Several Lives In One
It’s an illusion to believe that we won’t have to start from scratch one day or another. Life is littered with challenges that must be met one at a time. If you’re advanced in one area, you’re a beginner in many others, and that’s normal.
See Life As A Video Game
You’ve probably played RPGs or strategy games. If you choose to play the role of a hero, you’ll soon realize that there are various criteria you can improve: your strength, your dexterity, your magic points or skills, your intelligence and so on. Real life works in much the same way: there’s always a new level to unlock. When you’re a child, you learn the importance of being studious and getting good grades at school. A little later, you realize that your social skills are also very useful for becoming popular in the same environment. The further along you go, the more complex the parameters become. You can choose to become a scholar, a bodybuilder, a science enthusiast, a seducer or what have you? It all depends on who you are and what you want to achieve in life.
You’re Starting From Scratch Somewhere, But You’re Actually Adding A Multiplier To Your Existing Skills.
Being a novice in a field is not in itself a bad thing. Starting from scratch somewhere is actually a blessing in some cases. You’ll be able to accumulate multiplier effects to your previous skills. Take martial arts, for example. Imagine you’ve mastered a martial art (judo, for example) and you decide to start from scratch in karate. Sure, you’re going to be bad at it, but acquiring 1% knowledge of karate may make you 10% more dangerous in street fighting, because you’ve combined this skill with judo. It’s the same in other areas of life. If you’re excellent at math and you start computer programming, you have the potential to be formidable in the field of machine learning.
You’ll Have To Learn To Start From Scratch More Often Than You Think
The world is changing faster than you think. The ones who come out on top will be those who can accumulate relevant, hard-to-acquire skills in this changing environment. Starting from scratch will be the norm, provided you have taken care to dominate a strong skill. It’s by having the ability to constantly reinvent yourself that you can maintain the fluid, agile mindset needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
To Move Up Levels, You Need To Become A More Complete Person
Specialization is necessary as a basis for gaining a foothold in a field, just as mastery of writing helps you gain a foothold in school. What makes the difference in your career, whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur, is your ability to become more well-rounded. You see, certain levels in life are only accessible because you’ve managed to unlock qualities that others won’t have. For example, what makes Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Georges Saint-Pierre considered the best in the history of their discipline at their position (for soccer) or in their weight category (for MMA fighters)? Well, it’s their work ethic and natural talent of course, but the little extra that makes a huge difference is their humility. You’re going to tell me that there have been Tyson and Pele who weren’t particularly modest. I would reply that Tyson is in fact a modest person, even if he hid behind a menacing air, and that Pele is far from being the best player in history. He was undoubtedly the best of his era, but he couldn’t have rivalled the stars of contemporary soccer. I used humility as an example, just to illustrate the point. I could have said that to be a better fighter, a fighter should improve his flexibility and strategic thinking. Or to be a better parent, you need to improve your empathy, etc.
The Breaking Point
As with everything, there’s a breaking point, i.e. a threshold beyond which you can unlock a result that was inaccessible to you. Like a safe combination, after all. You can have the first 4 numbers right, but if you’re missing the fifth, you can’t access the treasure.
Essentially, This Approach Is Holistic: To Achieve Goal A, You Need To Assimilate X, Y And Z.
Deciphering the secret of success in each field is not easy. Each skill or profession has its own specificities. The recipe that works for one area will not necessarily work for another. To do this, you need to get close to those who have succeeded, either by being trained directly by them or by reading their biographies.
Here are a few examples to help you decipher excellence in certain fields, in other words, what distinguishes the successful from the unsuccessful. It would be difficult for me to give many examples, as that would require me to have studied each of these fields in depth. Nevertheless, I’ll try to guess the key mentality or skill in areas I haven’t mastered.
Online entrepreneurship: Many aspiring online entrepreneurs (myself included) bemoan their lack of results, despite their best efforts. As the business is new and constantly changing under the influence of technology, it’s hard to know what trajectory it’s going to take and how best to adapt to it in order to succeed. Yet success in the world of online entrepreneurship can be summed up in a single criterion: mastery of key skills. Anyone who wants to make a living from an online business is a kind of one-man band, meaning they have to be able to do several things at once – well. If you think you’re good at one thing and rely on that one thing alone, you’re heading for the wall on the Internet. Online success could be symbolized by melodious music resulting from a set of musical instruments playing in unison. To achieve such a feat, you need to take the time to develop all the necessary skills. It doesn’t happen overnight. Of course, you may have a particular advantage, such as having already mastered a skill or having a gift that makes it easier for you to stand out from the crowd. Whatever your advantage, it won’t be enough on its own to make a living online (unless you team up with someone who has the necessary complementary skills). So those who survive and succeed online have understood that entrepreneurship is an infinite game, and that the goal isn’t to get rich in six months, but rather to build the foundations of your prosperity and independence over the long term, ideally your whole life. The difference between those who make it and those who don’t is the belief that entrepreneurship is a long process, requiring the accumulation of a variety of complementary skills.
Mastery of a language: to speak like a native, there’s one key skill that can make the difference with everyone else, and that’s deliberate practice. If you’re capable of storing up large amounts of practice in oral and written expression, for example. Knowing how to practice without being hindered by stagnation is a good thing, because a lot of people get discouraged. It’s the number one reason for giving up. Deliberate practice is an essential key to learning a foreign language.
The legal profession: I believe that what distinguishes a good lawyer from one who is excellent in his field is his relationship with time. The legal profession is built over a lifetime, despite the changes the profession is currently undergoing. Those whose relationship with time is too short will not take the time to assimilate the foundations of the profession correctly, and then excel.
Cooking: The Way Of The Master
There’s a common thread running through all those who manage to dominate their field, whatever it may be. This quality is a different relationship to time and the importance of acquiring the fundamentals without rushing things. Assimilating the basics of a discipline takes time, and rushing only leads to disaster. Cooking is no exception to this rule: to be a chef renowned for his or her skills, you need to have mastered the fundamentals during an apprenticeship that can often seem long and tedious. Those who do best are the most patient and the most committed to constant learning.
Body building: one element that must not be neglected in bodybuilding is nutrition and rest. Many beginners ignore the importance of these two things. At a more advanced level, I believe it’s stubbornness that makes all the difference. Those who persevere and continue to train and work set themselves apart from the rest.
