Unless I know what you don’t understand, unless I know what is your fundamental lack of knowledge, all my articles, all my teachings go right over your head.
I had a wake up call yesterday, a wake up call I didn’t expect.
But if one person has this problem, then this is probably everyone’s problem, except I didn’t know it, because I didn’t have this problem.
One of my students in the 67 step coaching program launched a project to sell a real estate property. It is time to make some money!
And then he botched it up every step of the way.
This is what I wrote back to him:
So let’s see:
1. you didn’t accept and heed my teaching: do not do surgery on your parents, practice on dead bodies.
You started a project that is very important, but you never learned to do the elements… so you are doing surgery on your most important project…
2. You really earned this one. I am sorry to break it to you, but taking responsibility is nothing like what you understand.
Unless you are responsible i.e. causing to learn and practice and become good at the skills, you are still looking at responsibility as an after the fact thing… aka guilt.
And to this he answered
You know because I have been reading about and listening to audios from others who have done what I’m attempting to do, I made a false assumption. I would have never seen it if you hadn’t pointed it out. The elements, you say. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at what are the elemental skills necessary to carry out a project. And the responsibility comes in taking on the learning and practicing-making sure that I build the learning, the skill makes me the cause. alrighty then. thank you
My hunch is: no one ever understood that skills are not inborn, and each job, each project uses tens of skills that each has to be learned separately.
It’s not easy to break up projects to skills, unless you actually plan to do a project.
And then another one, and another one.
Thinking about a project, watching someone do a project doesn’t teach any skills. You have to buckle up and do it.
The number of details involved in any project number in the hundreds, and unless you have done it a few times before, it can take forever.
No skill development training is ever wasteful, because every skill trains you physically, and mentally to be able to learn another skill faster and better.
If you ever want to amount to anything, fall in love with learning. Not head-learning, but skill learning.
Head-learning is easy and worthless. (Do what is easy and your life will be hard!)
Learning skills, DOING stuff is where the joy of learning is, and where you can start becoming someone who can.
I have learned more than 20 professions, including tile laying, seamstressing, and computer repair. I can repair plumbing, electric appliances, draw, build furniture, take pictures, videos, post them online, convert different ebook formats, use hundreds of software programs.
Don’t kid yourself, learning a new skill when you already need it is too late.
You’ll probably never be as skilled as I am, because I started at age three and never stopped.
I cooked 3-course meals when I was eight… learned and forgot seven languages, won competitions in many disciplines… not because I am talented, but because I am unstoppable.
I heard someone say almost 70 years ago: They can take everything away from you, but what you can do and what you know, they can’t take it away.
My parents were Holocaust survivors, and I understood the wisdom in that saying.
I volunteered for the skills I could learn. I took on jobs I could not yet do. I taught skills I needed to learn. I am a learning machine… still at age 70.
I am finding that people who don’t learn are stingy.
Stingy means: they come from scarcity. They want to get before they give. They need to know that it is worth it… meaning that it pays off.
People who are skillful and have many skills think differently. The reward of being alive is to do things that need you to be sharp… that is the reward… No other reward is needed.
Because people who learn new skills are playful. For them life is play. And in play play is the reward.
And playful people are not waiting for the need… play is fun. And playful people are happy, because they get to do what they like to do: play.
If you stopped playing, you are already dead. But you can come alive again… and play again.
Marketing, selling, writing press releases, negotiating, making agreements, learning to communicate, learning to lead, creating a business that can run without much from you, creating ads that sell, following up, and more and more and more… All play. All fun. All skills.
