How to get better at something
- Immersion
- Get feedback from those who matter
- Avoid feedback from those who don’t
- Filter the fluff and the futile
- Do the work
- Celebrate small wins
- Avoid shortcuts
- Repeat
Immerse yourself.
Immersion is how to learn a language, acquire a skill, or make rapid change of any kind. Getting better requires changing your brain. Full immersion in a new environment facilitates completely new connections in the brain.
If you want better health rapidly, just take a six month sabbatical and stay in an organic yoga retreat center…
Probably not an option.
What is likely an option is to immerse yourself in a community that also seeks health and supports each other when times get challenging.
Hire professionals to help you eat, think move, recuperate in ways that contribute to health and facilitate you avoiding old self-sabotaging patterns.
Jump in with two feet. The water’s warm.
Get feedback only from those who matter.
Record yourself and give yourself feedback before seeking feedback from others. You will be your harshest critic and will cultivate the ability to see what improvements are necessary which shortens the feedback loop. This accelerates your growth. Then seek from a trusted source feedback that you haven’t been able to see on your own.
Seek mentors and colleagues who have walked the path or are walking the path. Seek people who you have chosen to spend your life serving since it will be them who you hope finds value as you progress. Seek truth from those you trust.
Avoid naysayers who naysay for the sake of feeling important. Avoid non-believers who will crush anything outside of their own belief system so they can feel safe. Avoid the people who just say nice job. They think it’s because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but they’re really just hiding from their own discomfort.
Filter the fluff and the futile.
If you gather 100 units of feedback, find the 20 that will give you 80% of the result you seek. Then from the 20, pick the 4. Then pick the one. Start there. If there is still more time, choose from the four, and so on. Discard the rest for now because as you progress you will have side benefit that takes care of much of the ticky-tacky.
Do the work.
Don’t fall into the trap of seeking feedback when it is time to do the work. If you want to get better hands-on, you gotta get hands-on. If every time you get stressed about not knowing how to work with your hands you find yourself listening to a podcast about working with your hands, YOU. ARE. HIDING.
The muscle that is used to perceive and appreciate the sensation of achieving a milestone must be trained. Otherwise, this muscles will atrophy.
And by the time you arrive at the “finish line”, your muscles of future casting and chasing will be so overdeveloped that you will blow right by the mark leaving the fruits of your labor to rot.
Every win is a higher peak with a better view. You can see something new after every step. Designate some time, energy, and focus to appreciate it.
Avoid shortcuts.
Seek efficiency in systems that get more result per unit of effort, but not at the expense of your values and integrity.
If you pay for a “system” that makes a dream-come-true promise, that will happen almost immediately, with little-to-no effort by you, one of two things is likely true:
- It is complete nonsense -or-
- You will have landed in a dream you didn’t earn, lacking the experience to appreciate it, and having developed little-to-no skills or the resilience required to keep the dream alive.
Either way, you come up short.
Work, listen, learn, work, celebrate.
Repeat.