Amateurs and Experts

365 Daily Meditations For The Here And Now

All great discoveries are made by amateurs.

This explains how in order to be an expert you must be skilled. When you are skilled you become repetitive in your expertise. Experts become more skillful, but yet more dull. Amateurs have nothing to lose! They tend to be bigger risk takers. They are still trying to find their way. They tend to have more drive and ambition.

The lesson behind it all is you have to constantly reinvent yourself. It is great to attain a skill, just don’t settle in the with that skill and mindset forever. Constantly try to invent something, try new things, delete old things, start over. Life becomes more meaningful when you break away from the pattern of an expert.

I have definitely experienced this in my life. There was a point in life… my first year in college. I felt like I knew what I wanted in life. I knew how I wanted to raise my child. I knew what I wanted to do with my career. I mapped my life out. I concentrated on things I knew and left out things that I didn’t know. I interacted with people that fit in my box… and nothing else. I had my routine. I had my security in life. Life seemed to be okay. I achieved most of my goals and things turned out the way that I desired them to be.

It wasn’t until I took a biology class and a religion class. Neither of which I wanted to take, but they fit in my schedule. Those two classes changed my life and whole train of thinking. My religion class forced me to experience things I have never thought of. My biology class made me think deeper into my current beliefs. It seemed to open my eyes and discover things in me that I never knew existed. I opened my eyes wider and learned so much about myself and the world around me. I learned SO much that I discovered I knew very little… That’s when I knew I figured out so much about life itself. My desire to know more and search for a deeper meaning in everything was magnified. I realized we lived in such a big world with such diverse people and cultures. I no longer wanted to live in the box I made for my life thus far. I wanted to create my own song to dance to. I may have not invented anything but when I let go of my routine and what I was an expert at…. I discovered a deeper meaning to life and myself.