Have you ever on your journey to becoming the best you ever felt like you don’t have the expertise you need to excel? Do you feel inadequate sometimes and you are wondering how to transcend the level you are at even though you don’t have the time to begin the learning process in acquiring the required expertise?
Three years ago my daughter transitioned from Primary School and what I witnessed her do in preparing, transitioning and adapting to her new environment can help you elevate your dream even though you don’t have the expertise yourself. The idea is to borrow from others.
I remember that each month for three years before she got admitted into this school, we visited her brother was already a student there. We always had to look for her because once we got in; she would go into the hostel to fraternize with the other children who were already students. She would ask a lot of questions of them about their experience in the school.
She made it a point of duty to try and connect with others on each trip and she didn’t just do it for the fun of it, she always had a question that she needed answered. So over time she had actually made for herself a number of friends that were not necessarily her brother’s friends. What this did for her was that she had an idea how the school worked and she also had friends waiting for her to join them.
How can we translate this principle to working our dream you may ask, well, I guess I am doing this post to debunk the myth that there is any idea so novel or new that no one else had worked before; it has been proven that for an individual to become an expert in any field at all, he will require to invest at least 10,000 hours in gathering information and knowledge in that field. Now I know you do not have 10,000 hours at a go but at least you have the window of opportunity where you can approach those who already know to be able to enrich your dream using their own experiences.
What my daughter did was borrow from the experience of the other children in the school, while taking every opportunity to familiarize herself with the environment. Even though your dream will be strange territory to you, it is not strange to anyone who might have worked a similar dream before. The first investment you need to be making right now, is identifying and connecting with those who have succeeded therein, so you can borrow from the benefit of their own experience.
Here are the steps clarified:
1. Identify the dream you want to pursue (What comes easy to you, what do others seek you out to help them with? What satisfies you beyond any other? What do you jump at doing even for free?)
2. Familiarise yourself with the working of that dream (What does it take? What skills do you require? How long does it take to prepare?) Do your research. This is called the law of navigation in leadership.
3. Connect with other people working the dream (Identify and choose mentors (books,
4. Podcasts, blogs and of course flesh and blood people). There is so much you can learn just by being around people traveling the same road with you. Because you can never all be at the same stage of the journey, you can easily learn from each other. Do you have a network of like-minded people you belong to?
5. Make the effort to seek them out, spend time with them and ask questions on what you don’t quite understand. Each time I think on this point, I remember the story as told by leadership expert John C. Maxwell on how he sought out some of the best leaders of the time he was starting out to find out what principles they lived by. He tells how much of a sacrifice he had to make to meet with them, including having to schedule his family vacation around times and cities where these leaders lived.
6. Keep the relationships going: Make sure you come back whenever you have the opportunity. There are people I follow that I am yet to meet physically, however, whenever I hear they have new material out, I go out of my way to get them. When I read them or listen to them and they recommend a resource, I go out and get it. Because the idea is they are great leaders and can only recommend great leaders such as themselves.
7. Look out for opportunities. Recognize that most opportunities don’t come dressed as opportunities; they come dressed as additional work. However, know when you should make the leap and regardless of how it feels or looks, make it.
Just like my daughter was able to transition into the college environment without friction, you can begin to work your dream from scratch too, if you will ride on the wings of what others have done within similar dreams.
You will make it NeverTheLess; just remember that expertise is available to you, if you will make the investment of reaching out to others.
Here is to your success!
Bidemi