Why Succeeding in Anything is Hard

I was reflecting yesterday about the process of succeeding in developing a new skill or habit. This can be in developing the ability to connect with new people, master a move in a sport, learn a new subject in school, or something else. Immediately, I was reminded of a talk I heard in January from author and successful businessman Chris Brady called "LifeSaver" and the subsequent CD recording. He clearly articulated this process in a way I want to relate now. He taught the reason why succeeding in anything is hard via the 3 phases in developing mastery in a new endeavor.

I'll start with a question. Have you ever seen someone demonstrate great skill in a field? For example, a profession sports athlete, an accomplished musician, a great dancer, a brilliant mind in an academic setting, person share a message of spiritual significance, etc. Have you ever thought, "I bet I can do that!" or, "That looks like so much fun!" without having any real experience in that field? Or maybe, we are exposed to a great teacher and they make us feel like anything is possible and help us develop some initial abilities. At that point we decide at age 10, "I want to be a theoretical physicist or a doctor or the president of the United States or something else."In this period, we assume that we have what it takes and will probably be easy to accomplish the thing that we see. This is called the Ignorance Phase. 

After we are in that phase,
sometimes we make the choice to start developing that ability. We become married or become a parent. We decide to join a sports league, buy a new instrument, begin a dance class, or go back to school. When we jump into the process of acquiring the ability, we are now in the Immersion Phase. At first we are excited! We are newly wed, we are going to the first practices, we are studying this new instrument/skill. However, after a minute, hour, day, week, month, year, or couple years we realize 99.99% of the time that this is harder than we thought! This is the phase where we almost certainly will feel overwhelmed and ponder quitting. There are a bunch of phrases we may say to rationalize this to ourselves: "I'm just not good at this." "All my friends quit." "I gave it my best shot." "I'm not as far as I thought I should be by now." "I've invested so much and it isn't working." "Someone made fun of me." "Someone hurt my feelings." "I found negatives and have doubts." Or simply, as previously mentioned, "this is harder than I thought." This feeling of frustration is inevitable because how could we have possibly known what it takes to succeed without actually trying?

The most important thing to realize about this phase is that we will be tempted to quit every good thing we ever do in your life. Christ Brady said that he even broke up with who would be his wife over three times AFTER he had proposed to her! Quitting is a natural temptation in all great endeavors in life. And the chief skill to success is learning how to not cave in to it. Therefore, what we do with this pressure to quit is CRITICAL. All of those rationalizing phrases come down to the same thing. We allowed the initial excitement in the immersion phase to turn into doubt.

A great example of overcoming this overwhelm Chris gave was of his twelve year old son who plays soccer. After a game, Chris asked his son about a move he had done in the game. His son responded by sharing all these things that were going through his head at the time of what he could have done and exclaimed, "Soccer is not what people think it is. It is not just kicking a ball. There is so much more... I could have done this, this, that, or this!" This revealed to Chris that his son, instead of feeling the pressure and frustration of the process, fostered something else. He fostered WONDER.

One of the most important things to remember is that quitting is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. By quitting, we develop a pattern that permeates all areas in our life. This pain experienced in the immersion phase exists in everything endeavor! By quitting, you lose the entire investment. Immersion went to doubt instead of wonder. You've chose to check out to go to something else and start OVER! The biggest problem is that you take the reason for failure with you! The cycle repeats!! While sands of time and clock of life are ticking. By fostering wonder at the process, becoming excited about the possibilities and the depth of the subject/skill, you move past the feelings of overwhelm. Instead of fearing failure, you develop a love for the game. This is the reason why success in any field or endeavor is hard because we have to go through the immersion phase. Ironically it is the difficulty of the immersion phase that makes us truly feel alive.

Finally, by forging through this immersion phase, you end up on the other side in the Mastery Phase. If you have ever watched sports, announcers sometimes describe players as having a "Basketball IQ." Or you see musicians not even need any of the sheet music to play their music. Or you see an unprepared speaker deliver an inspiring message. Or you see two dancers meet for the first time and perform nearly-flawlessly together beautifully. They have become skilled to the point that they have moved past the immersion process. They then seemingly do not need to be prepared anymore because they ARE masters of their art. Of course true masters continue to develop their craft on a regular basis, but in the performance process they do not struggle with the fundamentals.

If you find yourself struggling in the immersion phase pondering quitting after once desiring to excel, there are a couple things that you can do to foster the wonder and propel yourself to success... and they will be discussed in a future post. :)

- Jeff