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I’ve been toying with this idea. This slightly depressing but exhilarating idea.
Yes, sometimes you can’t take the knowledge of others or read enough or listen enough to avoid learning the hard way.
It’s like the first time you really understood why you can’t text and drive. Everyone told you it was wrong but until that moment that you slammed on the breaks you believed that you could handle both of those tasks at once.
Learning the hard way is nothing you can prevent. But it is something you can benefit from. It also doesn’t mean anything about your capabilities, talents, or skills. The hard way is not the bad way – its just a particular path you have to travel down. Sometimes, you get the fork that says “Easy” and you don’t doubt yourself then – so why would you doubt yourself when the patch says “Hard”? When you get the path that says “Hard” buckle up – you are about to learn!
Now, even though I say you can’t avoid the situation- below are somethings that will help ensure that you benefit.
1. Seek Experts
There is nothing like bumping up against an invisible wall. Let alone running headlong into it. But this is what happens when you don’t know what you don’t know! As a business owner, this can be alot. Would it occur to you to research hashtags or use RSS feeds to create content? Probably not, your job is to do what you do exceptionally well. It’s an experts job to counsel you in all other areas.
(Contact me if you want to talk about social media.)
2. Get Over it
This was bound to happen. Don’t dwell in the “coulda woulda shoulda” done something differently. The worst thing you can do is despise the rocky path for being exactly what it is – a training tool to hone your expertise. If rocky paths were never there you would never come into the expertise you have now. You might not be in a place to thank the rocky path. But you can certainly list 3 ways your expertise was improved. In fact, I suggests you do that exercise every time you have a close encounter of the rocky kind.
3. Acknowledge You’re Doing Something Right
You probably heard some variation of this but it’s still true:
The very existence of the “hard way” is proof positive that you are doing something right. People who are up to big things have big breakdowns to match. Just imagine if you were a county-living tea-sipping granny. Your biggest breakdown would be they didn’t have your Tetly in the store. But when you are creating a business to live a life you love you will be presented with rocky paths that look like disasters. They are not. They are merely mile markers to indicate you are on the right path.
I wrote about this because people always worry about jumping into social media and doing something wrong. They want to research and read everything on the Internet about getting it right. They want to avoid the pain of getting it wrong. I always tell them ‘Understand and create a strategy and then jump in. You will do something wrong and you will recover.”
This idea of learning the hard way is one that should free you up. Now, you don’t have to avoid messing up because you know it’s going to happen. Now,you can just BE. Now, you can focus on getting results and learning from the hard way.
What was your last rocky path?
Oh, I talked about this on Periscope..find me @where2start