What Are You Designed To Do?

This post is a follow up to Jenny’s comments

 

 

Perhaps the major barrier that holds people back is feeling unworthy. There are many forms of it, but it’s what a lot of issues boil down to.

 

Unworthiness is in essence a lack of faith in life. In a sense, it’s a kind of arrogance, that we can fix the errors of the force that made us.

 

 

Surely for us all to be here in this world there must be some intelligence behind the design whether you believe you were divinely created or are the result of millennia of evolution?

 

 

Do we really think that we were made from some third rate celestial factory?

 

 

Yet people go acting as if we were all bought from the discount store for some other planet’s catalog seconds.

 

 

Think about it for a minute. Surely there is some purpose in the design of your personality, your instincts and interests. There’s 6 billion people currently on the planet.

Each unique.

 

 

And we worry about not conforming to some standard.

 

 

How can we say that people are unique and then hold them up to some arbitrary, era and cultural specific standard?

 

 

Who has a complete enough comprehension of life enough to try to judge what is good or bad, strong or weak?

 

 

Once you start comparing yourself you lay the foundations of insecurity, jealousy, pride and deceit. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are or what you are doing. You are where, you are. If you accept and embrace it you have a solid base to work from and it’s all upwards from there.

 

 

 

 

 

Focusing on your weaknesses makes you feel unsure, confused and freeze up. If you beat yourself up, about where you are, you’re going to feel less able, capable and motivated to make the jump to where you want to be. It’s going to be like walking a tightrope.

 

 

As I explained in the last post. If you focus on not being where you want to be, you obsess about ever smaller details and descend into the depressive spiral.

 

 

Life is movement.

 

You can’t stop that. You either move downwards, upwards or tread water. Motivation comes from wanting something. And you’ll always want something. Once you reach the mountain top you’ll want a higher mountain. If you’re happy you’ll want to dive in deeper.

 

If you’re unhappy, you’ll probably want something bad for someone else or to jump out from the frying pan to the fire.

 

 

Our economy runs on insecurity. We all rush out and buy perfumes and toiletries so people will love us. We buy big cars and boats so people think we’re good enough. We’ve all got sheds and garages full of stuff we bought because we thought we might need it one day.

 

And the self-help industry runs on your perceived shortcomings. But who are we to judge them as shortcomings?

 

 

What you look at as your shortcomings are a necessary aspect that enable you to excel in another area.

 

 

For example, I’m really not that emotional. My wife will get really excited and effusive about things. And she’ll expect the same from me, but I’m really flat and stable. My emotions vary very little and aren’t very powerful. Sometimes she will ask me how I feel about something and I’ll struggle to answer. I just don’t naturally consider them.

 

 

Back when I had a Health Club, my Manager used to joke. He’d say to Members, ‘Rob got really angry today. Yeah, he raised an eyebrow.’

 

 

What that means is that I’m never going to be as rewarding to be around socially as my wife is. I’m never going to seem as warm or interested or as bubbly a character.

 

 

However because I’m less emotionally invested in situations I am able to analyze and see patterns, underlying causes and observations that she misses.

 

 

In other words my wife is built for social interaction, whereas I’m built for observation and understanding.

 

 

You see strengths are only strengths in certain contexts. Put them in another context and they can become strengths. So without the weakness, you don’t get the strength. You just have to work out what your strengths are and what that equips you to excel at.

 

 

I like what Dan Sullivan said about this.

 

“If all you focus on in life are your weaknesses, all you’re going to end up with at the end of your life is a lot of really strong weaknesses”.

 

 

There are many areas in life that you will never be able to excel in. You’ll probably never win an Olympic Gold, even if you spent all day every day training. You’ll probably never have a Number One single. I suspect that doesn’t really bother you because your interest lies somewhere else. Somewhere where you could excel. Here’s how you do it.

 

 

List everything that you do. Then grade them into one of four categories.

 

• Giftedness

• Excellent

• Average

• Incompetent

 

Now there are probably less than four areas that you are gifted in. Maybe it’s connecting with people or categorizing something or seeing something that others don’t. Gifted is something that comes really easily to you. So easy that you don’t even consider it a strength, but people are surprised how easily you do it and how quickly you can learn this skill.

 

 

Likewise you’ll be incompetent at a number of skills and even if you devoted years to being better at them you’ll never be great at them. Effort spent here is fighting nature and your instincts. It’s wasted effort.

 

 

For example, if you’re hopeless at cleaning, either trade something you’re good at with someone else in exchange for them doing your cleaning or generate enough money from being great at something to hire a cleaner.

 

 

The more time you spend on things that you are excellent and above, the happier you’ll be. You are aligning with the design nature has for you. And as a by product the more successful you’ll be in the world because people will only see you in the light where you shine most brightly.

 

 

To become world class at something, which I guess is what many people mean by bettering themselves. Here’s the steps you need to take.

 

 

Pick one of those areas you are gifted in, focus on it and develop your skill in that area and eventually you’ll be one of the best in the world. You might have heard of the ten thousand hour theory.

 

 

Looking up some details on it, it seems to have originated with Daniel Levitin, in his book “This Is Your Brain On Music” Anyway, here’s what he’s found it takes to become world class at any given skill;

 

 

ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.

 

 

Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

 

 

In another study from Northwestern University a few years ago, they found that the average human being of average intelligence who has the ability to focus approximately 70% of the time on any one topic for a period of 8-12 years will develop genius level thinking in that area.

 

 

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!