How To Become World-Class Much Sooner Than You Thought Possible
You can get what you want very fast.
Much faster than you think.
It could be millions of dollars.
It could be being top of your class or field.
It could be becoming a professional, an entrepreneur, an author, or whatever else you desire.
It’s closer than you think.
The reason most people take forever to get what they want is that they’re repeating mistakes.
There’s a famous saying that “lessons are repeated until they’re learned.”
Sadly, most people repeat lessons that should have been learned a long time ago. They’re not learning from their experiences.
They’re not aggressively seeking feedback and constantly adapting their strategy. Instead, they’re doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result. (Albert Einstein defined insanity this way.)
They’re not willing to change their path, their strategy, or their “normal” way of doing things. They’re psychologically stuck.
When you get unstuck, you become world-class.
This article will help you get unstuck.
Decide What You Really Want
“You don’t have to love the hard work. You just have to crave the end result so intensely that the work becomes irrelevant.” — Tim Grover
Kobe Bryant once said that once he decided what he wanted, the whole world became his classroom.
He could easily get what he wanted once he decided what he wanted.
What you want is a choice.
That choice will lead to what you get.
What you want also comes from your values. It’s up to you to refine and define those values.
As Viktor Frankl said, “What man needs is not a tensionless state, but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Your “freely chosen task” is the thing you really want. Your biggest goal.
You’re the one who chooses your goals.
You don’t discover your passion or discover your personality. You create them.
You make a decision about who your future self is going to be, and then you act how that person would act.
Invest In Loss
“Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process. It is the key to breaking through plateaus, to making quantum leaps in skill level, and to keeping the learning curve as steep as possible.” — Josh Waitzkin
I was able to become a professional writer while still in my PhD program because I understood one principle: investment in loss.
Investment in loss means you embrace failure as a way to learn and improve.
You don’t avoid challenges, you seek them out.
You don’t fear mistakes, you welcome them.
You don’t get discouraged by setbacks, you use them as feedback.
You don’t let your ego get in the way, you let your curiosity guide you.
You don’t cling to your comfort zone, you expand it.
You don’t settle for good enough, you strive for excellence.
You don’t give up, you keep going.
This is how you get what you want very fast.
This is how you achieve your goals.
This is how you live your dreams.
Josh Waitzkin teaches how he used this principle to scale and master multiple fields in his book The Art of Learning. Josh became an international grandmaster of chess at age 16 before later becoming a world-class martial artist. In his tai chi classes, he noticed that the when the teacher gave students time to practice and spar with each other, most of the students would choose partners at the same level or slightly worse than them.
They were making themselves comfortable and confident.
When their teacher, Shen, gave them feedback, they would try to justify themselves instead of listening and learning. They were obsessed with being right.
Josh would instead always choose someone who was much better than him, and]he would get beaten up. His training was very hard, but he learned a lot from his losses. He lived by the saying from Norman Schwazkopf:“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.”
Waitzkin realized from this experience that people who are afraid to lose in the short-term never win in the long run.
They’re too busy protecting their ego and trying to be right.
They’re not willing to invest in loss.
They’re stuck to their old habits and unwilling to make mistakes.
If you’re willing to invest in loss, you’re adaptable.
If you’re willing to invest in loss, you’re learning.
If you’re willing to invest in loss, you outgrow your weaknesses and win, over time.
In short, you’re psychologically flexible and adaptable.
Don’t Repeat Mistakes
“You should always make your learning greater than your experience.” — Dan Sullivan
Most people have more experience than learning, rather than learning from their experiences.
They’re continuing in technical mistakes which are then compounded by psychological mistakes.
Technical mistakes are about how you do something, and psychological mistakes are about how you feel about it, or your mindset.
Josh Waitzkin said that if a student of any discipline could avoid repeating the same mistake twice, both technical and psychological, they would skyrocket to the top of their field.
How true.
If you avoid repeating the same mistakes, you learn faster and achieve more simultaneously. You literally shorten your learning curve if you’re psychologically flexible.
To do this, look at yourself objectively and admit that you are not who you need to be.
Your current self is ignorant compared to your future self.
Your future self isn’t defined by your present circumstances, however.
People with a fixed mindset, as defined by psychologist Carol Dweck, believe that who they are in the present is who they will always be. They think that their skills and abilities are fixed and cannot be improved.
They’re trapped in the “tyranny of now.”
People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, don’t focus too much on their current skills and abilities. They are excited by failure, because they see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. They have a vision of their future self that is beyond their current limitations.
They have a growth mindset, which means they believe they can develop their skills and abilities through effort and learning.
They’re not trapped in “the tyranny of now.”
For example, Elon Musk has a growth mindset. He wants to die on Mars, which is his image of his future self.
He knows that he has to overcome many challenges and learn many things to achieve that goal.
He is driven by his future vision, not by his present situation.
Are you?
Put In The Practice
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of the 10,000-hour rule, which states that you need roughly 10,000 hours of practice to become world-class at something.
That’s not true.
You need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, not naive practice.
Deliberate practice means that you have a specific goal, skill, or area you want to improve. It’s different from naive practice, which is just doing something over and over again without improving.
Deliberate practice is designed practice. Your practice is created for the sole purpose of achieving a goal, not as an end in and of itself.
Deliberate practice is iterative. You get feedback on your performance and you adjust your strategy accordingly.
Deliberate practice is hard. You challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone and to reach higher levels of competence.
Nothing about deliberate practice is easy or fun, but it’s the most effective way to learn and grow.
Deliberate practice is fueled by humility.
Be humble and curious, and adopt a student mindset.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help or guidance.
Don’t try to prove your intelligence, but rather your willingness to learn.
If you have a clear goal, find the people who have already achieved it, and learn from them.
As Darren Hardy (no relation) said, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.”
When you find someone you do want to trade places with, ask them questions.
Listen to their answers.
Apply their principles.
You can learn from books, videos, podcasts, or mentors.
Use whatever you can.
Remember what Kobe Bryant said: “Once I decided what I wanted, the whole world became my classroom.”
Conclusion
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”―Ernest Hemingway
Most people in the world are going to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
They’re going to gain experience, but not learning.
They’re going to practice naively, but not deliberately.
What do you want to do?
You can avoid repeating the same mistakes.
You can seek and apply the advice of those who have already achieved what you want.
You can stop doing what your current self would do.
You can make progress towards goals above your capabilities. You can become extremely confident.
It’s up to you.
Ready To Upgrade?
(These tools are based on my book Be Your Future Self now, which was recently the #1 bestselling book in all of Korea.)
