ON SELF IMPROVEMENT || The Myth of Instant Expertise: Embracing the Journey of Learning and Growth
I cringed as I reviewed the first photos I had ever taken.
I thought, “Look at that composition; what was I thinking?” I was doing my best, given I had no experience taking photos. We all tend to be tough on our past selves.
Learning, improving and refining a skill takes time and numerous tries. Did you know that sushi chefs in Japan dedicate ten years to learning how to make sushi? It takes three years to learn how to make rice and seven years to learn how to make sushi.
Despite this understanding that good things take time, online courses set the expectation that new skills are supposed to materialize after you watch a set of videos; you instantly become an expert if you invest 10 hours in following the step-by-step guide in the videos. You can start charging five figures right away because of this new skill. Want a flat tummy? Buy this course or app subscription and see results in two weeks. An alternative is to use Ozempic, which is said to kill your appetite. Want an easy way to make six figures? Create a virtual good, put it on a website and watch it sell like hotcakes. At select universities, you can get an MBA in two months, and what do these MBA graduates know about business? It’s likely nothing applicable to real business scenarios. You know it is not true for success to come quickly, yet you desperately want to believe it, which is why these ‘miracle products’ are flying off the shelves.
This was one of the first photos I took on my first trip to Seoul over a six years ago. The lighting is overexposed, the focus is on the wrong subject, and the composition isn’t engaging.
The expectation that you must succeed on the first attempt is another popular misconception. If you do not succeed after the first try, you are a failure. This idea of being a failure if you try once and fail is not valid. Thomas Edison wasn’t the first to discover electricity; he was the first to try 2,774 ways to make it commercially viable. Those sushi chefs that spend ten years practicing making sushi? I bet the sushi rice fell apart on their first try.
For our marketing agency social account, we posted continuously at least once per day on our social channel to reach 200k followers in 11 months. Building success isn’t just showing up; it’s showing up every day, even when there were no results for the last hundred days, when you aren’t motivated, when you’re dead tired, and when you don’t feel like doing it. It’s about analyzing your mistakes in each video, learning from your mistakes, and improving the next batch of videos.
It feels better to believe success is within reach. If you could spare two weeks to pick up the new skill or set up that online business, you could watch the sales numbers skyrocket. You’re just a $199 course away from becoming a millionaire. Let’s think about this another way. If you have 100,000 people following the exact steps of this $199 course, the competition drives away the premium that prospective customers could have paid for this product or service. Where does that leave you? At best, capturing 1/100,000 of the enormous opportunity you bought into.
The road less travelled, the path you take, is better because the opportunity is unique for you. Good luck.
