Today I want to share with you an article by Michael Neill, The Genius Catalyst, that fits right in with learning and mastering a new craft:

In Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating new book Outliers, he quotes research by Dr. Daniel Levitin into the amount of practice it takes to achieve world-class expert status in whatever field you happen to be involved in.

In Levitin’s own words:

… ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

In researching this further online, I came across this fantastic blog entry by David Seah:

What to Do? Just Do!
Starting first with that 10,000 hours of practice: I’d had a similar thought about leveling-up abilities based on a magnitude-of-10 hour scale:

• at 1 hour … you know some basics
• at 10 hours … you have a pretty good grasp of the basics
• at 100 hours … you are fairly expert
  
• at 1000 hours … you are an experienced expert
• at 10000 hours … you are a master

I originally got this idea when reading about pilots, who seem to always mention how many hours of flight time they’ve logged. Hours of experience are a good metric, and I’ve noticed that this pattern seems to recur (up to 100 hours, anyway) for me. It’s not always exactly this many hours, but as an order-of-magnitude analysis it holds true.

While 10,000 hours over 10 years is a daunting proposition, consider this:

• 1000 hours is pretty doable. That’s a little less than a year of full-time work.
• 100 hours is even more achievable… you could do that over a few months on the side, or just slam through it in a very intense couple of weeks.
• Even spending 10 hours practicing something is going to make you significantly better at it. If you spent 10 hours practicing one song, or learning how to juggle, or learning how to bowl strikes… you’re going to learn something.
• One hour? That’s worthwhile too. You could spend an hour writing your signature over and over again to make it cooler. I’ve done that at least a couple of times in my life.

While breaking down the 10,000 hours to mastery in this way can certainly make it seem less daunting, another distinction I have found useful in this arena comes from motivator Anthony Robbins, who recounts his experience of booking himself out as a speaker 3 times a day to anyone who would listen. As Robbins says in the book Awaken the Giant Within.

While others in my organization had 48 speaking engagements a year, I would have a similar number within two weeks. Within a month, I’d have two years of experience. And within a year, I’d have a decade’s worth of growth. My associates talked about how “lucky” I was to have been born with such an “innate” talent. I tried to tell them what I’m telling you now: mastery takes as long as you want it to take.

When someone tells me “I can’t draw well”, or “I’m no good at sports”, or “I’m not a natural writer”, I invariably ask them “how many hours have you spent practicing?” It is very rare indeed that the answer is anywhere near 100 hours, let alone 10,000. The implication is that their apparent lack of skill is usually less a function of a lack of anything on the inside than it is a reflection of a lack of time and effort spent on the outside.

For me, the point of all this is not to give up on something you’d love to do because you’re apparently not very good at it. Almost any worthy goal will succumb to an investment of time – and time is the one commodity that we all have in equal abundance!

Copyright © 2008 Michael Neill. All Rights Reserved

Create A Project

If you read last week’s post and made your list of things you love to do, or talked to your friends and family about your gifts and talents, you probably got a good idea by now what it is that you want to do. Welcome to the project stage of starting your own business!

To get going, select a few things from your list that you can turn into a project. This can be anything from throwing a dinner party (you love entertaining and/or cooking) to starting a blog, finding a husband, writing a book, learning how to make jewelry, or anything else that you are interested in. It does not matter how crazy your idea, if you are curious about it, it passes. Chances are, whatever you love doing, somebody is already making a living doing it.

The important part about this stage is to take immediate action! Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get distracted from a great idea? If you don’t take action right away, the idea fades into the background until you forget about it all together. So do it, now!

Another crucial point is to take simple, easy steps. Time and again I have seen people get so overwhelmed with starting a business that they never take the first step. Be aware of this! Also, notice the voices in your head going like this: “Oh, this will probably never work, or, there are already so many people out there doing this, or, I am not good at this, or, I need to get a degree/certification/credit before I can start.” It’s your fear talking. Don’t listen and keep going!

Back to your project. Let’s use an example. Say your friend invited you to an evening of palm reading. You went to check it out and you fell in love with it (There is an institute for this, The International Institute of Hand Analysis). Voila, you have a project.

Every good project has a beginning, a middle and an end as well as a time line.

• Part One: Find out more about Palmistry. Search the internet, read books, find blogs, take sessions with a palm reader, get to know other palm readers, etc. As a time line you can set three or four weeks for this stage.
• Part Two: Learn your craft. Attend classes or seminars, connect with other, like-minded people or put together classes for a professional palm reader. You can also create a website or start your own blog on the subject. Depending on the learning curve, part two may take several weeks or even months. In my experience, you’ll never feel quite ready to move on, so don’t spend too much time here. You will always keep learning.
• Part Three: Put together your own small session or seminar. This can be as simple as asking a friend to organize a palm reading evening at her house, offering a class at a community center,  or doing single finger print readings. At this point you start charging a small fee for your service.

These steps are simple examples of how you can go about starting a project like learning a new craft. You can do this while having a job, working regular hours or taking care of your family. Simple as that!

How to stay on track: Life is designed to pull you off track! Here are a few ways to stay on course.

• Form a support team. Do you know other people who are working on a business or project? Set up weekly meetings to check in, set goals, report on progresses and to cheer each other on. This is invaluable!
• To do lists. Knowing what you are doing each day will help you to stay focused. Personally, I love writing my to do lists every night. Checking things off the next day will increase your drive and give you energy. Beware of being too hard on yourself. The list is a guideline, the project is a game. Have fun with it!
• Set weekly and daily goals. Again, this helps with staying focused and monitoring progress.
• Last, but not least, celebrate! Enjoy your project and celebrate your achievements. If you like, email me about it and lets celebrate together!

Today I want to follow up on my post from last week, ‘Struggling With a Bad Job. Start Your Own Business Now’, it seems to be a hot issue.

Over the years I have seen many of my friends stay in jobs they hated just because they thought that one day it might pay off (They would receive stocks, shares, a promotion, a salary increase, etc.). This has been my experience: It never does. On the contrary, in most cases it gets worse. (BTW, the same is true for most relationships but that’s for another post.)

Things will only get better if you make them better.

How? In the following I will offer several steps that you can take right now to start getting out of a job you don’t like without leaving it today. (If you like a more drastic approach I offer you email me and we talk about it. There’s more than one way you can do this.)

• First, be honest with yourself. What’s the real reason that you are stuck in this job? Is it because you are afraid you won’t be able to find a better one, are you tied to the location, or are you afraid you will not be able to pay your bills, lose your house, you car, etc.? There can be many reasons, which is yours?Once you know what you are afraid of, relax! The world is not coming down, you will keep your job a while longer, the economy will eventually get better and your life is meant to work out! I promise.
• Now that that’s out of the way, what is it that you really want? What is it that you’ve always wanted to do but haven’t? Take the time on hand and start dreaming up your ideal life, your perfect job, your own ventures, adventures, etc.Put it on paper. Write down what you come up with and make it as real as possible. Where do you live, what do you do, how do you spend your time and who do you spend your time with? If you really want to get into it, start a dream book with pictures, descriptions, outlines, etc. Or make a collage, a so-called vision board, that puts your vision into reality.
• Next, find out what your gifts are. What do you love doing? This is the tricky part because what you love doing may come so naturally that you are not aware of it. Doesn’t everybody love cooking, search the internet or take pictures? Doesn’t everybody want to be a famous writer? No, not everybody does. This is your dream!

  Ask others for help. If it’s hard for you to see yourself for who you are, ask the people who love and appreciate you to tell you what they see. Again, write this down. It may also help to think back to a time where you were really happy. What made that time so much fun and fulfilling? What were you doing? Add this to your list.

By now you should have a lot of material to work with. Look at all the different pieces and ask yourself, what is it that wants to emerge? What steps can I take today that will get me closer to where I want to be?

One of my clients did this exercise and realized that what she wanted most was to find a husband and to make chocolate. Wow! At the time she was working a corporate job in marketing. She decided to go for it. Her first project was ‘the man hunt’. She really went for it and searched for men online and elsewhere. As you can guess, she succeeded and with her husband she moved to the place she had found to be her perfect environment. She also left her job and started her chocolate business, which she grew fast and furious using her marketing talents to promote it. The point I want to make here is that whatever it is you want to do, you can be successful at it. Just take it one step at a time.

Like me, you probably grew up in an all or nothing world, where getting what you want is hard and living the life of your dreams is a fairy tale. Well, I believe that that reality is outdated. In today’s world there is enough for everybody to go around and you too, can live your life with zest and happiness! Go for it

These are some good books and websites on the topic:

Pam Slim’s blog and soon to be book “Escape From Cubicle Nation”

Bad economy, just got fired? Time to fly! Jonathan Fields Fire Fly Manifesto will provide you with great tips on how to get started doing what you love.

A great book to get you started on a business or project is Brian Tracey’s “Flight Plan”. Get it on tape and listen to it in your car. Beats any music!

David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” as well as his blog “webinknow”

If you would like to start a blog without setting up your own, yahoo offers a free service on it’s yahoo shine website. On shine you can easily set up a blog and start writing to an already existing audience. It’s a good way to get your feet wet in the blogging world. Check it out at www.shine.yahoo.com

If you are interested in making finding a man your project, a great book to read is “Find a Husband After 35. Using what I Learned At Harvard Business School.”

Set up an account on twitter at twitter.com. Build a community, learn from other entrepreneurs and start to publish yourself. Make sure to follow me at twitter.com/karinmanske. See you there!

Start Your Own Business Now! – Part 1

Our world is changing dramatically. Jobs are disappearing, whole industries are struggling or going under and people everywhere are wondering what to do next. How about you? How are you holding up in today’s tough market?

While times of crisis can be unsettling, they also hold opportunities for transformation and change. Take the economy for example. Never before has it been easier to start a small business than today. If you have a product or service that you are passionate about, you can start building your own enterprise. It’s a great way of making yourself independent from the job market by doing something you love and getting paid doing it. The best thing yet, with today’s technology it is very, very easy. Here are the basic steps:

1. Find a service or product that you are passionate about and develop a plan of action.
2. Look for a mentor in the industry you are interested in. This can be through a blog, a seminar or a personal connection.
3. Set up your business on the internet by creating a website and, most importantly, a blog.
4. Start marketing your business by building a community and interacting with people on twitter, facebook and other relevant social websites and blogs. Create your fan base.
5. Sell and deliver your product or service. If you did a good job at marketing, this step comes natural because people will want to buy from you.
6. Serve, serve and serve your clients. Service is key to any good business and good service comes from treating your customers with kindness and respect. But most and foremost good service comes from you loving what you do and having a grand time doing it!

While these steps are simplified, they are basically how you start any project.  As I said before, going into business has never as easy. If you have a job, keep it. Start your project on the side, experiment, make your mistakes (hey, they happen), get your feet wet and find out what works. The internet, your personal network and the community online will provide you with the support you need.  Once your business generates profit, you can still decide whether you really need that job.

]]> http://karinmanske.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/struggeling-in-a-bad-economy-why-not-start-your-own-business/feed/ 0 karin manske coaching http://karinmanske.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/are-you-your-own-worst-critic-how-to-fall-in-love-with-yourself-again/ http://karinmanske.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/are-you-your-own-worst-critic-how-to-fall-in-love-with-yourself-again/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:00:08 +0000 karinmanske http://karinmanske.wordpress.com/?p=161 ]]>

My friend’s 10 year old daughter loves posing in front of the mirror (for some odd reason their whole house is covered with them), moving her hips, doing little dance moves, tossing her hair and arms while smiling at herself in admiration. Her whole body emanates joy and pleasure and I am sitting in awe, watching her.

I catch myself wondering how long she will keep her lighthearted innocence alive. How long until she wishes her body was different, not as curvy, feminine and round?

I don’t remember how I fell out of love with myself but I certainly did. Maybe it was the comments my mother made, that I was big for my age, that I had a waist while most kids did not? Or the snickering, adolescent boys in school climbing the stairs behind me, whispering something about my ‘big butt’? Some things seemed to be wrong with me and I did not like it. I wanted to be like the other girls, skinny, boyish, and cool!

Later I found out that I was not the only one. Today I find it heart breaking to see how many women are hard on themselves, not liking who they are very much at all. How is that possible? Just like my friend’s daughter we are all so beautiful, vibrant and made to have fun!

For me, loving myself again started with loving and accepting my body first. Funny enough I did this by becoming a fashion consultant. While helping others to see their own beauty, I discovered mine. It was a somewhat shocking and surprising experience (there was actually nothing wrong with me!), and my first step in finding out who I really was.

How about you? How can you fall in love with yourself again and alter the way you perceive yourself? Here are a few things that have helped me on the way and maybe they can make a difference for you, too:

1. You probably are our own worst critic. To change the picture you have of yourself, ask a few of your truly best friends for feedback: What do they love about you? What are your strengths? How do you contribute to their lives? Make sure these friends have your best interest at heart. Really listen and take it in.
2. Pay attention to positive feedback in your life. Accept acknowledgment, soak it in, dwell in it. Stay away from negative people, their feedback and criticism. Personally, I tune it out.
3. Next time you go shopping, take a friend that has a great sense of style and loves shopping with you. Be courageous. Try out new looks, colors, even things you don’t think look good on you. Just explore and see what happens.
4. Listen to your body. Women are made for pleasure. Unfortunately most of us are out of touch with what we need. We push and go the extra mile and often lose our aliveness doing it. When you are pressured, you lose your natural wisdom. You forget what is good for you and what isn’t. So listen to your body. Take breaks when you are exhausted, take a hot bath to relax, dance, move, sleep. Everything else can wait. Don’t worry, your life will still be there when you return.

I wish you a wonderful time exploring your beauty, fun and wisdom! Let me know what you find out.

How is life without excuses? I thought it was an interesting question so I tried it out for one week. This is what I experienced:

From the get go I realized that I used excuses for two main things in my life.  For all the stuff I thought I should do but actually did not want to do and for the things that were unfamiliar, hard or scary to me. In both cases using excuses helped me to put them off indefinitely. The first category I took off my list. The second one I tackled.

This is what I did.

I very thoroughly sorted through my life’s priorities and goals. What was important to me and lit my fire and what was not, what was outdated and what was merely a good idea that I did not have the passion to act on, etc.

Once I had my priorities straight, I made a plan of action. I looked at the flow of my week, the vibration of the days (I know it sounds goofy, but I love this kind of stuff …  Monday is influenced by the moon, which makes it a bit mellow, sensitive, etc. so I chose Monday for my personal holiday where I relax, ponder new ideas, connect with family and friends, etc.) and came up with a clearly defined weekly and daily schedule with specific tasks.

When making a schedule be aware of the flow and the rhythm of your life. Don’t try to force things a certain way. In my life the best time for getting things done is in the morning while my daughter is at school. Afternoons are more flexible, with some appointments, exercise and time for family.

After noticing that unfamiliar things got pushed to the back of my list, I put them first. Second came the tasks that were easy and took almost no focus or discipline to get done.

Another, very important observation I made this week was that there were thousands of distraction every day that kept me off track (and using excuses). Brian Tracey talks about this in detail on his new CD “Flight Plan”. He says that on a flight from Los Angeles to New York a plane is off course more than 95% of the time! The job of the pilot is to make constant course corrections. This is true for life, too. Once you know your destination, you will have to make adjustments. Factor this in and don’t get upset when it happens. Get to know your major distractions and deal with them. I noticed that I tend to make time for family over my own projects which in the end gets me frustrated. Be aware, make things work for you (and others) and course correct.

Here are the steps again.

First, be very, very clear about what you want. Get rid of the stuff that does not light your fire. Next, make a clear plan of action. Put your priorities in order of most important, second most important, etc. Put unfamiliar things first. Make a weekly and daily schedule to keep you on track.

And last, make sure to schedule in play time! One of the reasons I was using excuses in the first place was that I was tiring myself out by a lot of ‘doing’ and very little playing. Be kind to yourself. Put your aliveness first. Make having a good time a priority.

Have a wonderful week!

At my daughter’s school they adopted a ‘no excuses’ policy this year. This means that every single kid, teacher, staff and admin is called to action to do their very best, every day!

That got me thinking about my own excuses. In what areas of my life am I not playing full out and why? Interesting? This is the list I came up with:

In my business:

- I am not good enough

- I can’t decide on my target audience

- I don’t have the right equipment

- I don’t know how to pin it down

- I don’t have enough time

- etc…

In my relationship:

- It’s not my fault

- Why me?

- He does not get it.

- I can’t help it …

- He does not care!

And the list could go on …

How about you? Do you use excuses for not getting what you want, for not being as successful as you could be and for not having all the fun in the world?

This is what I am going to do. For one week I will put my excuses to the side and do the things I actually really want to do: write quality content for my website and blog, outline an e-book about self coaching and start working on a coaching CD. I also want to take some time every day and do some creative writing. This is something I have been wanting to do for a very long time. By the end of the week I will let you know how things have been working out!

If you want to play the game, you can start by making your excuses list and then set a goal to do the things you really want to do for one day, two days, or a full week.

Sounds like fun? Let me know what happens. And, if you are one of the few people who does not use excuses, how do you do it, I’d love to find out!

To your success!

Do you find yourself wondering at times, too whether your peak moment has already come — or maybe come and gone unnoticed — or whether your real life is still ahead of you? If you do, read on and be prepared, you may find out that you are a late bloomer!

In his new article in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, talks about the misconception of late bloomers and why we believe that genius equals youth and early successes.  “Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.”

Most people live as if their life belongs to others. They leave it up to the rest of the world to make decisions for them, tell them what to do, what to think and what to believe. Then there are the those who do the telling, the bossing, and the deciding, which is just the other side of the same coin, really. Control or be controlled. Neither way is fun.

Freedom comes from living your own life. From making your own decisions and ultimately from listening to your own heart. This also brings responsibility. You’ll have to face your fears and weaknesses, stand up to mishaps and take the heat for poor decisions. This can be tough at first but in the end, it’s what works. Blaming others for an unfulfilled life is the easy way out. It will not bring real satisfaction.

The paradox is that the answers to your life are all within you. Start listening deeply to your heart and soul and begin living the life that’s yours.