Welcome friends to Episode #110 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast. If you want to do something new, you often don’t because you think you might fail. What if you knew how to become really good at something? What if you knew that there was a process to figuring it all out and that you could become really good? Would you try something then? Would you finally do that thing you really want to do but have been scared to do? If the answer is yes, then today’s podcast is for you. We’re going to talk about becoming really good at the thing you do. 

The Resistance to New Things

In our climb to try anything new, big or small, we often come across this thought that stops us. “What if I’m never going to get this?” “Is this really going to work?” “I’m not good at this.” When that happens, we feel uncertain and we stop. We give up on the training, the work, the prep, the course of action we committed to and we stop. When we stop, we end up not seeing the results we want and then we slide back into the way things were. We slide into our norms of how we go through life. The same jobs, relationships and ways of doing things.

When you want to become really good at something, you usually start off at a place where you are either not really good, ok, or pretty good. Either way, you want to be better. You have decided that the work you do is important and you want to become really good at it. Not just good. Really good.

How do we do that? What’s the secret sauce to becoming really good?

There’s no right or wrong way to do it, but there’s a way to get started that I teach my clients.

Deciding to Become Really Good

The first step is to decide you want to be really good. You want to become the person who has the results you desire. This can apply to personal and professional goals. For example, if you are considering your personal life, you might desire to be a really good parent or a really good partner. Perhaps you desire to even create a really great relationship that you don’t have today. 

The problem, however, is that the idea of being exceptional or outstanding sounds exhausting. You’re already thinking, “how do I just get through the day?” The idea of adding more goals to the list feels tiring. When you’re already so tired with the work you’re doing in your career/business, you will think that having an exceptional or outstanding personal life is going to exhaust you even more.

You just want this part of your life to be easy so you do things like drink with friends, buy things, and take trips to take the edge off of the overwhelm.

Yet, drinking wine, eating out, going shopping and taking trips aren’t working for you anymore. You want more from life but you don’t want it to be exhausting. 

The really good news is that it doesn’t have to be exhausting. In fact, this is why it changes the way you work and live. I show you exactly how becoming really good will simplify your life and how to do it in a simple way that doesn’t exhaust you. I will show you how to move from exhausted to calm while doing things you’ve never done before.

Simplifying the Process by Going Small

We all get exhausted from time to time. When we’re not managing our minds, calendars and health things pile up. How we simplify and the way I do this is to have my clients to focus on one goal. Not to add more things to their plate. The work they do is not about seeing how much more they have to get done and to do all those things. The work they do is about spending time in their life, doing what they do – differently. How to do LESS but more. 

Imagine every experience feeling curated with richness and depth. No detail is too small. If we are working on your overwhelming schedule, we go through your calendar together. We take what feels unmanageable and big, and make it doable and small. We find solutions to all the small challenges that are in the way.

When you want to do anything new, the task feels overwhelming and enormous. You don’t know where to start. We use my prioritization process to figure out where to start. We think through things with clarity and use the time to plan and prepare. We prepare schedules, decks, conversations, strategies and we reveal what needs to be done next, and how you have to change how you think about yourself in the process.

Then you execute. This is where things get more interesting. You are inevitably going to face challenges. Immediately, the thought will be, “I’m doing it wrong.” You’ll think you should be better than you are. You will make mistakes.

Failure

When failure occurs, we review it – not because you need to feel worse, but because you will get so much better. It will become impossible to fail when you mine everything for learning. We fix mistakes. We slow down so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes into the next opportunity. It will feel uncomfortable because you’re used to either giving up at this point or changing your approach completely instead of changing who you are and how you think, feel and behave.

This is how you become really good at something. Everytime you build new neural pathways with the same challenges present, you are rewiring your brain to become faster and more accurate at doing this thing. Yet, building these new neural pathways requires deep work, practice, repetition and fixing mistakes. This means there needs to be mistakes. No more shame. Instead, we focus on learning and awareness.

If you’re scared of getting feedback, you’re not alone. I remember that when I began working in consulting, the feedback was non-stop. After every presentation, deck and meeting there was feedback. I would model this with my performance management engagements where I was giving weekly feedback to clients decades older. It was the best way to become good because I did it so much. I received so much feedback that you either broke down from taking it too personally or realized that you couldn’t take it personally. It was a wake up call if you thought you were perfect and realized that you have so many places to still grow.

You’re not going to be perfect. There’s no need to be perfect, either. You’ll do your best with the presentation we’ve worked through and you’ll miss things. You’ll attempt to follow your calendar and you’ll get sidetracked. You’ll want to say yes when you need to say no. You’ll want to stop before you’re done. You’ll slip back into old behaviors. This is all normal. The reason this doesn’t derail you is because this is where coaching comes into play.

Coaching

Coaching allows you to not just receive information from someone else who has done it or taught it or been through this experience. It allows you to receive feedback from someone who is developing you as a person. Individualized coaching that sees how you are utilizing what’s going on around you and what you are doing specifically to either move forward or stay where you are. It’s the difference between someone telling you to hit a ball and someone saying that when you hit the ball, I noticed that your right hand shifted a little lower and that you do that when you’re tired.

When you’re being coached like this, it is often confronting for you to see blind spots in such a direct way. I often think the difference between having a coach and not having a coach is like having someone in your ear as a racecar driver. I’ve started watching the F1 show on netflix so if you watch it too, you’ll resonate with this analogy. I love watching the show because you get to hear what they are saying to the drivers and the conversations back and forth.

Your coach sees what’s on the track and how you’re racing compared to others. Your coach is able to help you advance as you are driving so you can stay focused on what’s ahead. It keeps you moving and not stopping every 10 seconds so that you can look all around and stop driving. You lose speed, momentum and time without one.

Becoming really good at driving means you’re working on your own skills but you’re also taking in information from someone else that has perspective and calm, even when you don’t have calm. 

In summary, the first step is deciding you want to be really good at something and that it will actually make your life better and less stressful and exhausting. You have to not just think of it as another to-do but as a different way of doing things. The second step is to simplify by going small. We break things down so that we can work on each of the smaller pieces and get really fluent in transitions and moment by moment experiences so that we tackle what’s most important even if it feels too small to matter. We then think about failure differently by providing feedback in a way that allows you to celebrate what’s going well as well as see how you want to shift. The third part is through coaching where you will get a perspective outside your own that will challenge you to do things differently and avoid potential pitfalls along the way.

Becoming really good is committing to thinking about life not as a destination, but as a process. You will get better and become really good, and you will learn to see all the ups and downs as not something to get through so you can finally rest, but something to enjoy because you’ve done it before and you’ll do it again. Becoming really good is a commitment in the long-term to something you decide is important. It isn’t a decision you make about something you want to change just for the short-term, it’s a decision you make that you’re willing to keep growing and learning because your spirituality, health, wealth, relationships and career are worth it. 

If you want to become the person who is engaged with all aspects of their life, reach out at https://mayempson.com/contact to schedule a consultation. It is the next step to learning more about whether or not coaching is right for you and how to make the best use of coaching. In our coaching together, you will simplify your life, create more freedom of choice and learn how to live in the present moment.

If you join my coaching program now – at the time of listening to this podcast – you’ll have access to join in on the live teachings and coaching in May on Money. We will be working together on how to take aligned action based on money goals. We will have a challenge to create money in May based on that methodology. We will make it fun and you will think at a higher level around money than ever before. This is not wishful thinking. These are the strategies, processes and actual work you will do to make that money goal inevitable. Yet, it’s not about the money. It’s about how you feel about money. We are going to redefine what you will do, how you will invest, what you want to create, and where that money will go. You will become a different person just by this challenge alone. If you have a business, this is for you. If you have a corporate job, this is for you. If you have both, this is for you. You need this foundation to be able to take the risks and invest in yourself, your future and your business so that you can 10x your growth.

If you want to join us now or if you’re listening to this later, you will have access to all this content and past teachings as well. Book a consultation at www.mayempson.com/contact to get started now. A year from now you’ll have wished you started two years ago. 

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If you’re ready to Own Your Best Life, I want to invite you to watch the free training on how to Stand Out and Lead, using spiritual, high-performance strategies. You can access the training at https://may-empson.mykajabi.com/stand-out-and-lead.

You can then apply to join my Spiritual Achiever® program, where you’re going to create your next chapter with spiritual and high-performance strategies to achieve time and financial freedom using my proven method. It’s risk-free. You either start seeing results within your first month or I give you your money back. Schedule your call HERE. We’ll see you inside.