life in lessons and carols

becoming a calm expert by accepting misfortune

It’s been a period of lessons and carols for me and many others in the way of tasks, mishaps, misfortunes, and heartbreak with a clear lesson of how to keep singing about the journey. Nothing earth-shattering for me this year, per se; major surgery and total loss car accident, endless house repair of the tearing - scrubbing - plumbing - lifting - fitting - wrenching kind, plus lots of environmental damage all while trying to create new businesses.

Still, I have a roof over my head that never leaks. Ever. And my doors keep out the wind and cold. And the trees that came down did not take out the house, the surgery went well, and my year-long recovery is getting me stronger. So again, nothing earth-shattering, just a lot.

I’m not alone. I talk to people and learn about their trials and tribulations and think, ‘That seems like a piece of cake!’ hearing the struggle in their voice but still comparing. Then I stop to ponder if these folks have similar thoughts regarding the simplicity of my trials and tribulations I find so encompassing?

Have you noticed this? It occurs to me that the lessons we receive are uniquely challenging for us and give us the strongest personal response. We wouldn’t likely grow if we traded our strife for that of others. While I think to myself, ‘I wouldn’t have a problem with that,’ how would I grow if it wasn’t a challenge?

This same concept is can be seen in the method I profess to efficiently acquire skills. Shhh!

I’m spilling the beans. When we have something big and daunting in front of us - you know, taking 10,000 hours to acquire an expertise or something we really want to master so we can become socially acceptable, we tend to use our brains, research the method of attaining that skill, and create a good habit. Seems noble, but in all honesty, nobody learned the big stuff from a good habit. They may free up some time, though…

As for acquiring a skill, forget about all that stuff that comes easily. You can do the easy stuff in a moment when you can relax. Instead, spend your 10,000 hours in small chunks, approaching the most difficult material head-on in a small unit. A very small unit.

Wait, don’t do the same thing over and over again, day in and day out? Isn’t that what it takes to move on up? No way! That’ll just wear you out and you won’t have as much energy for what you really need to learn. Plus, when you spend so much time on the thing you can already do, it starts to become something to hide behind.

Instead, do that hard little thing. Do it upside down and backwards. Do it slow, do it blind, do it until it feels like home, just that one tiny little fraction of what you’re trying to learn. There… now, forevermore, that one thing will be easier.

You can prioritize something else now - find another thing that’s hard.

Repeat.

This method removes the popular practice of repeating “mistakes” and instead focuses on what we want and doing it the way we want to do it and with the result we desire. Next time, we focus on another small aspect of what we want. Instead of beating inefficiency into ourselves and spending our time correcting, we use our entire time actualizing what we are trying to learn.

OK, I’ve taken a minute now to share. Back to tying it together. Life seems to do the same thing for us. If we lean into it, learning from the situations we are given, while others learn from the situations they are given, we all learn our lessons a lot faster and spend a lot less time repeating mistakes, giving us more time to enjoy the journey.

So let’s sing!

#expertise #growth