When beginning work with a new client often introduce new skills to them and that can bring up all sorts of beliefs around never being able to accomplish them. One of the most difficult parts of succeeding at anything is consistently practicing a certain task until being good at it. Or just getting started can be really difficult.
It’s easy to admire skilled artists and musicians for what they can produce, but what you don’t see is the years of hard work, practice, and mistakes that led to their mastery. The overnight success that could have taken years.
Many people fail to realise their true potential because of this – they are unable to create a clear path towards realising the goal they have in mind. They want results, but have no path to achieving them.
What do you want to achieve in the future? Do you want to learn how to play an instrument? Do you want to learn how to speak a foreign language? Do you want to educate yourself in a demanding yet rewarding field?
Now ask yourself why you haven’t done it yet.
People often give themselves the same excuses year after year – see if the following sound familiar:
I don’t know where to start.
I don’t have the natural talent that other people have.
I don’t have enough time.
It’s too difficult.
These excuses all serve as justifications for why people defeat themselves before they have even begun.
If you start falling into this same self-reinforcing trap of mediocrity, sometimes the solution is as simple as a paradigm shift and a plan. These powerful steps can be a guide that will drive you towards what you know you could achieve.
- Narrow your focus
You have to know what your skill is before dedicating yourself to it. Learn to play an instrument or how to code are good goals, but they are broad categories that have variation within them.
Learning to play the drums is very different to learning to play the piano. Instead of thinking about everything you want to achieve, start with just a single goal in mind.
Begin by choosing a specific skill to master, and carry what you’ve learned there into other skills you want to acquire next.
- Set lots of little goals and several large goals
People often make the mistake of setting a few grandiose goals that might sound great on paper, but can prove to be much more time-consuming to achieve than they thought.
This leads to a false sense of failure and to discouragement. It’s good to keep sight of the big picture, but consider this: Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Before you have a city, you must build a village. This concept applies to any skill that you want to master.
Think about it like writing a novel, and breaking up your targets into individual chapters, or even pages.
Motivation carries its own inertia: it’s difficult to get started, but once you see results, it’s hard not to keep going.
- Take regular steps
Notice that the size of your steps isn’t specified.
You don’t need to practice an instrument for five hours every day to be good at it. Excessive practice can actually work against you – the law of diminishing returns will eventually kick in.
What’s more effective than lots of practice is consistent practice.
Consistency, consistency, consistency is the mantra.
So maybe you can only spend 30 minutes of your day working on your coding project. That’s fine! What matters is that you are disciplined enough to apply yourself for that 30 minutes each day even when you don’t want to.
Think of it like going to the gym – you can’t slack off for two weeks and then work out extra hard to make up for it.
It’s important to be consistent about learning a skill to master it.
- Find a support network
Seeing your own success is motivating, but it’s even more so to have the support and encouragement from other people.
Bodybuilders often benefit from having like-minded friends who are all set on similar goals. When things get tough, they provide advice and support that can get you through a rough patch.
Conversely, you will eventually get your chance to mentor and advise the people around you. If you surround yourself with people who are similarly motivated, you’ll be amazed at how much more you get out of your practice and dedication.
You might even learn a few new things along the way.
