You don't become an expert by just reading

I was in the shower listening to “Raising Good Humans” by Hunter Clarke-Fields and she relayed “You don’t become an expert tennis player by reading tennis books.” You do it by practicing. Then again to drive the point home, she says you wouldn’t let your son go into a soccer tournament without practicing with the team many many times would you? No Way!

This rational really is the key to so many “things” within our lives. Want to be a better student, study (aka practice). Want to increase your physical endurance, train (aka practice). Want to have more mindfulness, meditate (you guessed it that’s practice).

Everything we do in life, we are practicing!!! Practicing at being human.

From when you were a baby you had to practice holding our heads up, then walking on two legs, feeding yourself, dressing by yourself. There is nothing that you are currently doing that you have not practiced how to do. And yeah, there is a huge sliding scale in everyones abilities, some do things better or worse than you, but do you really need to be an expert teeth brusher? I guess if you want to avoid cavities you should become an expert at your oral hygiene.

The point is, there is no physical way of becoming an expert in anything (your field, your body, your communication skills) just by listening or reading. It’s applying what you have read into your day, practicing. It’s in the practice of doing where we learn even more HOW TO do the thing.

You don’t become an expert at anything unless you practice with that thing is.

Just like you don’t become good at meal prep unless you practice.

You wont get good at listening to your body until you practice listening to your body.

This concept, “practice for progress” is wow, like, SO EASY to say, but way so hard to actually do. 

Why?

Number one we avoid doing it because it’s hard.

Number two it takes effort which is hard and we don’t want to do it. 

Number three you’re not going to see the reward of that practice for a really long time so people often get discouraged and stop. 

And the cycle repeats.

But not you, you can and will break that cycle because you’ve got a vision of where you want to be in life. You have goals to reach, you are striving for better. So here are some helpful tips I’ve learned along my journey.

How to:

Step 1 - Get a Motivation, WHY? So why would you want to practice speaking Spanish at 40? Maybe you are planning a trip. Why do you want more mindfulness in your life? Maybe you are frustrated and looking for more calmness or answers. You need to have a connection to the reason why you are practicing. For my kids, I tell them, if they want to be successful in life then need to start by being a successful student because students practice learning. So doing homework or extra reading and writing allows them to practice being a student (does it always work, no but its a practice 😉). Maybe you want to increase your income, so start practicing what taking on that new role might entail.

Step 2 - Activate the thought into the act. Your brain is going ot remind you time and time again to practice. It is usually an impulse thought right. Well, use that impulse and 5-4-3-2-1 GO! countdown method by Mel Robbins. I am also a huge fan of this and it even works for my kids 🙌.

Step 3- Or schedule time for the activity practice in your daily calendar. If you don’t make time for it, the time is not going to magically find itself and thus it’s not going to happen. When you are planning out your day, chunk off 10-15 minutes for your practice activity. Once you do this for a couple days, you can get a feel of where it fits best in your daily routine. Does it fit best in the morning before your day starts, maybe mid-afternoon after lunch or in the evening after dinner or before bed?

Step 4 - Keep doing it. Try to be consistent in your practice. If your only allowing 5-10 minutes a week it will need to take you a very long time before you can master or become an expert at something. For example, My son Theo took a skateboarding clinic, it wasn’t until the last meeting that he really was able to get the motions down. Thats ~5 hours of time investment in just one thing. Yes it spanned several weeks but image how much sooner he would have been had he done 5 hours in one day? I’m not saying you need to accelerate your efforts like that, I’m only putting the practice into perspective. Weekend immersions (retreats) are an excellent way to build up your practicing muscle to allow you to continue learning once life gets in the way (which it always does).

Step 5 - Be Dedicated. Don’t give up. Keep doing it day after day until it feels effortless and you see the results of your consistent practice. Like I just said, life will come up and try to get in the way. Taking a day, two, a week or more off from your practice happens. The sooner you forgive yourself and jump back on the horse the better! Not to mention, the sooner you will reach that expert goal. The only way to really fail is to give up and that’s not you. You are not a quitter. How do I know? Well you made it this far in my post so that’s speaks a lot about your drive. Will it take 10,000 hours like Malcom Gladwell suggestions. No, I told you Theo learned in 5. Maybe if he wanted to be a professional skateboarder 10,000 hours or more would be needed but I know of too many success stories that follow a different timeline.

Another point on this, you really never know how close you are to achieving your goal until you do. It could be that next golf swing, it could be the next phone call where everything clicks into place. Sometimes we stand at the bottom of a mountain looking up and wonder how we can get to the top. But everyones climb up is different and you really don’t know how close that summit is until your standing on-top of it.

Step 6 - Have passion for learning. This will be especially helpful when life gets in the way and you start to get discouraged. Having passion for what you are doing, for the practice of learning the thing you want to do! That 100% is what will keep you going. I can say this from personally experience. I love nutrition. I am motivated to learn more, it interests me to no end. But I some days are easier than others welcome rejection from prospective clients. That’s when I need to reach for my passion of helping others. This is a tricky one because what we are passionate about varies about as much as our expert levels. I will say though, if you are haphazardly engaged in the activity, in the practice then it will be that much harder to become an expert. I wish I could give you guidance on finding your passion, but that is something only each of our unique souls know. When we enjoy the practice, if you really love this thing you are doing then you’re gonna find a way to practice it no matter what because it’s what motivates you, it drives you and it’s the forces that keeps you coming back to try again.

How do we create passion, that might be a whole nother blog post …… but having a vested interest or an opportunity for a financial gain was a big motivator for me to do as much personal growth as I have in this past year. I wanted to be better for my business so I could gain more clients. I knew by focusing my attention on repairing my mindset, my self-love/worth, diminish some limiting beliefs and increase my confidence, by investing in my growth….. Then something wonderful happened, I started to enjoy the practice of personal growth. And now here I am sharing this with you, so maybe it can help you want to grow too.

But above all, just start and try. you never know how good you can be until you actually try.