I have a problem. This problem has been going on for a while.
People watch movies and think that movies are like real life.
This problem is really affecting my business.
And I’m going to try to explain it to you.
The Pitfalls Of Learning About Life From The Movies
So, there are some people who watch a movie and it’s a romantic comedy and they think that’s how love works.
There are some people who watch a movie and it’s an action movie and they think that’s how fighting works.
Now, if you’ve ever been in a relationship, you know that it’s NOT like the movies.
And if you’ve ever been in a martial art or a fight, you know that is NOT how fighting works.
Now the same thing applies to learning new skills.
The problem is that we watch a movie and there is a training montage and in about 8 scenes of sweat and grunt, the main character has learned this new massive ability.
The worst offender in this is a superhero movie where someone is able to figure out how to turn back time in a 37-second montage and save the world.
So what happens if we take that type of FAKE information and apply it to our expectations for learning a new skill? Just like if we took “love” from movies and tried to apply that to a relationship or “fighting” from movies and try to apply it to a real-life situation when we apply this idea that we are going to learn these skills in a training montage and be done with it, that expectation is setting us up for major failure!
(Watch above for a video version of this written blog post).
How To Develop New Skills In The REAL World
Instead, it takes consistent repetitive time to get better at something.
Now, if you have superhero traits already; if you could already run faster than the speed of sound, then maybe running faster than the speed of light isn’t that big of a separation of skill and you can learn it quickly.
But if you have extremely weak time management skills and you’re hoping to run a very efficient calendar, the difference between where you are and where you want to be is enormous. You will have to build up many “micro-skills” first.
It is going to take continuous effort and learning.
Learning From “Failure”
Along that path, the thing that teaches you the most is when things DON’T go well.
Whenever we fall off, whenever we struggle with a problem, we shouldn’t look at those obstacles as failures and beat ourselves up.
We should say “Hmm… I was unsuccessful in this element. What didn’t go well there?”
- The environment was wrong.
- I wasn’t prepared.
- My mindset was wrong.
- I was doing the wrong activities before so my energy wasn’t there and I should schedule that differently in the future.
All of these lessons that pop up can be learned from!
And now you can apply them and get better and better at this skill.
It is not this linear growth pattern that goes up and then the villain shows up if we dig super deep then all of a sudden we can do the thing that we couldn’t do before.
That is not in my experience of how life works. That is how life works IN THE MOVIES.
So please, don’t attempt to have a superhero montage moment of growth.
Stack Your Daily Work Like Growing Your 401K
Focus on daily growth. Stack those results.
Just like setting aside money in a 401K, you are putting aside that money day in and day out.
It will be there. It will grow. It will be totally worth it!
Unlike a 401K, you don’t have to wait until retirement to actually benefit.
If you’re stacking up that “skill time” and giving it time to grow, you’re going to have success early and you’ll progressively have more and more success over time.
I hope this helps keep you motivated.
Keep up the good work. Focus on the skill. Double down on it. Don’t lose sight!
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