The secret to success
It's really pretty simple. If you want to succeed at something, whether it's learning an instrument or mastering fractions or running a marathon, you've got to just not quit.
Simple, but not easy, right? Here's what I've noticed in working as a teacher and coach across subject areas:
When we think we are pretty good at something, we'll keep going until we have completed our objective.
That might mean repeating a phrase of music fifteen times until it's perfectly smooth, working on a math problem for upwards 45 minutes, practicing a speech under stressful conditions to make sure it can hold up, or going back to the gym week after week to hit a new personal record.
But when we're not feeling so great about ourselves, we don't sustain this kind of work. We play the phrase of music three times and stop for the day. We give up on the math problem after five minutes. We hope that the speech will go well even though we only ran it through once in the privacy of our own home. We stop showing up at the gym a few weeks into the new year.
Learning a new skill can be a fragile thing. Most of all, we need the belief that the thing we're trying to achieve is within our grasp. If we don't have this belief, we have no incentive to follow through on the hard work that our objective requires.
And when we see ourselves as successful, we look at our failed attempts as necessary steps along the path. But when we think of ourselves as unsuccessful, we tend to look at our failed attempts as evidence that we're not good enough. We think we don't have the talent, the smarts, the charisma.
What we call "talent" is often the result of consistent effort over time from a person who started out with a strong belief in her own ability.
The "talented" person repeats the same task until the results emerge. The "untalented" person repeats the task a few times and gives up.
There are a few ways that we can support learners (be they our children or ourselves) in building new skills.
The first thing is to start off with tasks that are doable. Most of us tend not to relish challenges until we are confident in our skills. Until then, we need to take baby steps.
We can also build in social reinforcement. When we see that other people are struggling the same way we are, we don't feel so alone. We can all learn together.
Lastly, we need to celebrate our successes. Too often, we only look at how far we need to go instead of appreciating how far we've come.
At Rulerless, our goal is to create a community of learners who are supporting each other in the belief that every one of us can achieve our goals when we put in consistent effort over time.