Yesterday I read an article on how the trick to reaching your goals is creating a self-identity around them. Like, if you want to get in shape, you start small and run/walk/exercise each day a tiny amount until you feel like you’re “a person who exercises” and then getting in shape seems much more plausible for a “person who exercises.” And as I thought about this, it made sense to me.
Especially on the opposite side. Like, I’ve wanted to learn how to do really beautiful lettering for a long while but each time I think about it, the first thing that comes to my mind is “my handwriting sucks, I am a person whose handwriting sucks.” I feel like having bad handwriting is just who I am so for this person with bad handwriting, being able to create beautiful lettering seems unfeasible. Not accomplishable.
I used to feel that way about drawing too. I remember I said to myself “I can’t draw. I wish I could draw.” It was who I was: “a person who can’t draw.” But then I started. I copied others, I worked at it every single day. I tried different things. I copied from photos. I experimented. And I found my style. After years of trying. I stil have a long, long way to go before I become the kind of talented sketcher I hope to be. But the point is that now my identity has shifted, I am no longer “the person who can’t draw.” I am “someone who can draw.” It changes how I see myself in the world. It makes everything possible. And it gives me the self-empowerment to accomplish any goals I set around drawing.
(I did the same with exercise by the way. I went from “someone who never exercises” to “someone who exercises every single day.” with tiny tiny steps, i changed my identity on exercise.)
So I’ve been thinking about how I can do this for the other things on my list that I haven’t been paying able to accomplish. Things like lettering, doodling, sketching figures. What I need to find is small steps that are achievable and create enough momentum for me to shift the self-identity I have around these. So I can move from “a person who can’t” do them to “a person who can.”
I think this idea of shifting the way you see yourself in the world (about this topic) is really spot on. It’s what leaves the doors closed vs creating the space for you to soar. And I know that I don’t want to ever feel like any doors are closed in my life.
I’ve made some changes in my life in the last few weeks that have had some expected and some unexpected impact so I thought I’d share them with you in case it helps in any way.
The first change I made was back in the beginning of March. I decided that I was going to quit refined sugar. There wasn’t a lot of build up to this change or some major purpose. I tried quitting all sugar for about four hours and it was a disaster but then I switched to refined sugar only and it’s been a breeze. I take a break for our date nights but other than that, I’ve pretty much avoided refined sugar.
The expected impact was possibly some more energy, maybe some weight loss, but it was really cause I wanted to do it and liked the idea of eating as little processed food as possible.
What I didn’t expect was how easy it would be and even more significantly how easily it made all the foods I was struggling with not a problem for me. For example, each time I went to Starbucks to get coffee, I’d find myself picking a pastry or a cakepop and going there had become agony for me cause I found myself constantly craving the food and then feeling bad about it, etc. But I still wanted to get my coffee and felt mad at myself for not being able to control my food cravings. Interestingly, since the day I decided to quit refined sugar, none of those pastries are an option for me anymore and this hasn’t bothered me one bit. I can now go to Starbucks, get my coffee and nothing else. I don’t even mind it one bit. This has meant less bad food for me and for my boys since they were asking for food when I got some, too.
I have no idea what caused this shift but I am very grateful for it.
The other change I made was at the beginning of last week. I have been meaning to go back to daily meditation for over six months now but it keeps falling off the todo list. Out of the blue, last week, I decided I’d start waking up at 5am every weekday so I could meditate and journal while my kids were still sleeping. I think maybe this was instigated by my desire to do the Life Planner but I am not sure… either way, I decided to do it and have been sticking to it every day since. (I was already getting up at 4:40 on Wednesdays for my coaching certification calls so now I just get up at 5am on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, too.)
The expected outcome was that I would meditate and journal each morning. Both of which did happen. I actually even get to finish my daily running before the kids wake up, too.
The unexpected outcome was how much calmer and happier this makes my morning. By the time 6:30 rolls around, I have already meditated, journaled, exercised and showered. I am calm and awake and patient. The breakfast is ready. If my kids aren’t awake, I lovingly kiss them and feel the spaciousness of having time to get them ready for school. It’s been so seamless that I now have 45 mins after they wake up to do my daily sketching, too. This means my sketching gets done before I drop the kids off so when I come back home, I can start work right away. It’s made my whole week go more smoothly. I’m still amazed by the effect it’s had on my life.
So here we are. Sometimes one shift causes other, unexpected ones. So if there’s some change calling to you, I say take the step today; maybe you’ll be surprised by the unexpected impact like I’ve been.
One of the things we did in the One Little Word class at the beginning of the year was to set intentions for the year. As I was thinking about March, I decided to practice self-kindness and compassion and I was surprised to notice that my intention for March had been “kindly present” so it lined up really well.
As April approached, I was setting intentions for myself and one of the things that kept coming up was “be you.” I have a little stamp from Cat’s Life Press that says {be you} which I stamp on every single piece of art I create. It’s my reminder to self and message to others. I believe we shine the most when we fully step into who we are. It’s hard and requires a lot of bravery, but it’s also the most fulfilling way to live and it’s exactly what the world needs.
A few weeks ago, I had a small moment that caused me to set this intention. I was about to leave for vacation (a short 3-day trip including the weekend) and right before I left, one of the guys I work with asked me if I had finished a task I’d volunteered to take on. My original understanding was that the task wasn’t a rush and I had time to really dig in and figure out how to resolve it. But then he messaged me and asked me if I was done and made it sound like it was urgent and he was going to do it if I wasn’t done.
A lot of stuff kicked in at once for me. The panic I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the worry of not being good enough, the stress that I was leaving the next day, etc. I told him to give me fifteen minutes so I could see if I could get it done. About five minutes later, I knew there was no way I was getting it done in fifteen minutes or even a little longer. I felt the panic growing larger and also despair and smallness.
I then took a deep breath and tried to practice non-judging awareness. I noticed all my feelings and senses. I was feeling frustrated that the urgency had suddenly gone up five notches without my knowing about it. I was feeling small that he made it sound like he could just get it done and I knew I couldn’t “just get it done.” I felt like the stress of having this descend upon me minutes before I left. I felt all the “you’re not good enough to do this” and “maybe you’re not good enough to do your job” and on and on. I allowed all of them to come to the surface.
And then I changed my point of view. Instead of making it about “me” and “my incompetence” and the “unfairness to me” I decided to look at this from the group’s point of view. Would it be great if this project was indeed finished the next day? Yes. Did it truly matter (for the project) if I was the one who did it? No. So I put my pride aside and messaged the team member back. I told him that there was no way I was getting it done before I left and if it was urgent to get it done while I was out, he should definitely go ahead and do it. If not, I’d pick it up when I got back.
It was honest and the right thing to do. And it felt so good.
At the end of the day, whether I liked it or not, being myself meant admitting that I could not do it in the time allotted. It was also admitting my wishes to be the one to do it so I could learn and practice. I did both and also told him to do the right thing for the project regardless of me. It was hard and brave. But also easy and came with a huge sense of relief.
After that incident, I decided to practice being honest and being myself more and more. I figured I am who I am anyway. And while it’s great to try to improve (and I constantly do), it’s also important to just accept who I am. And the first step in that is owning up to it.
So I decided that my intention for April would be to be “me.” To really pay attention to who I am, how I really feel and approach all of it with non-judging awareness and then be myself unapologetically.
I’ve had a few occasions to practice since then and it’s paid off every single time. And with practice, the feeling of apologizing for who I am diminishes more and more.
(By the way, the situation at work resolved as well. My colleague didn’t get a chance to do it and so when I returned from vacation, I made the changes myself and got to learn like I wanted to and it was fixed in a timely manner.)
Just this week, I was looking at my intention card for April and there it was: bravely present.
I can’t imagine anything braver than fully being myself.
I’ve been thinking about writing blog posts for weeks now (even worse, I started this one on April 4th but I am determined to finish this time!) but each day comes and goes and I am not able to sit and do it. The last few weeks have been insane. I sort of knew they were going to be because of predictable timelines at work. Since my plan for March was to be kind to myself (more on this later, I promise) I decided that I would tackle this new milestone with a lot of self-compassion, patience and optimism.
I don’t mean optimism in the “things are just fine” rosy glasses, way. I mean that I would approach each day with the expectation that things would turn out ok. And that if they are not okay, it wouldn’t break me. I would just do my best with that day and try again the next day. I also decided to take on the positive outlook approach. I woke up each day thinking about how the day was going to be fine and each time anxiety came up, I’d remind myself that it didn’t mean anything and things were just as likely to go well as they were likely not to go well.
I greeted my family with love and tried not to take out my frustrations out on them. And I tried to have a reasonable idea of which of my personal goals could be dropped on the floor, which could wait, and which would have to get done anyway. I just wanted to be extra-aware this time around and try to set myself up to succeed.
And while the timeline is still playing itself out, I’ll say that this overall approach definitely works. Because here’s what I learned about anxiety and panic: they don’t help. In fact, they hurt. When I am anxious and panicky, I am more likely to react as opposed to act. I am more likely to make decisions from a place of anger, stress and fear. I am more likely to spread my stress, thereby affecting others, too. Which, of course, affects how they�perceive�me and my ability to keep my cool. But, even worse, now they are stressed and they are spreading their stress around, too. It perpetuates.
I already know that when I am in a stress-response, I am not using my pre-frontal cortex and instead making fight-or-flight like decisions which are survival based. Clearly not where I want to operate from at work where I have complicated decisions that require a lot of thinking and evaluation.
This all seems obvious in retrospect (or even when you say it out loud) but the trick is to really apply it in the moment. Just like it’s super obvious that if you want your kids to stop yelling and fighting, yelling at them to be quiet is not the right approach. Alas, the problem is that when you’re in the middle of it, it “feels” like a fight-flight response situation. You feel the stress, the panic, the anger, the frustration and you don’t feel like you have the extra two seconds to not react.
But, you do. You always do.
(unless there’s a tiger in front of you, about to jump. Then you don’t.)
When moments like this happen, I forget that I am at choice. I just panic. I think of the worst scenario, I worry about failing, I feel like it needs to be instantly resolved. I mean instantly.
Alas, it does not.
So, setting these new expectations of myself and being dedicated to being positive and being in the present moment allowed me to sail through March and beginning of April much more smoothly. Not to say I didn’t have some rough days and things didn’t trigger me. But I did much better than usual.
A few weeks before my milestone began, I was struggling with a similar issue at work and feeling like I was constantly triggering on the panic. One of the solutions I came up with my coach was to take a ten minute break when I first noticed the problem. I wasn’t allowed to resolve it for ten minutes. I had to go take a walk, be with my kids, or do something else and then come back to it. I figured this would give my panic time to subside without really impeding the swift resolution of the issue.
What was amazing is that I didn’t even need to implement it. The next time something went wrong, I handled it calmly without having to take my ten minutes. Just knowing it was there for me gave me the shift I needed.
I think this isn’t rare. Most things start with awareness and setting intentions (another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately) and once you start paying attention, you can be a lot more purposeful and intentional about the way you live life. And it pays back immediately.
So that’s where I’ve been. Apologies for the quiet here. I will say that I’ve really missed writing and made a commitment to be back here regularly. I hope you’re still here, too, and thank you for your patience with me 🙂
Every now and then I get into this place where I am reading a slew of books at the same time. This, to me, is a sign that I am distracted and need to refocus. So I told myself I can’t start any new books until this queue is finished all the way.
One of the books I’m in the middle of is True Refuge by Tara Brach. If you read here with any regularity, you know I am a huge fan of Tara and listen to her podcasts regularly and have found them to be incredibly helpful and thought-provoking.
Today, while I was waiting for Nathaniel’s class to get out, I read this passage:
When Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh was invited to the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1970s, the students asked him what they could do to improve their practice. He had entered a monastery at age sixteen, was ordained monk, and had endured the horrors of the war in Vietnam. I imagine they expected some rigorous prescription for deepening their spiritual life. Thich Nhat Hanh’s response: “You guys get up too early for one thing, you should get up a little later. And your practice is too grim. I have just two instructions for you this week. One is to breathe, and one is to smile.”
This is such good advice. Approach your practice (and your life) with an earnest yet relaxed heart. You can make a dedicated effort without tension and striving.
The part that was most most resonant for me was the very last part:
You can make a dedicated effort without tension and striving.
This has been a rough week for me. I seem to be lost in some kind of non-productive thoughts which are making life harder for me. And reading this is the reminder I needed. I always work hard. I know that part of the reason I’ve achieved the successes that have come my way is through hard work and persistence.
But what I also know is that my hard work is imbued with worry, stress, tension, and a lot of striving. A lot of wanting to be better. Beating myself up. Worrying. And then more stressing. And while I know these are not helpful, I can’t seem to disassociate them from the “dedicated effort.”
As if working hard, trying hard also means worrying a lot and stressing a lot.
And it does not.
It does not.
I love the idea of “an earnest yet relaxed heart.” The idea of not stressing but still working hard. Still committed, dedicated, and growth-oriented. And relaxed.
And I believe with all my heart and gut that this is possible. That a dedicated effort and lack of tension can live together.
And yet, I am not sure how to do it.
I know from experience that “just relax” is a completely unproductive thing to say to someone who is like me. If I knew how to relax, clearly I would be doing it. So the question here for me is how do I do it?
I shall start with breathing. Closing my eyes and taking a big, deep breath.
It appears I ran out of time tonight so I figured I’ll share some of my favorite videos. No common thread except that all of them are food for thought and for your soul.
Multitasking and the Effects on Concentration
Amanda Palmer @ TED
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology @ TED
I was on a call this morning. It was really really early in the morning and the person we were waiting for didn’t realize the time had changed (he was in europe where the time hasn’t changed yet) and so he didn’t show up. Instead of hanging up, two of us stayed back and started talking about my values.
She asked me what I would need the most in the world and I said only my kids and my husband. I have faith that if we’re together, we can figure out the rest. And then we started talking about more second-level stuff. Like what would I want assuming I had my family, shelter, food, etc. I said books. Books have been an integral part of my life for as long as I could read.
That’s over 35 years.
She asked me what it is about books that I like. At first it was the typical stuff: learning, the escape, the stories, etc.
But then I realized it’s not that at all.
I like books because they give me a sense of belonging.
When I am reading, I don’t ever doubt my place in the world. Books don’t reject me. It’s a place that waits for me and accepts me no matter what. I can read on a good day, on a bad day, and every day in between. I don’t ever have to doubt myself, what I say, what I look like, what I worry about. The books are always there and they create a space for me that’s mine.
Without judgement.
I know it’s not like friends or family. And I am not comparing. I am just saying that books are so much more than an escape for me. They are not a fun past time. They are not simply a tool to learn. They are not silly. They are not something to do on the beach. They are not even just a path to sanity and quiet.
After reading about it on Ali’s blog, I went to read this interview with Katrina Kennison. And there’s so much good there but this one section resonated with me above all:
As he placed my beads into my palm, he looked into my eyes with such pure loving acceptance and acknowledgement that my own eyes immediately filled with tears. It is a powerful experience, to be seen and loved in that way. And in that moment I realized that perhaps I could make that kind of love my own offering in the world as well. It was definitely an “ah-ha” moment, because it made me see that life didn’t have to be as complicated as I made it out to be; that in any given moment, or whenever I felt confused or unsure, I could just choose the loving gesture, the loving word, the loving path.
This is hard to explain in just a few words, but I will say, learning to pause and ask myself the question, “What is the loving thing to do here?” has given me a new assurance. It helps me to see when I’m reacting out of fear, and to choose love instead. It has made me at once more courageous and softer, more confident and less attached to being right. I don’t have to be right; it is enough to be loving.
It’s enough to be loving.
I love that idea. I love love love it. I love it because, for me, it means I don’t have to work so much. It means I don’t have to fight and stress and worry. It means I don’t have to struggle so hard. This sort of made me think about my self-kindness goal for March and how it’s about doing the loving thing for myself.
And while it’s magnificent for me and for my way of thinking, it’s incredibly powerful when approaching the world and others. I had a long and struggling day on Friday. I came into a call with a lot of energy and optimism and felt completely deflated, confused and small by the end of it. Whenever I am in these situations, I feel a strong sense of overwhelming sorrow. Sometimes when I am really sick, I can’t remember how it felt to be well. It’s like being sick consumes me and even though intellectually I know it will go away eventually, emotionally I can’t remember how being well felt. This is how I felt after the call. Like I would never be well again. Like I should just give up on this particular goal and stop the pain of learning/growing/struggling right now.
I knew this was coming (even though a small part of me wished I was wrong, of course.)
And I am trying to let myself feel it and sit with it and learn from it and not run in the other direction. Not take the easy route.
But reading this passage made me think. What would be the loving thing here? How could I approach the whole situation in a loving way? Here are some ideas that came to mind:
I could be loving to myself and allow myself to acknowledge the hurt and that learning something new can be a struggle and being judged and graded can be tough. I can give myself kindness, love, and a hug
I can be loving towards the other person and assume they are committed to my growth and learning and want me to be the best version of myself
I can choose the loving path here and be grateful for all the learning and love the opportunity to get it one-on-one
I can choose to love the process of growing and learning
I can remember that I am still at the beginning of this path and i have forever to get it “right”
I can love the process and not focus on the outcome
I can assume the other person loves me and i love them and we both love the process and we’re both invested in my improvement.
And when I list all those, I feel lucky, blessed and grateful. Grateful that I have “time” to get it “right”. Grateful that there are people who will take time and effort out of their own lives to help me improve. Grateful that I am still choosing to learn new things and improve myself.
And, above all, grateful for this new perspective.
In 2002, I quit my job to join Teach For America. What followed was some of the most difficult months of my life. I felt so sad, so lost, so frustrated during those months that it stained everything else about my life. As all of it was happening, I remember thinking that I had to make sure to write it all down. I knew that after many months, or years, I’d look back on it and tell myself that it wasn’t as bad as I thought. My memory would fade.
So I wrote it down. I wrote that I wanted to remember how bad it really was. What it was doing to me and why I decided to walk away and how it wasn’t a lightly-made decision. Because I wanted to erase the likelihood that I would look back and reprimand myself for not being tough enough to make it through.
While I might still have some bruised parts from having walked away from it, I can tell you that writing it down allowed me to really lock in the experience. It’s been ten years and I still remember it vividly. It was hard. It was terrible. It made me a shell of the person I was. I can go on and on. The important part is that I can still remember that feeling and connect to it right now because I took the time to lock it in.
And, today, I want to do that same thing but for the opposite reason.
For reasons I can’t specifically put my finger on, I have been feeling really good lately. Nothing amazing but just content, happy, relaxed, safe and loved. I have been going through my crazy-busy days and not stressing and not panicking and not yelling. I have been growing and learning from my experiences. Looking at things positively. I have had no refined sugar for two weeks now. I have been exercising daily. I am connecting with my kids and spending time with them. I have set up a regular date night with my husband. I have been taking time to connect with friends and work mates. I am doing ok at work and not stressing about things. I am just doing the best I can and letting myself off the hook when I need to.
For me, all this adds up to feeling good about myself. Showing up in the world in a positive way and assuming the best and being grateful.
And, it will change.
I know it will because everything does. Tomorrow I might wake up to a huge problem at work. I might lose my job. Something could happen to my kids or husband. Something could happen to me. It might even not be that big a thing. My supervision could go badly and my perspective of myself could completely shift. I could have a fight with my husband or yell at my kids. Someone could yell at me. Etc. etc. Big and small things happen every day. Emotions shift, feelings change.
Since I know I am feeling joyful at this very moment, I wanted to write it down and lock it in. So that I can remember this feeling and connect with it when I need to. Put it in my catalog of good experiences.
So that I can not just know but feel that it will come back around again.
So that when things go bad and I look back, I don’t tell myself it wasn’t as great as I thought it was. So that I don’t let my memory distort it.
It was great.
It is great.
I am grateful and I am locking it in.
If you’re in a good place right now, too, I hope you’ll lock it in with me. And if you’re not, maybe this can also remind you that you’ve been here before and will come back around to it again.
I’ve been taking Melody and Kathy’s Art School Sessions: Wings class and while there’s wonderful art instruction and great projects, what resonates with me the most, as is often the case with her classes, is Melody’s words. She has a discussion question/topic with each week’s lesson and these often open up worlds of questions and thoughts for me.
I was listening to this week’s topic this morning and I don’t want to give away class content (nor could I put it as eloquently as she does) but it’s generally about accepting yourself for who you naturally are. Not trying so hard to be something that you weren’t built to be. (This is not about not improving or learning but more about knowing the conditions under which you thrive naturally.)
And one of the things that struck me so hard while I listened to her was about how there are parts of me that I just resist or fight instead of accepting. And how if I were to accept myself wholly, I might thrive so much more. Not just be happy and content and feel whole but actually thrive in all areas of my life.
This led me to take a moment and think about what parts of myself I might be fighting. What am I resisting? What do I know to be true but insist shouldn’t be? Like I always hate it when people tell me I’m too emotional. I find that when I lean into that part of myself, I find a lot of empathy and caring and kindness. All of that comes from being “too emotional” and it’s when I give myself permission to be who I am (instead of scolding myself about how that’s not ok to be) that I feel peaceful and strong and able to really make a difference.
But there’s also something to be said for putting yourself in environments where who you are naturally is a good fit. For example, this emotional side of me coupled with the side of me who needs emotional connection and acknowledgement doesn’t really do well in male-dominated fields. I’ve worked on Wall Street and high tech. Neither of which are super conducive to being emotionally taken care of. Of course, I also have a technical, analytical, methodical side of me that does thrive in these situations. And the insecure part of me doesn’t do particularly well in female-dominated situations either.
So this is not to say that there’s this one right place for me. But it is to say that when instead of paying attention to all sides of myself and honoring them, I try to fight them, belittle them and deny them, I am not accepting the fact of who I am. Which makes it hard to honor that part of me. Hard to realize where I might thrive. Hard to realize why a particular situation doesn’t work well for me, etc.
And, most significantly, if I can’t honor all of myself, how can anyone else?
And even more significantly, fighting it doesn’t help me. The first thing I need to do is accept it. See it. See its value. Really be with the fact that this is who I am. Reprimanding myself doesn’t actually change facts. Really looking at them, really soaking in the cost of being this way might actually allow me to change. But ignoring it or being mad at it definitely does not. So even if my only goal is to change that part of me, fighting it is not the path to get there.
All this thinking led me to realize the obvious: the first step is to accept what is.
This is the gift of the present moment. It’s why I picked present as my word. Focusing on what IS. And sitting with it.
And honoring it.
The idea of honoring all parts of me and really basking in the gifts of who I am in the world sounds so wonderful. It also sounds like something that’s not immediately accessible to me. Something to maybe one-day reach. To really embrace who I am and find a situation where that person thrives. I can clearly see that to find where I thrive, I need to first accept every part of me. I need to see my whole self and embrace it.
And I think that starts with putting an end to fighting parts of myself.
My son, David, and I have started a daily practice of working on his academic knowledge. We spend 20 minutes a day together on either Reading, Writing or Math. Looking at problems, trying to understand passages, etc. This is for a multitude of reasons but the biggest among them all is for me to see exactly where he’s at. What he’s weak at and what he’s really strong at.
He’s a good student and he’s only in the second grade. This makes it relatively hard for me to assess his abilities too well. So I figure by spending some time together, I can see his thinking process and understand his way of learning a bit better to see where I could encourage him to grow more and where he might need to be challenged more, etc.
He’s not always the most positive person and I can already see some “I’m good at this and I’m not good at this” behavior starting. I am strongly against the belief that we’re born intelligent or not. I believe that, like most things, success in life (and whether that depends on intelligence is highly debatable) comes with hard work more than anything else. So I told him that he only needs four things to succeed:
Focus
Discipline
Purposeful Practice
Time
I’m a firm believer that these four things lead to success each and every time. If you really want to learn/achieve/improve, you need to first work on your focus. If you’re distracted and paying attention a million things at the same time, you’re not really paying attention to anything. I noticed, for example, that David gets stressed when he doesn’t immediately see the way to solve a tricky problem. He then panics which ends up being counterproductive cause the panic kicks in the fight/flight response and shuts down the brain. And the brain is exactly what you need to solve the problem. So panicking, stressing, worrying doesn’t help solve the problem. Focusing does. Thinking out of the box might. But the first thing the problem needs is your undivided attention.
Once you’re focused, you also need discipline. You need to keep showing up. You need to not give up too soon or too easily. I personally think this is harder than focus. This is the reason we walk away from our resolutions. It’s easy to eat well for one day. It’s much much harder to eat well every meal of every day. It’s hard to keep showing up day after day.
Purposeful practice is related to discipline but it’s a bit more sophisticated. It’s not just showing up everyday but it’s also learning from your mistakes, paying attention to where you need to grow more and focusing on those. If I am learning to draw and I get the perspective wrong each time, unless I pay attention to that or look differently or try some new ways, I will not get it right even if I try 100 times. I need to know what problem I’m trying to solve. I need to be purposeful about my practice. So this means reflection, paying attention and practicing in a particular way.
And lastly, the hardest of them all: time and patience. We each take different amounts of time to learn things. Some of us need a few hours where others need weeks. The more you learn, the easier it gets to learn. Once I’d studied six languages, the seventh was much easier, but with the second or third one I learned, I needed to study and practice a lot longer. Time always rewards if you have the other three things on the list. Patience is hard, especially if progress isn’t quickly visible. But, in my experience, if you’re persistent, time always rewards. Always.
And that’s what I told David. I said you don’t already need to know this, you don’t need to be more intelligent, you don’t need anything except for these four things. You need to want it badly enough to do these four things. In my opinion, these are the keys to success every single time.
To be fair, I believe luck plays a big role in life, too.
But I also believe Louis Pasteur said it best: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
