How To Learn New Skills: Decisions and Discipline

Decisions:  Have you ever decided to learn a new skill, then somehow a week later you forgot you decided?  It's like the story of the 3 frogs on the bank of a pond and 1 decided to jump, how many frogs were still on the bank? Three.  The one frog only decided, he didn't take action.  

Best way to learn a new skills is to learn for 1 hour, apply for 1 hour, learn, apply, learn, apply, etc.  You can sit and read a book about how to play the piano 2 hours a day for 1 year and it will mean nothing until you apply what you learned, make some mistakes and physically Do It….then go back and learn.

Would you agree that the person who learned and applied would be dramatically better at playing a piano than the person that only studied hard at learning the piano every day for a year?

What would improve in your life you had a skill that you know would help make your life better?  Foreign languages, communication, networking, relationships, parenting, leadership, instruments, business, technology, social networking, etc.

First Decide you want to learn a new skill and then decide you will have the Discipline to take action every day to get better; have a strong reason WHY you want to develop the new skill, and focus on the daily activities.

Discipline: Have you ever noticed there are some areas of your life where you lack discipline?  We all have areas of strength and areas of weakness.

For me, sometimes it’s Chocolate.  See, I’m not fast enough to out run chocolate…if it’s available, a small piece won’t hurt, then it tastes so good that I may want to try another one…[know what I mean?]

But I’m smart enough to out smart chocolate.  What I mean by that is; if I already know I’m tempted if it’s around, I can decide before hand…to NOT have it around.  I suppose, discipline and avoiding temptation can be two different topics…some are stronger in one or the other, leverage your own strengths.

Practice greater discipline in all areas of your life…one great way to do this is to write down what you will do the night before the following day and decide you will be strong enough to do the things you know you should do, even when you don’t feel like doing it.  This can apply to both personal and business situations.

I promise you the night of the following day you will feel great about yourself for doing what you promised yourself you would do.

If you have trouble being accountable to yourself, find a trusted friend or coach and ask if you can be accountable to them on what you want to improve.  You can even ask me, I'd be honored to be your accountability partner in learning something new or achieving something that's important to you.  
Either way send me a message and let me know what skill you have decided to develop.

If this helps you, please share with your friends.
-Jeremy C. Jones
Entrepreneur, Family man and Visionary
http://www.AskJeremyJones.com
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