A few months ago I was stuck at Mwanza Airport, waiting for the air-line to find a safe plane to get me back to Bukoba.
I sat there for six hours.
While a lot of other passengers kicked and moaned and otherwise had fits, I and maybe a dozen others went with the flow. I used the downtime to write, read, and relax. One of the books I had stuffed into my bag was good for my mind, was a delight to read, taught me a few things, and prompted me to write this note.
According to Richard Restak, in The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind, your brain is plastic. You can teach your brain new tricks, skills, languages, and more with repetition, intention, awareness, and patience. He says, \’there is a 10-year rule stating that virtually anyone can become a genius—or at least a superior performer—in a niche if they apply themselves in that area for a decade.\’
As I think about how I became an entrepreneur, then a home based coach, then a publicist, then a speaker, then a web designer, and then a marketing practitioner, I can see I spent nearly a decade learning those subjects and honing my skills. I read books, studied authors, bought courses, and invested in seminars and training. I put myself through a relentless and disciplined self-study and home-study quest to learn and grow.
YES, I do this today. I was stuck at Mwanza Airport because I was there Mwanza to attend a weekend seminar organized by Prof. Ally Mtanda and May Mnuo.
The point: If you want to become a better salesperson, or a doctor, or an engineer, or marketer, or copywriter, or author, or speaker, or anything else, you should expect to invest time, energy, and money to learn the craft. You should expect it to take longer than a weekend. You can start the process in a moment, with a decision, and you can see progress very quickly, but mastery will take a little longer.
Maybe even 10 years.
But if you don’t start now, where will you be in 10 years? I wish you to…
Open Your Mindset
Carol Dweck, in her wonderful book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, explains that there are two perspectives to growth in your life:
- a fixed mind-set and
- a growth mind-set
The fixed mindset is where you decide you cannot learn anything new in an area, no matter how much you try. Your ability is fixed.
The growth mindset, in contrast, is one whereby you feel you can learn with enough energy, focus, time, and commitment. Your ability is flexible. You are able to grow.
When I read Dweck’s book, I thought about the world of organizing, web-designing, sales and marketing. In that area, I have a growth mindset. I feel I can learn new things with guidance and effort. In other areas I had a fixed mindset.
When it came to performing magic for others, for example, I felt my skills were fixed at a poor level. After reading Dweck’s book, I decided that was not true. I awoke to the fact that I can learn anything, even how to perform magic, if I focus on it and work at it. Today, I perform magic for anyone who asks, and sometimes for those who don’t ask.
The same concept holds true in my today’s professional career when it came to online marketing, network marketing, web-designing, coaching and building my own business from scratch. At one point I had a fixed mindset about my ability to deal with powerful people. I was intimated by them. As I changed that old mindset to a growth mindset, I’ve been able to deal with the big offices.
As you read this article, I encourage you to come from a growth mindset. Although some of the concepts may be new to you, that doesn’t mean you can’t implement them. It simply means they are new to you. Nothing more.
When I first began to learn new languages, such as English, I found the new words to be staggeringly difficult. I felt I would never re-train my mind. But by adopting a growth mindset, by realizing I could learn anything with time and persistence, I was able to learn conversational American, and I’m still learning today. The only reason of publishing this article in English language instead of Swahili.
Advises Dweck,
\”Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.\”
As you practice what you’ll learn here, the entire process will become easier and easier. And then, one day, it will be second nature to you. It all begins with your mindset.
Steve Andreas, in his two-volume work, Six Blind Elephants, says, \”It is one thing to realize that the beginning stages of learning are often inevitably difficult and uncomfortable. It is quite another to use that discomfort as a reason not to learn anything new.\”
In other words, stay open minded. Just relax and learn. I\’ll make the learning process easy for you.
Me and my team will use hypnotic techniques to help you absorb those information at an accelerated rate. You may or may not notice these methods at work. If you’re familiar with my earlier works through seminar, you may be onto my hidden methods.
But be sure that this website is founded to speed up your learning so you can cut the 10-year training rule down to an almost instant improvement.
And now, when you’re ready, let’s catch up together. Tell me something and will keep in touch ASAP.
