The One Secret to Mastery. Period.
How to succeed with anything.
Have you decided to start an endeavour? A new adventure in life? Do you have a dream?
Maybe your endeavour is for fun, maybe for riches? You know it’s just something you have to do.
Maybe someone, somewhere said you had a talent for something and you want to make use of it. Maybe you have skills to use and the drag of the 9 to 5 is making you think of spreading your wings and heading out to make your mark on the world, create your own story. A chance to stop working for minimum wage building someone else’s dream.
To do that you need to master your niche, you need to learn everything you possibly can about it, but you need something more.
From Apprentice to Master.
Becoming a master at something isn’t about the gear you have, the skills you develop, the connections you make, the website you build or the blog you write.
Don’t get me wrong, all these things play a part. They are all stepping stones to your ultimate goal. They will all help move you along the road from student to master.
It isn’t just perseverance, sticking with it through thick and thin, working the extra hours, earning less money, scraping around to pay the bills. Torturing yourself with the thoughts of failure.
It isn’t just persistence, knocking on those closed doors again, fighting to get seen and heard, for someone with influence to spot your worth and share that value with their tribe.
It isn’t just drive and determination, that compulsion to keep pushing forward in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Again, you’ll need all this and more.
But there is one key ingredient, one ring to rule them all.
The Road to Success.
We read every day about the success of high flying individuals.
Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Goins, Bill Gates to name a few.
What you don’t hear about are the MILLIONS of other wanna be Billionaires who didn’t make it. You see the lifestyle these people achieved but not the path that took them there. The trials and tribulations. The knock-backs. We may not want to hear that story. It’s much better to think that it’s a path strewn with rose petals not rocks. We want to think it’s relatively easy to get there and anyone can do it. That anyone can then include us!
Personally, I don’t want to get to those heady heights, I just wan to be able to make enough to give me a simple quiet life. I want to make connections with like minded people and help them reach their goals too. It doesn’t cost much for a rural retreat to grow stuff and keep some chickens with the opportunity to paint and photograph nature. My goals are moderate and attainable.
But however far you want to go, you need GRIT.
Grit is strength. Grit is solid. It wears things away while remaining strong. It knows it’s own mettle. It has power. The power to remain. The power to support. The power to create change. Grit is uncompromising, reliable.
Grit will hold you up when the going gets tough.
Grit supplies the reserves of energy when the path is gruelling.
Grit gets the work done.
With grit you grind away and unlock your aspirations.
I’m not saying that you can’t do this. I’m saying you can. I’m not trying to put you off, just taking off the rose tinted spectacles. You need to look inside yourself and see not a millstone round your neck but the ultimate ring of power.
The power to push through every obstacle, learn every lesson, make mistakes and overcome them without losing anything of yourself.
However you measure success, dig deep and be prepared to use every ounce of grit.
Janice Gill is an Award winning Artist and Photographer. She can often be found watching paint dry and sometimes even photographing it.
You can follow her here on Medium or on her blog.
Her most popular article at the moment is
3 Keys to Mastering Aperture like a Boss
which is a companion piece to
3 Keys to Mastering Shutter Speed like a Boss
For more about creative success try
Don’t Beat Yourself Up, Be Brave.
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