4 Steps to Becoming the Best at Anything

“If you chase two rabbits at the same time, both will escape.” - Anonymous

First, know what you want. Second, figure out what you need to do it great. Next, focus all of your resources on it. Finally, don’t get distracted.

1. What do you want? – At some level, all people know the answer to this question but we like to make up excuses for ourselves or save our self-esteems but not pursuing it and risk failing. I won’t tell you that it’s easy but I will say that it’s exhilarating once you decide on what you want, and choose to go after it.

2. Figure out what you need to do it great. – Many people go to the extent of figuring out number one and then lead ourselves to the second great excuse. “I don’t know how.” We live in the information age. We are drowning in it. So stop kidding yourself. Go after it! Here’s what you can do after you’ve decided what you want to do.

3. Focus all of your resources on it. - Go to Google. Search whatever it is and narrow it down to the best individuals in the world at your chosen endeavor. Read about them, but only enough to learn what it is they do that makes them great. Go back to Google and read about that. Once you have some background knowledge on the topic, take your trip over to Amazon.com. Search for a book on the topic. Everything on their has already been reviewed, so you will know right away whether or not the book is worth your time and their reviews will let you know if the book is really covering what you want. That will serve as your strongest resource but you can also check out the many free how-to videos on Youtube.com but make sure the people posting them really know what they are talking about before you take their advice.

Once you have learned the proper technique or whatever you need to succeed, perfect it. Constantly, work on improving that one area. Don’t just simply practice. Make it deliberate. You can become drastically better if you give yourself exact criteria to measure yourself against in your quest for perfection. For instance, in golf, you don’t want to just practice chipping for 100 swings, you want to maintain 80% of your shots within 15 feet of the pin for 100 swings. That is deliberate practice and what it takes to become great.

4. Don’t get Distracted – I recently learned that a lion trainer will take a stool into the den with him and point the legs at the lion. It will back away from the trainer because it tries to focus on all four legs at once and can’t. Don’t be a lion. This is one of my greatest flaws and could be what’s stopping you from achieving what you want. We have so much going on in our lives and many of us want to be great at all of it, or we see something that looks like fun and drop what we’re doing right now to chase after that goal. Stay focused. Strive to improve that area you have just learned will make you a master. Become a star in this first area and then once you reach that point, chase something else. Finish what you start and the momentum from this will carry you through to that next goal.

Make Today Your Masterpiece.

NB