5 Deliberate Steps to Master a Skill

5 Deliberate Steps to Master a Skill

By Mel Robbins |

I grew up cheering for the Detroit Pistons, but even I can admit Kobe Bryant was one of the greatest NBA players of all time. The fascinating part? He wasn’t born gifted. He’s an exceptionally hard worker. One trainer recounted how Bryant would exercise from 4:15 to 7 a.m. and then play basketball until the team’s practice at 11 a.m. Yes, Bryant trained for seven hours before practice even began.
Once he had five NBA championships under his belt, Bryant would still engage in grueling four-hour workouts on game days.
It’s easy to look at the masters in any field—be it Bryant, Mozart or Oprah—and credit their skills to genetics, innate abilities and hours of practice. But research on the science of peak performance has shown that it’s not just talent and hours of practice that lead to expertise. Instead it’s the type of practice one does. We can all reach mastery-level greatness through hard work, discipline and something called deliberate practice , or the process of understanding your weaknesses and then making considerable efforts to learn the skills you lack.
Related: Are You Willing to Do Whatever It Takes?
To improve at anything, you must push yourself beyond your comfort zone. When you put sustained effort toward improving your weaknesses, you will grow. This is the logic behind deliberate practice, a research-backed tool introduced by researcher Anders Ericsson.
For the past 30 years, Ericsson has studied the masters. His research has shown that how you practice matters much more than how much you practice. Experts become great by focusing on improving their weaknesses. Many people focus only on practicing things they can do effortlessly, but this never leads to improvement. Working hard just to work hard will exhaust you. Working hard for the purpose of improving is the secret to success.
Related: ‘8 Secrets of Success’
Another important factor of deliberate practice is constant feedback. You must monitor your progress so you can make adjustments. Without feedback, you won’t know how to improve. Reach out to others in your field and ask for criticism and advice.
Measuring your progress is also a key component of deliberate practice. Bryant measured his progress in many ways, such as counting the number of baskets he made daily. Every single day, he forced himself to make 400 shots. He never allowed himself to stop improving, even as his fame increased. You can measure anything: the number of cold calls you make, the pace you run or the amount of times you pitch your business.
Just like Bryant, you can incorporate deliberate practice into your own life with these steps.
1. Identify your goals and write them down. Research shows writing down your goals will help you complete 33 percent more of them.
2. Identify your weakest link and what is keeping you from achieving your goals.
3. Purposely and deliberately work on improving this skill.
4. Seek feedback from others.
5. Push yourself to show up and do it again and again.
Bryant wasn’t born a great NBA player. But by using deliberate practice, he became a master. And you know what? You can, too.
Related: How to Push Yourself to Greatness
This article originally appeared in the January 2017 issue of SUCCESS magazine .
Mel Robbins
Mel Robbins is a contributing editor to
SUCCESS magazine, best-selling author, CNN commentator, creator of the “5 Second Rule” and the busiest female motivational speaker in the world. To find out more, visit her website: MelRobbins.com . To follow her on Twitter: Twitter.com/melrobbins

7 Practical Tips to Achieve a Positive Mindset

How to prioritize your mental well-being

Larry Alton

 

June 14, 2018

 

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The “power of positive thinking” is a popular concept, and sometimes it can feel a little cliché. But the physical and mental benefits of positive thinking have been demonstrated by multiple scientific studies. Positive thinking can give you more confidence, improve your mood, and even reduce the likelihood of developing conditions such as hypertension, depression and other stress-related disorders.

All this sounds great, but what does the “power of positive thinking” really mean?

You can define positive thinking as positive imagery, positive self-talk or general optimism, but these are all still general, ambiguous concepts. If you want to be effective in thinking and being more positive, you’ll need concrete examples to help you through the process.

Related: 10 Clever Tricks to Trigger Positive Emotions

Here are seven:

1. Start the day with positive affirmation.

How you start the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. Have you ever woken up late, panicked, and then felt like nothing good happened the rest of the day? This is likely because you started out the day with a negative emotion and a pessimistic view that carried into every other event you experienced. Instead of letting this dominate you, start your day with positive affirmations. Talk to yourself in the mirror, even if you feel silly, with statements like, “Today will be a good day” or “I’m going to be awesome today.” You’ll be amazed how much your day improves.

• Tell youself these 3 positive things every day.

2. Focus on the good things, however small.

Almost invariably, you’re going to encounter obstacles throughout the day—there’s no such thing as a perfect day. When you encounter such a challenge, focus on the benefits, no matter how slight or unimportant they seem. For example, if you get stuck in traffic, think about how you now have time to listen to the rest of your favorite podcast. If the store is out of the food you want to prepare, think about the thrill of trying something new.

• Find your silver lining.

3. Find humor in bad situations.

Allow yourself to experience humor in even the darkest or most trying situations. Remind yourself that this situation will probably make for a good story later and try to crack a joke about it. Say you’re laid off; imagine the most absurd way you could spend your last day, or the most ridiculous job you could pursue next—like kangaroo handler or bubblegum sculptor.

• Adopt these 5 habits to become a happier you.

4. Turn failures into lessons.

You aren’t perfect. You’re going to make mistakes and experience failure in multiple contexts, at multiple jobs and with multiple people. Instead of focusing on how you failed, think about what you’re going to do next time—turn your failure into a lesson. Conceptualize this in concrete rules. For example, you could come up with three new rules for managing projects as a result.

• You're going to fail. Learn to use it to your advantage.

5. Transform negative self-talk into positive self-talk.

Negative self-talk can creep up easily and is often hard to notice. You might think I’m so bad at this or I shouldn’t have tried that. But these thoughts turn into internalized feelings and might cement your conceptions of yourself. When you catch yourself doing this, stop and replace those negative messages with positive ones. For example, I’m so bad at this becomes Once I get more practice, I’ll be way better at this. I shouldn’t have tried becomes That didn’t work out as planned—maybe next time.

• Silence the negative voice in your head.

6. Focus on the present.

I’m talking about the present—not today, not this hour, only this exact moment. You might be getting chewed out by your boss, but what in this exact moment is happening that’s so bad? Forget the comment he made five minutes ago. Forget what he might say five minutes from now. Focus on this one, individual moment. In most situations, you’ll find it’s not as bad as you imagine it to be. Most sources of negativity stem from a memory of a recent event or the exaggerated imagination of a potential future event. Stay in the present moment.

• Be right where you are. Live in the moment.

7. Find positive friends, mentors and co-workers.

When you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll hear positive outlooks, positive stories and positive affirmations. Their positive words will sink in and affect your own line of thinking, which then affects your words and similarly contributes to the group. Finding positive people to fill up your life can be difficult, but you need to eliminate the negativity in your life before it consumes you. Do what you can to improve the positivity of others, and let their positivity affect you the same way.

• Surround yourself with these 5 amazing people.

Almost anybody in any situation can apply these lessons to their own lives and increase their positive attitude. As you might imagine, positive thinking offers compounding returns, so the more often you practice it, the greater benefits you’ll realize.

Related: It Takes a Positive Attitude to Achieve Positive Results