Top Ways To Keep Your Skills Sharp
Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog! Today, we’ll continue with our business success series by talking about the importance of learning. As an eco-friendly enthusiast and a business owner, I’m a firm believer in the benefits of always trying to improve. As a matter of fact, I can go even further — I can confidently state that my success in life is mostly thanks to my skill to learn from my experiences. And how did I do it? Keep reading, and you’ll find out!
Here Are Ways To Keep Your Skills Sharp
Tip#1 — Never stop learning!
Every experience, every single thing that we go through in our daily lives affects us. Every situation that we partake in, every social interaction, conference or event that we attend, every show on TV, video on YouTube, or course that we see leaves a mark on our personalities. And you have two choices — you can either learn from what you’ve experienced or dismissed it and let your time go to waste. I firmly believe that we, as humans, have the potential to learn from everything. You can learn something from every passing moment. Even if something seems insignificant at the time, you never know when it could be useful down the road.
Maybe you’re filling a part-time position at a storefront? Perhaps you’re a cashier or a front desk person. Or maybe you’re between jobs and just going to interviews. You can still extract valuable information that can help you further your career, start a business or affect the lives of those around you in a positive manner!
To leverage your experience, try and focus on the things that you’re learning. Think about the job itself, about the interaction with your peers and colleagues, about your clients and bosses.
Time is only wasted if you choose to waste it!
Tip #2 — You can’t be afraid to learn
Well, you can, but you shouldn’t be! Here’s the thing about learning — we have a near-infinite skill for learning, but we’re bound to make mistakes along the way. The trick to picking up new skills and improving is not to be afraid of failure. Realistically, you’re going to mess up, especially if you’re starting.
If you’re trying to learn a new sport, a new language, or a new position at a company, you’re bound to make a couple of mistakes along the way. That’s absolutely normal, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Nobody can realistically expect you to be perfect. And if they are, they just have no idea what they’re doing!
Here, I’d also like to point out that there are some mentors (both of the “business” and the “company in-house” varieties), that subscribe to a somewhat harsher methodology. They’d try and present your shortcomings in a way that can make you feel uncomfortable. Generally, if this doesn’t work on you (and if the person is any good at what they do), they’ll pick up on the clues and move on to something else. But if, for one reason or another, they continue with this approach — don’t feel bad about it. In reality, this is just a psychological trick meant to motivate you.
The important thing here is not to give up. Don’t let your small failures hold you back. In reality, you only need to get it right once, and it’s all smooth sailing from then on out!
Tip#3 — You can’t give up!
Rome wasn’t built in a day
I sure do like repeating that one, but only because it’s true! You can never expect to succeed immediately, especially in the business world. Yes, I know that you’re really excited about your latest idea. I’m sure that it sounds innovative, fantastic and very profitable. And, for all I know, it might just be the next best thing since sliced bread!
But it also might not work out. You might be lacking in knowledge, resources, or the time to make it happen. And that’s okay! The important thing is to not linger on the failure. Extract what knowledge you can from the experience and move on. Realize why you didn’t manage to achieve your goal, ensure that you won’t ever fall into that trap again, and get started with your next big thing!
Tip#4 — Don’t be afraid to ask for help
No matter who you are or what you’re doing, I can guarantee you that there’s at least one person in the world that is just as good at it as you are. Chances are that there are also people who are way better at it!
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel!
If you were trying to learn a new language, you could definitely do it all by yourself. You could pick up a couple of books, some recordings, or videos and lock yourself in a room. You can spend weeks or even months trying to decipher the most basic principles. Or, you could, you know, sign up for a course. You could go to someone who’s not only great at speaking the language but it also has the skill and experience in relaying their knowledge to others.
And I’m not saying that every entrepreneur out there needs a certified, professional business mentor. I’m not even trying to make you sign up for a course. You can always walk up to one of your peers and ask for advice. They’ll likely have at least something of value that they’re willing to share with you. And, more often than not, they’ll even be glad to share their knowledge. Most will also feel flattered by the fact that you value them enough to ask for advice! And you never know, you might even make a friend that day.
Bonus Tricks
Find at least five people who do what you want to do — you’re looking for people who can teach you what you need to get to where you want to go. Ideally, these people would be both interested in helping you and have enough free time on their hands to do so.
Make a list of people that you look up to — these don’t necessarily need to be people that you’ll get to talk to. But active discussions aren’t a requirement for figuring out what they’ve done right. Things like online discussion boards, social media, or even Wikipedia can be of great help here. As I said above, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel — people have already done that thousands of years ago and you can learn about how to make your own wheel without trying to bring them back to life!
Expand your social circle — you don’t necessarily need to learn everything from the same person. As a matter of fact, you’re often going to pick up a lot more information by talking to different people about the same topic. And there is no better way to achieve that than by working on your networking!
Don’t turn down conferences and events — even if you think you are already familiar with the subject of discussion, I’d advise you to not miss out on presentations and demonstrations. Not only do they present you with a chance to learn more and ask questions, but you’ll also get to meet a lot of like-minded people, some of which might end up as a part of your network in the future!
And that about wraps it up for today! If you’ve enjoyed this article and think that you learned something from it, please let me know by sharing it with your friends and leaving me a comment down below! Check out my other blogs such as, “ Habits For Long-Term Financial Independence “.
What’s your take on learning? Do you agree with my stance? If you don’t — why not? As always, if you think that I’ve missed something regarding ways to keep your skills sharp, or if you have any learning tricks of your own that you think I should add, don’t hesitate to let me know — I always love hearing from you!
Originally published at https://lifestyletipsbyantoaneta.com on April 23, 2021.
