A Letter To You About Rapidly Building
New Skill Sets, Behaviors and Competencies…
Hello,
Many times I have sat mesmerized while watching a movie, having been pulled in from the very beginning by an actor’s “performance of a lifetime.” Then I realize that he or she has had one “performance of a lifetime” after another, absolutely owning the stage or the theatre with their command performances. Have you ever wondered how such an actor reached this level of mastery in their field? How do they “become” their character with such absolute congruence? For instance, how did Charleze Theron reshape her entire body, including the features of her face, for her performance in “Monster?” How could she pull off taking on the appearance of Aileen Wuornos and end up talking like her, walking like her and in essence becoming her? How did Cuba Gooding, Jr. so effectively turn himself into Robert “Radio” Kennedy, the young social outcast as portrayed in the movie “Radio?”
The answer is that Charleze Theron and Cuba Gooding, Jr. literally “modeled” the people they sought to portray. They temporarily “stepped into” another person’s beliefs, values and behaviors, and modeled them so well that their fans momentarily forgot who the actors were.
How To Shorten Your Learning Curve!
Now, what if you could model the skills and behaviors from someone with competence in what you desire to learn? More than that, what if you could dramatically shorten the time that is required for you to learn and develop mastery of certain skill sets for your career, relationships, health and hobbies?
The fact is that you are quite capable of learning to do just that! In fact, you are more than capable. Think about it this way…from the moment a newborn infant begins life on this planet, she or he begins a process of rapid, unrestrained learning and the building of complex skill sets! This is true, despite the fact that human infants are born helpless and more dependent than the young of any other species!
Learning And Your Unconscious Mind
Furthermore, this rapid learning continues until adults interfere with the natural learning process all infants and children unconsciously engage in. Until the interference begins, learning complex processes and skills are easy and natural for a child, largely because it is an unconscious process and not a conscious one. It is when the conscious mind gets in our way that learning becomes difficult for us. With that said, the conscious mind does have a vital role to play in rapid and effective learning and skill building. More on that later.
Now, continue reading if you value learning how to accelerate the overall process of learning new behaviors and skill sets. Not to mention building in useful belief and value systems and strategies for modeling excellence in others.
How To Determine What You Are Capable Of: A Base-Line
Recall a time you saw someone doing something exceptionally well–something that you have not yet learned to do–or that you are not yet doing exceptionally well. Something you believe you would enjoy doing, something you would profit from doing! If you have something in mind, you now have enough information to conclude that you can learn to do what you pictured in your mind someone else doing. Because what one human being can do, another human being can “model” and replicate. Or improve upon!
All Behavior Is Learned!
I say this because…all behavior is learned! Period. More than that, the beliefs and values that you and I use to shape our life, have been learned as well. This can be and will be of great value to you as you consider that the beliefs, values and behaviors that we have learned…about learning itself, have had, and will continue to have, profound effects on our capacity to enjoy ourselves and our lives.
For instance, all that we have learned up to this moment determines whether we create unhealthy stress for ourselves on an ongoing basis… or enjoy rising to the occasion and delightfully surprising ourselves with how easy it all is. Whether we have been “reacting” to what life brings us or whether we move forward with the grace of an accomplished student…depends upon our past learnings.
Simply put, our lives are reflections of our past behaviors, and all of our past behaviors were simply learned behaviors.
If you look back into your life and are less than pleased with what you see, understand that it is all in the past. It has nothing to do with what you can build for yourself today and tomorrow, and so on. Your past achievements and who you have become were shaped by your past learnings, no more and no less.
Good News About Your Future!
If you desire a better future and a better you, you are limited only by what you are willing to learn today and tomorrow.
As you look back upon your life, remember to remember that the past is the past. And who wants to repeat the past, however good it was? Because if something was good, we can improve upon it to no end!
If you look back and enjoy what you see, consider that it is merely a shadow of what you are capable of being and doing! And your future? Well, it is in good hands, yours! And your future will be built, choice by choice, behavior by behavior, out of what you learn, or do not learn, from this point on. Period.
Now, you are as capable as anyone else. True, in the past, you might have been limited by not knowing how to model others and to rapidly acquire their skill sets. Perhaps you have not known exactly how to access their beliefs about the skills and behaviors you desire to acquire. Yes, that might have been limiting.
Recall for a moment all the things that you have been able to model and learn from those around you. Such as tying your shoes, walking across a room, riding a bicycle, operating a computer, whistling, cooking a meal, communicating persuasively with a client, connecting with your child or significant other, accepting yourself unconditionally…
How did you acquire all these skills? There is a process to how you learned these skills, whether you are consciously aware of the process or not. What if you could easily model and take on the skill sets of another human being who has demonstrated a high level of competency in a specific realm?
Is Life Inherently Difficult?
It is not as difficult as most imagine–just as most things are not as difficult as most imagine! Some human beings have learned to make things difficult. Such as the now well known psychiatrist who unfortunately released a book over twenty years ago with the beginning pronouncement that “Life is difficult.”
Whew! What a belief! And mind you, that is all it is. A belief. Not a fact, not “reality,” simply a belief.
What if, instead, you and I began to learn a new skill, with the belief of “This is going to be fun!” Or, “I will undoubtedly gain this skill quite rapidly.” Or, “I have learned far more difficult things than this, such as how to talk, so this will be much easier. I’ll just take all the resources that I’ve built into my mind, my brain and my body since I learned the quite complex skill of talking, and use these resources to master yet another skill.”
Now, how would these beliefs about learning affect your ability to learn whatever you want to learn, rapidly, efficiently and effectively? Furthermore, what if you knew how to apply internal strategies to make your learning time fly by because it was all happening quite naturally and fluidly?
What if you knew how to run the hardware of your brain in such a way that you quickly and enjoyably absorbed whatever was useful to you in acquiring a new set of skills and behaviors? How would that affect your ongoing life? Your primary relationships? Your career? Your ability to earn the income you desire? How would that change your overall future?
Not only is all this possible, it is quite available to you, if you so desire. In this letter, I have revealed a major reason as to why more human beings are not developing their latent abilities and building the life they truly desire.
I would enjoy hearing from you, if you, like me, are hungry to develop your capacities in becoming a more fully integrated human being. And in so doing, enhance your capabilities to learn voraciously, rapidly and effectively, and to do so with increasing wisdom.
Now, what was that about life being difficult?
All the best!
Alan Allard
Alan Allard is a Life and Business Coach offering private coaching, seminars and keynote presentations. He teaches others how to accelerate reaching levels of unconscious competency that takes them well beyond their current level of success. Alan has a masters degree and post graduate training in Counseling, Clinical Psychology, Family Therapy and Hypnotherapy. Free Coaching e-Letter at: http://www.geniusdynamics.com
