You are born with potentials but no skills. Even breathing is a skill you need to learn.
Skills are the atoms of actions. Each action, like a molecule is built of atoms, each activity is made of parts that we call skills. Some actions are complex, others are quite simple… mirroring the diversity of the physical reality.
Atoms are building blocks… If you don’t have atoms, you can’t build anything… If you don’t have skills you can’t build actions. No actions… no success… And no good life.
No food, no money, no paper, no house, no life…
And yet… you are trying to build a life without the building blocks… because… Yeah, why?
Why you don’t have many skills? Why don’t you get busy developing skills… gathering skills? Why don’t you fill your ingredient box, your pantry, your tool box with what you may need for the good life?
Why are you waiting for opportunities to start learning anything? Why are you looking for your life’s purpose before you’d do anything?
Because you think it is a waste of time to dig a well, unless you are already thirsty.
I could say that this is true about every person I encounter online, but I would be lying. I have met so far 10 people for whom it wasn’t true… 10 out of thousands.
So what is underneath this attitude?
1. Stinginess.
We want to direct our energies only to what is worth it… As far as our conscious mind is concerned.
When I observe your behavior, there is no match. You waste your energy on meaningless, useless, somewhat enjoyable nothings… routines, doing things over and over, things that don’t benefit anyone else but you. Like taking a shower every day. Or washing your hair every day. Laundering every piece of clothes after you worn them for 10 minutes.
Or reading stuff and not paying attention. Coming to webinars and not hearing a word I say. Playing computer games that make you unconscious. Or worrying about things you cannot influence. Stuff… So you see that you are full of crap… when it comes to directing your energies where it is worth it…
2. You can’t see shades of gray, you cannot see elements, you have no idea what successful people do or not do. You actually believe that people are born with skills and then they use them.
Or maybe you think you have them… That it’s no big deal… You see others doing it, and they don’t look or smell different from you, they have two eyes, and two ears, so that means that if they can do it, then you can do it too.
You are stuck on the surface, and don’t even consider going deeper… after all it takes energy and you only want to expend your energy where it is worth it… ugh.
And if you are a parent, you even keep your children from acquiring skills, with your words (after all why would you want your kid to have it better than you have! right?) by your example, and by the stuff you do for them.
3. You are waiting for the right opportunity, or the right whatever…
You say: unless I know what is my life purpose, or what I can be successful at, I am not going to learn anything…
In other words: you are stupid. Or maybe you aren’t stupid, you just do stupid.
You live an impoverished life that matches your impoverished goals, impoverished values.
All of you.
Millions, in fact hundreds of millions have bought the book What Color Is Your Parachute.
I have coached about 50 of them.
48 of them shared this: they did not have success stories to share, or their stories were not really successes.
A success story that qualifies for that name is a project that
- you dreamed up,
- executed,
- enjoyed doing, and
- succeeded in taking it to its ultimate success…
Here are some examples:
- At 38 I planned to have an event in my one-room-efficiency apartment… even though it was crowded with my stuff. I could not get home from work, on any day, before 8 pm… But I did have the event and it was a success… How did I do it? I used some 30 skills, people skills…
or - At 32, just coming out of deep depression, I planned to visit different areas of Europe and stay with people I didn’t know. Learn about people, life, and what is the culture of the country I was visiting. Spent two months traveling, slept little, but met and spent time with 10 different people, ate with them, and became friends. The Netherlands was my absolute favorite.
or - At 18 (almost) I wanted to learn English in England. I had no money, I knew only one person there who I last spoke with when I was 9… but through communication I accomplished that… I spent nine weeks as a maid… enjoyed the process 90% of the time, and became an adult in the process.
or - and I have tens of stories, planning, preparing, executing to success that I enjoyed, stories that I can tell you.
Really. 90% of those are results I accomplished mainly through communication, through other people, through using spiritual capacities like hanging in there, seeing the big picture, finding alternatives, etc. while only 10% was pure doing.
I have hundreds of projects I could write about that I enjoyed but didn’t succeed with. Hundreds. And hundreds I succeeded with but didn’t enjoy.
Skills are doings, actions, moves that you can do well enough to produce a result.
- I do not enjoy throwing a Frisbee… but I can do it. I also don’t consider it a skill I want to use… but throwing anything is a skill I may need.
- Hell, I do not enjoy flattening cardboard boxed and take them to the curb… but I can do it. I don’t consider it a high value skill… but I am willing to do it.
Any job, any business, any project takes hundreds of skills to do well.
The more skills you can wield the more money you can make.
Most of you limp along in life with hardly any skills… Yet you’d like to rake it in.
You can have skills in any area of your life…
If you don’t have well-being skills, you may succeed for a while, but you’ll be fat, sick, and miserable.
Hell, If your people skills are not enough, even if you can DO things well, you won’t be liked, you won’t be promoted, and you won’t make much money, because all money comes from other people.
If your money skills suck…
If your physical, movement skills suck…
Also if your planning, preparation, envisioning skills suck…
If your computer skills suck
If your observation skills suck…
You see, I can make a list of all areas of life where you suck… if your skills suck.
You suck when your skills suck.
Which means: the world is full of opportunities to do things that build skills… the more areas you suck at, the more opportunities.
The quality of your life depends only on you… and the number of ‘atoms’ that you can combine into molecules…
No raw materials, impoverished life…
Make sense?
Now get busy. Instead of browsing the web, do something… something that builds skills. Something new.
Even if you are 70 years old, like I am.
By the way, this week I volunteered to put my gym teacher into business… online. It will take hundreds of hours.
He is a good teacher with a lot of fun classes.
I will put his videos up for sale, create a membership site for him, build a following…
And I am going to love and hate every minute of it. But the result will be a set of skills and a process that I can rinse and repeat.
Why still build skills?
Hey, the moment you stop growing you start dying… I am planning to live, while I am alive.
| Keywords: | Description: |
| life skills | Life skills have been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as ‘abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life’. |
| develop life skill |
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| your life needs skills | Some of the important life skills identified through Delphi Method by WHO are:
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PS: All skills are transferable…
the way you can build a water molecule or an amino acid molecule using just a few different atoms… in different context they are different… but the same atom, the same skill.
Skills. Was ever there a more misunderstood subject, or a more misunderstood word?
An article by Dick Bolles of What Color is your Parachute fame
It has been so, for ages: people ‘putting down’ other people by saying, ‘They have no skills.’ People putting down themselves, by saying, ‘I have no skills.’
Let us stand in front of the mirror, and say it loud and clear: ‘Everyone has skills. Everyone has skills.’ Dozens. Hundreds.
I used to teach a two week workshop every summer, did that for over 25 years, attended by people from around the world, poor, rich, young, old, schooled and unschooled, and no one – no one – has ever failed to have at least 250 skills. The only question is: which kind, and what are they?
We are all born gifted, we are all born ‘skilled.’ Watch a baby learn, digest information, and put it to use. The skills every child has are astounding!
What, then, are these skills? What do we have, to offer to the world?
Basically there are three kinds of skills that you have, and I have, to offer to the world. It is useful to think of them in three categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives.
Your Skills as Verbs
Some of your skills are verbs, or can be made into verbs, ending in ‘-ing’
Like: healing, sewing, constructing, driving, communicating, persuading, motivating, negotiating, calculating, organizing, planning, memorizing, researching, synthesizing, etc.
These are your Transferable (Functional) Skills. They are also called talents, gifts, and ‘natural skills.’
They are the strengths you have, often from birth.
Some people, for example, are born knowing how to negotiate; but if you weren’t, you often can learn how to do it as you grow. So, some of these skills are ‘acquired.’ You rarely ever lose these skills.
They are called your Transferable Skills because they can be transferred from one occupation to another, and used in a variety of fields, no matter how often you change careers. These skills are things you are good at doing with one of three universes: either people, or things or data/information/ ideas.
Most of us lean toward preferring work that is primarily with one of those universes: either people, or data, or things. And why? Because that’s where our best skills lie, that is, the skills we most love to use.
You were born gifted: you are good at working with either data, or things, or people.
That’s the first thing you have, to offer to the world.
Your Skills as Nouns
And then, some of your skills are nouns. Like: computers, English, antiques, flowers, colors, fashion, Microsoft Word, music, farm equipment, data, graphics, Asia, Japanese, the stock market, etc.
These are called your Work Subject Skills, or Knowledge Skills. They are subjects that you know something about, and love to use in your work.
They are knowledg stored in your brain – which you may think of as a vast filing cabinet, at your command. They are often called ‘your expertises.’
You have learned these subjects, over the years. Through apprenticeships (formal or informal), school, life experience, books, or from a mentor. It doesn’t matter how you learned them; you did. Question is: which ones do you absolutely love to use?
These expertise are the second thing you have, to offer to the world.
Your Skills as Adjectives
And then there are the third kind of skills, those that are adjectives or adverbs.
Like: accurate, adaptable, creative, dependable, flexible, methodical, persistent, punctual, responsible, self-reliant, tactful, courteous, kind, etc.
You know, of course, these are your Personal Trait Skills. Traits are the ways you manage yourself, the way you discipline yourself. Hence, they become the style in which go about doing your transferable skills. Often these are hammered out, in the crucible of experience.
We speak of our traits, in everyday conversation, as though they floated freely in the air: ‘I am quick, I am methodical, I am very intuitive. I am woman, I am man.’ But in actuality traits are always attached to your transferable skills, as adjectives or adverbs.
For example, if your favorite transferable skill is ‘researching,’ then your traits describe or modify how you do your ‘researching.’ Perhaps: methodically. Perhaps: intuitively.
Or perhaps: quickly. And so forth.
These styles, these self-disciplines, are the third thing you have, to offer to the world.
Nouns. Verbs. Adjectives (or adverbs).
Having any one of them does not make you unique. No. It is how you combine these three kinds of skills, that makes you unique.
It is important then, that you figure out what kinds of jobs need the transferable skills, and the knowledge, and the traits that you most like to use. After all, you were born because the world needs what you uniquely have to offer.
