Everything is a skill

Meera
Meera
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

I mean if you consider everything to be a skill that you need to work on, then you realize that everything can be mastered to a level of an expert.

I was recently watching a video where I saw people performing the most amazing stunts. Graceful back-flips off of ten story buildings, perfect dives into crystal clear water, the spinning kicks of a complex karate move. While it seemed so effortless, I realized that behind these moments of perfection were thousands and thousands of hours of practice and failure that nobody could have seen.

So we the consumers are left in awe, admiring these super humans with their mind bending acrobatics, because we are so divorced from the processes beneath the surface. Which explains our fascination with sports athletes, the Olympics, and basically anyone doing apparent super-human things with minimal looking effort.

So we end up looking like this as we stare at our screens in awe:

Me watching Usain Bolt win the 100m as I scarf down a pre-lunch

Okay, but how about we think of it another way.

Things such as mathematics, becoming a karate master, writing a paper, cooking a steak, composing an email, having a telephone conversation, programming an app, winning the 100m, maintaining a motorbike: they are all variation of the same thing. A skill, that can be learned and mastered with effort and repetition.

In that mindset, there’s no thinking: Oh I’m not born to do this. I am the wrong race. I am the wrong sex. I am too dumb, too clumsy, too slow.

It’s just a trade that you will eventually get better at with effort. I mean isn’t that why trade schools exist? Isn’t that why university exists? To make us realize that there is nothing you can’t learn if you just mitigate distractions and concentrate?

So lets look at mathematics the same way we look at tae kwon do. With more practice, we will get better.

And maybe one day, there will be a video of you on Facebook doing the most craziest math problems with seemingly no effort. Be warned though, your level of attractiveness may skyrocket through the roof ;)

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