Source: personalbrandingblog.com

Source: personalbrandingblog.com

Do you often find yourself trapped in the mindset that if you fail learning something, you simply have to keep a bit harder, and then a bit harder than that? A lot of self-declared gurus try to motivate people to simply push themselves a little harder to achieve their goals, and that it takes only some efforts to do something amazing. The truth might not be too far from that, although it might take a lot of time.  Aiming for the east, but walking towards the west will most likely turn out to be a terrible waste of time, energy and effort.  

Trial and errors are an alternative that can help one learn a new skill, grasp a concept that is currently unknown, or generally do something new that has not been done in the past by someone else. However, in most cases, we are all aiming at something that has already been done by someone up to this moment. Writing a book, developing a world famous application, going to the gym regularly or learning how to cook, you name it. These are all things that have been already done and it is fortunate for us to learn from them.

Learn from other people’s success

It is possible that you might stumble upon somebody who luckily has hit a jackpot type of success that might be a bit surprising and not so much deserved. This person’s success might be the type of the pattern that you should simply ignore. If there is somebody in a particular field who has been showing repeatedly desirable levels of accomplishments that you are interested in, then you should keep that person in your zone of attention. For example, if you want to learn how to play tennis, then learning from Federer’s type of habits, exercising schedules and types of training set that he performs are an ideal option.

If there is not anybody of that level in the field that you are interested in, then you can scan through a lot of people who are famous and that have hit at least once a target that you are aiming at. Let’s suppose that you are aiming to become an NBA MVP. Then you can try to learn from Stephen Curry, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and see what it is something very common in their trainings. Study their biographies, their journey to the type of pathways they had to path, obstacles they had to face or critics they had to deal with to achieve up to this level of success. Extract from them some actionable steps and implement them.

Learn from other people’s mistakes

Something usually neglected, but that maybe is more important, that can result in shaving off tons of wasted hours is by learning from other people’s mistakes.

More often than not, a few types of mistakes can become terrible time wasters that might even demotivate a lot of people and make them to quit. When a usual person starts to learn a new skill, they might stumble upon something hard that is giving that person an unpleasant experience such that it might cause a lot of stress. However, you should not have to go through the same painful journey. You can simply become a student of the lessons of other people’s mistakes and get faster to the point of learning that new skill that you are interested in.

After you are done learning that new skill, you can apply the same principles to other skills you wish to have in your repertoire.

You do not have to reinvent the wheel. All you have to do is use other people’s patterns of behaviors and habits that they have been incorporating in their lives to achieve what you are aiming at, and then use the same in your life.