I’ve heard this before in the book by Daniel Goleman called “Destructive Emotions”. We habituate our thoughts through our environment. In one of my YouTube videos, I talked about Triggers. Environment and memory create our somewhat autonomous reactions to sensory triggers. If you were nearly killed in a fire, you would probably have a reaction to fire around you, whether it be adverse or not.
Our past experiences end up giving us access to opportunities. But the problem with many people is that they seriously lack awareness of their habitual performances. I’ve mentioned in one of my seminars before that being more aware of yourself opens up opportunity for improvement. Your habits could trap you or lead you to excellence. It’s merely a question of what kind of habits you build for yourself.
So… do we really need 10,000 hours to build a skill?
My personal opinion is that 10,000 hours is necessary as a foundational step. If you have NO skill, or have not been practicing anything to improve yourself, there’s going to be a general lack of positive regard for what you do and the meaning behind it.
Your ability to feel that what you are doing is challenging and fulfilling will lead to something called “passion”. I suppose that’s one of the reasons why people think that it’s hard to “find” your passion. You simply haven’t looked at the right places yet! When you start something and begin to enhance your capacity to do that something well (e.g. swim, run, read, write) you end up developing opportunities.
It is these opportunities that will give you new skills to learn and new people to meet. This then offers the higher chance of becoming highly successful in what you do. I like to think of myself as a portal to opportunity. I’ll help bring people to the doors, but they have to walk in there themselves.
Millionaires can be made.
Experts can be created.
The question is… which one comes first: the millionaire or the expert?
I think you probably know the answer to this. It’s your expertise that brings you the millions. If you have no expertise, even if you received a million dollars, it’s going to disappear!
The funny thing is this: after your first 10,000 hours, the next skill or expertise you need to have doesn’t take that long. Possibly 9,000 hours. The more you learn, the less you HAVE to learn later.
Why?
Because domains of knowledge overlap with each other and you can be sure that this is the rule, not the exception. If you don’t have the learning capacity, you are in serious trouble. Others who have this learning edge will stay ahead of the curve and will force you to arrive at a conclusion that you’re too late.
It’s never too late! By being a student and learning, you might actually start finding it addictive. Learn more, build more capacity, increase your awarenss and you’ll find opportunities abound. Take those opportunities and you’ll see success coming in!
