The Simple Truth To Mastering Skills – How You Will Be Able To Develop Mastery In Anything

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Mastering Skills from Internet Marketing to Classical Musician and Anything In Between

Mastering Skills is NOT a lofty, elite, world only a few can obtain

In this post, I’m going to share a story that will illustrate how you can master just about anything you choose to master.  The good news is that mastering skills is something you can do.  There is a process to get from novice to master.  The bad news is that there are no short cuts.

 It is good to have an end to journey toward;  but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

– Ursula K. Le Guin

Jeff Olson, a hugely successful business executive, and now head of Nerium, a company marketing a skin care product, wrote a fabulous book titled ‘The Slight Edge’.  Below is a graphic he’s created that tells a profound story in itself.   His book delves into the concept of success, and mastering skills, and it has had an influence on my approach to my daily life.

Mastery is NOT an exalted state that lies at the end of the path;  it is a state of mind that lies at the very beginning.

– Jeff Olson

I’ve learned so much from so many people over the years, and there are a few core concepts that you can boil it all down to.  Jeff Olson has a good metaphor for one of the key concepts to understand when it comes to mastering skills and mastering your life.

I’m going to paraphrase his story he called Baby Steps.

When you were a baby, up until you were about a year old, you traveled around your limited environment on your hands and knees, crawling.  No one around you was crawling though.  And at some point, your mind recognized this and the thought came into your head that perhaps you should give that ‘walking thing’ a try.

So that was a moment in time that changed you forever.  In an instant, you decided you needed to walk.  A decision was made, and you were going to walk.  You didn’t know how you were going to do it, you didn’t know how long it would take, you didn’t know anything about it other than one thing.  That you were going to do it.  The decision was made that you were going to walk.

So you grabbed onto the side of the couch near by, and you pulled yourself up to try to stand up and walk.  Literally, on a step by step basis, you were going to do whatever it took to walk.  So as you stood there, wobbly and unsure, trying to get some balance before taking your first step, you let go of the couch, perhaps by accident, and ‘Blam’, you hit the floor.  You failed to walk.

It may have been immediately afterwards, or a few minutes later or the next day, but you tried it again.  You grabbed on to something nearby to pull yourself up to your feet, and again and again you fell down, until, eventually, you were able to balance yourself, and stay on your feet.  You were standing up.

We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.  The hand is more important than the eye….  The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

– Jacob Bronowski from the Little Zen Companion

Standing shakily, as a little baby, you shifted your weight to one foot, and reached out the other foot in front of you, modeling all the big people you had been watching.  As you tried to take your first step, you fell to the floor.  No less epic than Neil Armstrong taking a step onto the moon, you dreamed an epic dream and simply decided you were going to walk.  So you stood up again, and fell again… And again, and again, and again…

You then stood up, holding your mom or dad’s finger, and with the look of determination on your face, you took a wobbly step, and then another one.  Eventually, mom pulled her finger away and you took a few steps towards her all by yourself, walking into your mom’s arms as she grabbed you and kissed you and hugged you.  You celebrated that wonderful moment, because now you were walking.

The metaphor is clear for mastering skills, but if we delve in a bit deeper, hopefully this will resonate with you like it does with me.

When you were trying to walk, did you spend more time falling down or standing up?  Unless you were supremely gifted, you spent a lot more time falling down and failing your way to success.  Each attempt you made was a step down the road of mastery.

Can you imagine yourself still crawling across the floor now like a baby?

As a baby, do you think you ever considered quitting!  Of course you didn’t.  Think about this.  What would you have done… Tell yourself maybe you just were cut out for walking, and you would crawl the rest of your life.  CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF IN ANY WAY, EVER, ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, CRAWLING RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WALKING WAS JUST TOO TOUGH?

Assuming you have two legs and don’t have a crippling disease, the answer of course is comical.  No human being capable of walking physically would feel too mentally challenged to walk, and thus crawl in their suit and tie across the office to the boss’ office, or crawl out of the car into the gym to watch their son play basketball.

Do you realize that not choosing to do what it takes to have what you want is IDENTICAL to you crawling.

Constantly falling down was painful, and you looked pretty sill I’m sure.  But you don’t quit, because successful people never quit.  They realize each action is just a form of feedback to learn what to do, or at least what not to do next.  As a baby, you were guaranteed to succeed. You were born to succeed.  Your human nature is to succeed.  Babies are masters of their environment and they continue to move forward, literally step by step, until they have mastered the skill.

The sad and simple truth about why you are not living an abundant, glorious life.

Some where along the way, we become too grown up, too cool, too fearful, too sure we would never succeed, so we stop taking baby steps.  We become so sure we can’t succeed we refuse to let yourselves fail a few times first.  We give up the secret to mastering skills, which is taking baby steps and be willing to fail our way to success.

Some how you forgot what you instinctively knew as a baby.  You knew that anything was possible, and it was simple to get what you wanted.  You simply took baby steps, day after day, consistently, until you mastered the skill, or reached the goal.

It is that basic, that simple, yet as we get older we become certain that things are not possible.  We choose to believe that ‘this won’t work for me’.

The Great News Is We Can All Be Babies Again

There is absolutely nothing preventing you from simply dreaming big again, and then deciding to take one little step at a time towards that dream.  Nothing is in the way except our limiting beliefs.

Here Is How To Turn Your Life Around In 90 Days

1 – Dream big and write down with complete clarity and specificity what you want your life to be like.  Be very specific, see it, feel it, smell it, hear it, speak of it in the present tense, and document it.

2 – Use the incredible vehicle you have right now, Empower Network, to achieve time freedom through wealth creation.  Empower Network provides you a vehicle to make an unlimited income on line while mastering skills in marketing and mind set.

Making the decision takes just a moment.  Following the process in Empower consistently, every day, can turn your financial life around in a matter of weeks or months.  It varies for different people, but everything you need once you’ve made the decision to change, is there for you in Empower Network.

Of course, there are no guarantees for anything.  You may make absolutely nothing after joining Empower Network.  But if you choose to change, commit to it, then you are unstoppable and will make money no matter what you pursue.

Get Empowered.  Join Me, and stop crawling through your life.  Time is too valuable to waste another day.  It’s time for you to step it up and embrace change.

When the way comes to an end, then change —  having changed, you pass through

– I Ching