acknowledge the first 80 per cent while reminding the patient that no one else is likely to. The first 80 builds skills. The last 20 makes things happen.