and hopping onto the slope of enlightenment.
Are you having trouble sticking to your goals? Ever tell yourself that you’re going to take up the piano, learn how to code, or become a TikTok superstar? The idea of wowing your friends by playing an impromptu piano piece at a dinner gathering sounds really good to you. It’s even enough to motivate you to take a few lessons. Pretty soon, you start to envision an alternate version of you that can professionally play the piano. You think to yourself, “I got this. That'll be easy. It’s me. I can do anything I put my mind to, including learning how to play piano.”
*Sigh*
People have a tendency of overestimating their abilities. We watch the pros do it and think to ourselves, “that doesn’t look that hard, I can do it.” In reality, when you master something, it becomes easy. Otherwise, you haven’t yet mastered it. Pros make their craft look easy because they’ve dedicated their lives to it. They’ve trained their mind and body for it. They’ve put in the time and the effort for it.
They climbed up Mount Stupid and dipped into the dreadful valley of despair before they embarked on the perilous climb of the slope of enlightenment on their way to the plateau of sustainability.
Forget about instant gratification. Instead, incorporate the concepts of repetition, consistency, and discipline into your mind. In anything that you set yourself to, you’ll inevitably encounter the valley of despair. The valley of despair is a traitorous place. It’s the early stages of development when acquiring any new skill or proficiency. In this stage, progress is incredibly slow or non-existent. The majority of people stay there and never come out of it. The amount of will power needed to get out is too great. People that move onto the slope of enlightenment do so because they kept at it, day in and day out, through the hard days and through the less hard days.
Getting better at anything costs time and effort.
Quick reminder: effort is the complete of opposite of comfort.
If you’re considering a new skill, you have to ask yourself three questions:
- Do I know why I want to learn this skill?
- Am I serious about learning this skill?
- Will I dedicate the necessary time to learning this skill?
If, and only if, you truthfully answer yes to these three questions, should you pursue the skill.
Knowing your “why” will come into play as early as you start to traverse the valley of despair. If you’re “why” isn’t clear, you’re doomed from the start.
Being serious about learning a skill means that you’re willing to undergo hardship, friction and experience a whole lot of head-scratching moments. However, if you’re serious about what you’re doing, the thought of abandoning ship won’t ever come up in your mind.
Everything costs time. Going to the store costs time. Speaking to that annoying colleague to keep it PC costs time. Learning a new skill costs time. Imagine you have a wallet, and in it, you have time coins and bills. You go to a “skills” store and tell the clerk that you want to know how to code. The clerk pulls out two translucent red pills from a drawer behind him. He places the pills on the counter in front of you. You look at him and you ask, “how much?” He looks at you and says, “2920 Ts.” “Ts?”, you ask. “Yes”, he replies, “2920 hours, which equates to 4 hours per day for the next two years.” Your jaw drops. All of a sudden, those tasty-looking pills lost their appeal. That’s a lot of time. Or is it?
One of the most priceless luxuries that we could ever hope for as humans, is knowing, ahead of time, how much time learning something costs. Imagine that. What if I could tell you that learning to read, speak and write German would take you 384 hours. Would you do it? Since we don’t have this precious information when the going gets hard and we quit, we chalk our loss up to our mediocrity, take a hit to our confidence and leave our progress to die in the valley of despair.
Fear not though. You’re going to make it out of there just fine. Why? Because you’re ready to take your eagerness to grow with you to the grave. You’re patient. You’re disciplined. You’re serious. You’re in it for the long run.
Is learning tennis hard if you’ve never played? Yes. Will you be able to serve a ball and get a few good hits during your first couple of practices? Yes. Will that make your confidence go up? Yes. Will it last? No. Will you hit the valley of despair? Yes. How do you get out of it? You swallow your pride, get through the bad days and keep churning. You keep going, even though it’s crickets in the results room. You keep going no matter what. Will it make sense to you to keep working towards something for which you’re seeing no visible results? No. Should you still keep going? Yes. Why? Because it’s part of the growth process.
When you’re down and have nothing to show for your hard work, know that you’re in the valley of despair. Know that it’s temporary. Know that it’s a crucial part of the process from which you can’t escape. Everyone has to go through it. It’s the price of progress.
If you keep at whatever it is you’ve set your mind to, one day you’ll wake up and find that the results you were hoping for have finally arrived.
That happens when you forget about the goal and focus on the process.
See you on the other side.
I publish [1] new article every day. My goal is to get to 100 subscribers by the end of September. If you enjoyed my words, please clap and subscribe by hitting the (FOLLOW) button.
I dearly appreciate you.
