How To Be Excellent At Anything In 4 Proven Steps

Everyone wants to be excellent at something, but it takes hard work and dedication to reach mastery. To be excellent is different from being the best; it means consistently doing your best to achieve the highest level of performance. Being the best means consistently outperforming everyone else.

Why do we need to be excellent? Because average is boring!

Transcript

Because it's not because you do your best that you're going to reach the level that you want to reach, Right? No, But if you do your best, You can be proud of yourself and you deserve to have love and self-compassion. If you're not, Just get it together and start acting in alignment to who you want to be and what you want to do. Hi everyone, Welcome to another episode in our interview series, How to achieve success and fulfillment through self-mastery. And today the conversation is about how to be excellent at anything. So that's my first question. Why do we need to be excellent at anything? Because average is boring, Isn't it? We're not here to be average. We're here to be awesome. And well, You cannot be excellent at everything, But you can strive to get better at everything you do, Right? You cannot be, The top 2% of the world in every aspect of life. But you can be better than you were yesterday. So it's about picking one or two things that you want to be excellent in. Yeah, And it's nothing to do with perfection, Which is an abstract concept. It's really about how can I get better at what I'm doing right now, Gaining more mastery, More autonomy, More ownership over whatever I'm doing. So this is a very healthy thing to do in your life because we're here to grow. We're here to learn. We're here to progress on our journey of life, Right? And so this is being intentionally or having the intention to get better every single day at something. You think everybody has that feeling? Everybody has this striving to work? I think I can name some people who don't have the ambition to be excellent in anything. They're just living their life and they're okay. I agree. And I find it a little bit sad because we are here to use our full potential. We can do so many things, But a lot of time we settle for just nice, Just okay, Just good. Why? I think there is a part of our brain that wants to protect us that, Well, You know, If you don't try to get better, At least you're not going to fail. You're going to be whatever you are. And that feels comfortable. That feels certain. And I know it's not like I don't want to blame anyone because this is how the human brain works right we are we are lazy you want to conserve energy if something is just okay what would you do more what would you some effort when you go through some hardship just stay where you are but I find it a bit sad right we have this potential to do so much more I don't want to be dying and just think like oh I could have done more I could have be more No, So we can create this intentionality every single day. It doesn't have to be. Incredibly like it doesn't have to be a massive massive effort to get there it can be just getting a little bit better than where you were yesterday just even one percent but if you compound that over time there is a tremendous change So how do you find that one or two things that you want to be excellent in? Well, You can strive to be better at everything you do, Right? But I think to really reach this high, High level of mastery in something, You're going to have to pick something that is worth struggling for, Something that lights you up, Something that makes you feel good, Right? I'm not going to talk really about passion because a lot of times people develop passion after doing the work for years, Right? We start doing something, We increase our autonomy or mastery about it and slowly we start developing passion. More following the curiosities that you have, Following those things that excite you to do and strive to get better at those things. Yeah, So it's coming really from the inside. It's not other people that are telling you, Oh, You're so good at this and then trying to be excellent at that. Because it's never going to work. If it's 100% extrinsic motivation on the long term, You're going to get empty with that. You need to feel this intrinsic reward so you keep pushing. So, Okay, Now we all want to be excellent at that one or two things that we figured out. Is there a strategy, A way that we can achieve this fast? Because we have limited time, Of course. Yeah, Yeah, Definitely. So I developed a process. It's a four-step method to help you to get better at whatever you want to get better at, Right? The first step is to gain awareness. Because if you don't know what you want to improve, There is no chance you're going to improve it, Right? It's awareness about your situation, About your thoughts, About your emotions, About your behavior, Right? When you understand what's happening and you dare to face the hard truth, Then only you can start moving forward. I like to say, Listen to your bank account, To the scale, To the puller bar or to the mirror. They don't lie. They give you the hard truth. And sometimes, Yes, It's not comfortable to face the reality as it is, But it's necessary if you want to grow, If you want to move forward, You're going to have to do an assessment and see what is where you are and where you want to go. Okay, And when this awareness is clear, That's the first step. What is the second step of this process? The second step is ownership. Basically, It's taking responsibility for where you are. Now, You're not always responsible for your situation, But you always have power and control about how you react to it. So, It's not great to say, Oh, I'm overweight and this is because of my behavior. I'm not in the job that's fulfilling the most. Well, You choose to get there, Right? It's really realizing that, Oh, Every act is an act of self-definition, To use the quote from Neil Dolan Walsh, Right? It's that every day you create your life, Every day you choose who you want to be, What you want to do, How you show up. And so taking ownership for your situation really means that, Oh, I'm here where I am today, It's not where I want to be, But this is because I did this and that. I take ownership, I take responsibility for that. And only then you start really empowering yourself to keep moving forward. There's a thin line between taking ownership or blaming yourself. Feeling overweight and you're blaming yourself for that extra cookie that you ate? Are you taking ownership like I'm overweight? What is the difference and how would you describe that? No, That's a very good question. I think self-compassion, Self-love, It's super important, Right? We need to be kind to ourselves and usually we're not so much. Now, I think there is a really thin line as you said because the moment that you justify your lack of discipline or the behavior that you should not have, You justify it with self-compassion and self-love, I think it's really negative because it doesn't really help you to move forward. Let's say that you say, I'm going to go to the gym three times a week and you don't go to the gym for two weeks. Like, Oh yeah, But I should not be too hard on myself. It was really hard with work, Etc. Then you start just making excuses and you justify your negative behavior with self-love and self-compassion. It doesn't work. That's not going to lead you to greatness. 100% sure. Now, I think the moment you should have self-compassion and self-love is every time that you keep doing your best. Because it's not because you do your best that you're going to reach the level that you want to reach, Right? No. But if you do your best, You can be proud of yourself and you deserve this self-love and self-compassion. If you're not, Just get your shit together and start acting in alignment to who you want to be and what you want to do. What's the third step? The third step is taking action. You know where you are. You know where you want to go. You know what led you there. You take ownership of it. But if you don't take action, Nothing is going to happen. Success does not just happen. You need to start taking actions, Right? And so this is the moment when you create and define clearly where you want to go. You explore the different possibilities to get there alone with a buddy or with a professional as a coach. And then after you create a strategy to have the milestones, To have what you need to do tomorrow, Next week, Next month, Etc. To get there. So you put in place this structure that's going to help you to reach success. It's important to not wait for all the conditions to be perfect all the time. Sometimes it makes sense. But most of the time it doesn't. While we tend to say, I'm going to do it next month, Next week, And you keep postponing that for later, Because we are scared to start. We don't feel really confident. We feel like an imposter, Which is not a problem itself, Because confidence is really going to start coming, And you're going to build it after taking small actions, One and then the other, And then the other, And then you start feeling better, More confident about your abilities, And you start trusting yourself more. So it's important to not always wait for the perfect moment or when you're ready. Start before you're ready and get ready on the way. Okay, So we have awareness, Ownership, Action. What's the last step? Discipline. Yeah, Because if you do one, Let's say you want to have a big bicep, You go to the gym, You do one bicep curl, Then you look at your bicep, Like, Come on, Grow. It's not going to work, Right? It's sustained actions over time that's going to help you to get where you want to go. And you start with the motivation because in the just the phase before you have the plan, The strategy, The structure, You know how you're going to take action. You feel super motivated because you know why it is important to you. Great. Then on the way, You're going to have to use a little bit of your willpower to stay on track. But this is momentary. It's like a muscle. It gets tired. You cannot use that all the time. So the only way to make sure that you're going to reach your goal in the long term is to build self-discipline. Building self-discipline is reminding yourself what you want to do, Why is that important for you, And acting accordingly. So only when you do that, You start changing your behavior, You start changing your identity, And it's helping you to follow your goal on an automatic pilot, Right? Because you know how you need to show up every single day. So self-discipline is essential to reach mastery in whatever it is. Actually, Self-discipline is necessary for living, For life. You keep giving up into temptation and you just drift, You just react to life instead of living a created life and be very intentional about who you are, How you show up, What you want to do and what do you want to create in your life. So what do you do in those moments that you feel a bit low and not motivated, That excuses or an inner critic voice is coming up? How do you keep going? I think it's to take the time to slow down and remembering why do you do what you're doing. We get lost in the process and we don't remember what is the big picture. So slowing down, Looking at the big picture again that can really help to reignite this motivation. Remembering why is that important for me? What is the cost of not doing it? What if I don't do it? How am I going to feel? Putting in place a support structure is very important. Having someone who can keep you accountable, Who can support you when it's difficult and cheer you on when you actually have big wins or small wins, Right? So having a structure around yourself is very important. Okay, So we've done step one, Two, Three, Four, Then what? Are we then excellent at whatever I chose? Yeah, I wish. No, This is a long-term game, Right? When you start, You do the four steps and then you go back to step one, Which is awareness. So after doing this, You are taking action over time and it's time to have a reality check. You gain awareness about your situation. It's kind of the feedback. I was there. I'm here. I want to go there. What helped? What did work? What did not work? What do I need to change? You start taking ownership. Okay, I did that. I did not do that. I should have done that. I should not have done that. When you take ownership of those things, You start putting a new action plan based on the previous one that's going to help you to get better at it. And then you start taking action. You build discipline and you do the loop again. So it's kind of an infinite loop because you never really get excellent at something. You always get better compared to how you were yesterday. That's what really matters because chasing perfection is not possible. But if every day you're better than how you were yesterday, It's a celebration. It's a win. It's a success. This track is just a taste of the four-step method. So if you want the complete framework for becoming excellent at anything you set your mind to, My full course, Master Any Skill, Walks you through each step in depth. You can just tap on my name, Then go to Courses, And there you'll be able to find it. I hope to see you there.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing! I think this method could work and I'll give it a try 👍