Strategies for beginners to get to success
World-class athletes didn’t become the best overnight. Their first drafts were bad too. They usually started when they were a child, and they practiced for years or decades to master the sport.
The path to mastery isn’t easy, but beautiful if you embrace it.
Tom Brady’s’ first shot was bad. The same goes for Kobe Bryant.
When Taylor Swift sang for the first time, it was bad.
In my Architecture studies, I learned that the first draft will never be the final project. Never. But with practice, I learned an intuition of what works and what looks good. I gained knowledge to get over the first bad draft faster.
The same applies to writing. The first draft is bad, but with practice, you get faster and you will know what sounds good and what doesn’t.
How do you get better at overcoming the beginner mode and mastering anything:
Power of Practice
To master anything you have to practice (a lot). It takes time and repetition to become the best.
That’s the reason why the best athletes usually started when they were really young. They had a lot of time to practice.
Through repetition you learn the basics of the skill, you get feedback and then you improve in small steps until you reach mastery.
Repetition is necessary to learn the basics, but if you don’t get feedback or improve you will get stuck at the same level.
That’s the reason why 40 years of doing the same work will not make you a master or happy. You are not improving, and you are not getting feedback.
It’s like I would do the same first draft over and over again, not knowing that it is bad.
The repetition and improvement need to be part of your everyday life. Life consists of a lot of days with our routines and habits.
If we do something every day, it’s part of our life and it influences the future.
We are what we do every day.
If you work out every day, you are athletic and you improve your muscles and your health.
If you are watching TV and eating snacks the whole evening, then you are not improving your muscles or health. You are a couch potato.
Both of those habits influence your future: positively or negatively.
As healthiness affects everything else in our lives, the first one will probably thrive at work, and the second one will not have the energy to give 100%.
Our daily habits are what our lives consist of. This is us.
If you work out every day, you are supporting your willpower and your athleticism.
If you sit on your couch every night stuffing candy, you are supporting your self-doubts and the entropy of your body.
The good thing is: it’s your choice what you practice every day.
What do you need to practice to get to the future dream life you want?
Embracing the Learning Curve From First Draft to Mastery
Practice the basics, and then tackle harder challenges.
It’s important to have daily routines of practice, but if you don’t get feedback or get challenged you will not improve, and you will also get bored.
In my Architecture studies, we do projects every semester. And they are never the same. That would get boring and we will not learn anything.
Every semester the requirements and the workload get bigger and harder. Every semester is a challenge.
By going through those challenges and getting weekly feedback we improve a lot. Every semester I learned to do more in less time. I learned to make better presentations. I got into more details about the building.
By doing the same thing over and over you will get bored. And this will decrease your motivation and you will quit.
Don’t get bored! Don’t do the same thing!
Challenge yourself to get to a higher level. Just like my semester projects challenged me every time. Your learning curve will get exponential, and not linear.
By practicing the same thing over and over, you will improve but only linear and it would take forever to master the skill.
By challenging yourself and getting feedback your learning curve will be exponential. You will improve a lot over time, and you will not get bored.
In the beginning, you have to start with the basics. You are a beginner. You have to figure out the rules first to be able to play.
This can be frustrating because as a grown-up we are not used to being a beginner again. But awake the child in you again and have fun exploring.
And after you practice the basics you can add challenges to make it more interesting.
Rewards of Mastery
The goal is to master a skill (or life). But life is not the goal.
Life is the path to get there. If going there and practicing isn’t fun, then your life isn’t (and it’s not worth achieving the goal).
This present moment is your life. So how to be happy now without having achieved the goal?
- By celebrating the achievements along the way
- By finding joy in practicing
- By finding fulfillment in the path
- By celebrating the confidence you gain along the way
Don’t wait to celebrate your success until you reach your goal.
Celebrate now the small steps you take every day!
Life consists of small steps on the path to success.
Success means taking those steps to get to your goals.
Reward yourself now for small achievements and you will have a great life along the way to your goal!
Conclusion
Just like a child learning to walk: just start!
Never mind the failures and bad first drafts that will come.
Expect to be bad at the beginning and even embrace it. As a beginner you can experiment, try new things and you will see improvement.
Just start doing it! Whatever you want to do.
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