photo credit: laurenfarmer

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. – Tenneva Jordan

If you scoured the entire Earth looking for someone who has shown more kindness to you than your own mother you would be gone a long time. Such a person does not exist. Your mother cared for you while you were in her stomach, gave birth to you, fed and raised you to become the person you are today. No body comes even close to her in terms of love and compassion. And over the years she has taught us many things, some helpful, some not so helpful. Here are a few life lessons that your mom was right about.

1. It could be worse
Of all the things your mom said to you as a kid this is one of the most valuable. Hidden inside these four words is a wealth of wisdom that has been somewhat obscured due to the popular nature of the saying. In fact, when your mom said this to you it was often at a time when you felt pretty terrible. And so you ignored her. I’ll never forget when my little brother broke his arm my mom calmly announced that “it could be worse” and to basically get it together. She was right. It could have been worse.

The reason this saying is so important is because it teaches two things that are essential to your life, calmness and compassion. When you think about how much worse your bad situation could be you realize that there is no point getting all worked up. But you also start to think about those other people out there in that “worse” predicament and feel sorry for them. It is a very powerful tool.

2. The proof will be in the pudding
As if on a timer, my mom would say “the proof will be in the pudding” every year about three weeks before school report cards went out. It was around this time that she started to get nervous that my brother and I had been playing too much soccer and not doing enough homework. So she would subtly let us know that even though we said we were working hard, the real proof would be the grades on that card. And for some reason it scared the hell out of me!

There are a lot of people in this world who are good at talking. They are good at spinning a few words together and getting out of a predicament. In a similar way, there are a lot of people who are good at making excuses. But the proof will be in the pudding. You can convince yourself and those around you that you are working hard towards your goals or a project but unless that hard work bears fruit then you might be kidding yourself. The proof really will be in the final product.

3. I don’t care who started it, you stop it
Do you remember those times back at home when you and your brother or sister were pulling each others hair out over some stupid little argument? Do you remember how cheated you felt when mom trounced in the room and told you to stop it even though you didn’t start it? It was the worst feeling in the world. It felt like everyone was against you and that the world was completely unfair. Well, in actual fact, your mom was teaching you an extremely valuable life lesson about self control and self responsibility.

photo credit: ASingleAtom

What your mom was really saying in this situation is that she wants you to take responsibility for being the bigger person and diffuse the situation. When you put it like that you might start to see some more adult-life scenarios where it would be useful. Perhaps an argument that you are having with your father or even with your siblings again? Perhaps a colleague at work has started a fight or maybe one of your mates did something silly? Even though you might be in the right it is often extremely wise to put your pride aside and diffuse the situation.

Imagine the effect this wisdom would have on a global scale if it was put into practice by world leaders and politicians. I am not saying that everyone should just admit defeat all the time, but rather that it could be useful to put grudges aside and be the person or nation who takes steps to solving the problem instead of arguing about it.

4. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all
What a simple but powerful lesson. Imagine how many disputes around the world would be avoided if people just remembered their mothers advice. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. This saying has applications for marriages, politics, business and friendships. And it has a lot more to it than it seems.

As a kid this saying probably just meant that you shouldn’t call your little brother a dickhead. But as you grow up and get a little bit more life experience you can start to add new meanings to it. For example, saying “something nice” might not just mean a compliment but rather something that is going to add to the situation and help the people that you are speaking with. Like the Buddha said, “do not speak unless it improves on silence“. So from this point of view the saying is a lesson in helping other as well as being mindful of what one is saying.

In the business and political worlds this saying is perhaps one of the most important rules there is when dealing with other people. You never say anything bad about a business partner or a competitor because it will inevitably come back to harm your reputation. The consequences in the political world are even worse. Gossip and harsh speech can have implications for careers, national progress and even international relations. Your mom was right about this one. Unless you have something helpful, intelligent and proactive to say, don’t say anything.

5. If you don’t do it now, then when are you going to do it?
If you are a regular reader of The Daily Mind (good on you!) then you will know that I am always talking about procrastination. So much of our lives is wasted because we hate the idea of now and we love the idea of tomorrow. But when tomorrow comes and we still haven’t accomplished anything we feel regret, depression and ever so unfulfilled.

One of the sad truths about life is that you can lose it at any time. Death is certain to come but the time of its arrival is most uncertain. So you might not even have a tomorrow in order to accomplish your task. Really, if you look closely at the matter, now is all you have. Now is all you have. If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it? What if that opportunity never comes or if you run out of time because you are too busy. Will you be filled with regrets on your deathbed?

Again, we can add a little bit more grown up meaning to a saying that your mom probably said a thousand times. Of all the lessons she taught you this is one that really needs to hit home. She is right about this one. If you don’t do it now then when are you going to do it? My guess is never.

What lessons was your mom right about?

Every mom has a myriad of different lessons for their children. It would be wonderful if you could try to remember a few and leave a comment. It would be even more fantastic if you could try to think of some examples in your adult life of when the motherly wisdom helped you out.

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Imagine that your main goal in life was to have as much fun as possible. What would your life look like?

I’m asking this question because I reject the idea that the pursuit of fun, in its maximum, would result in a life of non-stop television, fast-food binging or substance abuse.

Instead I’d argue that, even if putting fun as the highest goal wouldn’t lead to the ideal life, there is still a considerable overlap. I want to make the case for two points:

1. That serious fun requires effort. Giving up all discipline and effort results in a local maxima of fun which is far lower than the maximum possible enjoyment.
2. That fun supports work-related and nobler goals, rather than distract from them.

Why People Don’t Like to Think About Fun

What if I told you that you weren’t maximally productive. That is, your current behaviors don’t accomplish the most for the time you invest, you probably wouldn’t require much persuading. After all, we all sense our deficiencies when it comes to procrastination or laziness.

But, if I told you that you weren’t getting the most fun, you might require more convincing. Somehow we feel that work is something that can be enhanced by analysis and introspection, but fun is not. Fun is something magical and trying to think about how to have more, destroys the very enjoyment we seek to create.

I’m not going to disagree with you. The act of trying to figure out how to have more fun, when you’re playing a game or socializing, usually makes the activity less fun. Fun is spontaneous, so thinking about it too much can undermine it.

However, while I believe a mindless, go-with-the-flow approach works best in the moment, that same logic doesn’t apply when structuring your life to have more fun.

Serious Fun Requires Sweat

Take travel as an example. You might feel that going on a trip will be more fun than staying at home and playing video games. But, the video games don’t require any advanced planning, whereas the travel might. So if you don’t apply any thought, you’ll end up staying at home.

Look at sports. Sports are a classic example of the frustration barrier. When you are lousy at a sport, it isn’t much fun to play. But as you gain skill, the sport can become almost obsessively interesting. If you didn’t apply the foresight to practice through the frustrating phase, you would never experience the intensely fun phase of mastery.

Being a connoisseur of fun doesn’t mean all your leisure time needs to require years of practice or planning. Instead it means that, as far as having fun is a worthy goal, there are benefits to putting some thought into designing a more entertaining life.

I’d rather live an adventurous life, which has richer fun experiences, than a merely entertaining one, which occupies itself with shallower fun.

Mindless Fun vs Serious Fun

I don’t want to categorize certain activities as always being mindless fun and others as being serious fun. I’m not going to say Shakespeare is inherently better than South Park, simply because I feel those comparisons are so corrupted by people using high art to signal status.

The difference isn’t the activity, it’s the way you pursue it.

Imagine one person watches television for six hours straight, because he has nothing better to do on a Friday night. Compare that to a person who, spends the same six hours watching television, but it’s in the deep appreciation of a favorite story. Reveling in the character details, completely fascinated by the broader themes of the work.

The difference is between being an aficionado and a drone.

Why Serious Fun Supports Serious Work

I don’t believe that fun is the ultimate aim in life. However, I do think it’s useful to think about because I feel fun supports other goals. If you’re saturated in adventures and enjoyment, those experiences enhance the other aspects of your life, rather than detract from them.

I get a lot of emails from people wanting to give up online gaming or partying so they can focus on working more. That’s fine, if in their honest assessment, they’ve decided that there are more satisfying ways to use their spare time.

However, in most cases, I feel people want to abandon these pursuits, not because they’ve found something better to replace it, but because they feel they should. That watching television, playing World of Warcraft or going to a club is working against their bigger goals.

I’ve fallen into this reasoning trap myself. I’ve previously written about giving up television, and while I enjoyed the challenge (I still don’t have a television), I think I pursued the goal for the wrong reasons.

Instead of trying to eliminate all those distracting sources of low productivity, I should have been embracing them. Embracing serious fun.

How Fun Improves Productivity

The truth is, for almost all my goals, if you asked me whether I’m more productive now or years earlier when I had a more obsessive focus on work, I wouldn’t have to think about it. I’m definitely more productive now.

I believe a big reason for this is that seriously pursuing fun, making sure life is as fun as possible, gives you the energy to put back into your more focused pursuits.

Again, however, I want to draw a distinction between mindless fun, which is usually done just to occupy time, and serious fun, which is the conscious effort to make your life as adventurous and entertaining as possible.

Making my life more fun has occurred on many levels:

• Improving my business, so that the creative work I find incredibly fun is something I can get paid for.
• Living abroad, so even acts like going to buy groceries are interesting challenges.
• Building my social network, so I’m connected to other people’s adventures.

Even more, it’s been accepting that the serious pursuit of fun is productive. And that the ideal life not only accomplished but thoroughly enjoyed.

Note: This is a guest post from Armen Shirvanian of Timeless Information

If you want to see if and how you waste time, compare your current productivity to that which you have had at a winning time in your days. There is much benefit to gain from looking at a time when you felt like you were doing all the right things for a short time. You can see and reflect upon why that period of time came out feeling so good, and get new sense of how the time period you are now in is going.

You Can Stay At Your High Production State

The first thing to accept here is that you can maintain the high level of production that you have put out at some point. There is no reason you are weaker or less able now. You might have some distractions or pressures that you didn’t have when you were at your peak, but those can be pushed aside by your bigger vision. Let’s say you are a student who had a period where you were really focused on your schoolwork, and had a time where you were doing all the assigned reading given to you for a couple of months, and then slowed down since then. After a sizable amount of time passes from this period of success, you might start to feel like you can’t reach that state again. This isn’t the case, as you can reach that state, and even add to it, with new abilities you have strengthened since then.

Look At Your High Production State As The Goal

You want to view it like the high production state is where you need to be staying at, and any period where you are not at that state is a period where you are wasting some of your time and potential. This is an uplifting way to look at your effort usage. If you were once trying to sell a product to about 3 different customers every day for a few weeks, you have to now look at any time where you are not marketing at that rate as a time when you aren’t doing what you know you can do. This will keep you on an upward slope. No one wants to be told that they are wasting their time. It makes them feel like their actions are starting to look irrelevant to the masses. Using this knowledge, remind yourself when you do see yourself wasting time, according to the description I pointed out above. You won’t like the feeling, and will quickly build up some self-discipline to avoid that label, and self-discipline is the big deal.

Piano Practice Example

Let’s say you used to play a new piano song every week, and now haven’t played piano for a few years. You might think your past learning ability is out of reach, or that you have missed your opportunity. These thoughts don’t help much. Taking the experience gained from the past piano-playing, along with the confidence received from knowing this habit has already been tackled before, you can return to the routine again. There’s nothing stopping you from getting back your momentum by learning Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” within the next seven days, followed by Brahms “Brahms’ Lullaby” the next week, and Mozart’s theme from “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” the week after. You already have the skills to do so from your experience, and have more goal-setting resources at your disposal today, so you can be back in action in no time. Everyone always says “time flies”, and that means that the period of struggle to get the habit back in place will also fly by.

Work At The Level You’ve Already Shown You Can

Once your mind reaches a certain understanding, your mind will never go back to not having that understanding. In the same way, you can always return to a production ability, or winning streak, that you once had. Toss aside any blame on others, or views of yourself as no longer having the capacity, and you can again be rolling the ball up the mountain, soon enough.

Armen Shirvanian writes words of wisdom about mindset, communication, relationships, and related topics at Timeless Information. You can follow him on Twitter at @Armen.

Photo by madmolecule

photo credit: Shadow becomes White

Do you want to become a professional sports player and compete on the world stage? Perhaps you want to become a concert pianist and perform at Carnegie Hall. Or maybe meditation is more your thing and you would like to tame your mind and get closer to enlightenment. Regardless of the dream, the method is the same. Practice. A hell of a lot of practice. In fact, 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes to become an expert at any given field. So do you have what it takes?

10,000 hours, the magic number

Many studies have been done on the topic of becoming a professional sports player or a great musician. And almost all of them have concluded that the magic number is somewhere around 10,000 hours of practice. Let’s do the math on that. If you practice in your chosen area for two hours a day you are going to get in 730 hours of practice per year. At that rate it will take you 13 years to reach the 10,000 hour mark. Using that equation, let’s imagine that you want to become an expert guitar player. Imagine you start a little late in life, say around 30. If you put in the hard yards, perhaps practice before and after work everyday and more on the weekends, you will be an expert by the time you are 40. It doesn’t seem so bad when you put it like that. After this you will have the rest of your life to play your guitar like a pro.

Why 10,000 hours?
Good question. It does seem a little random. But the more you look at it the more you start to see it is true. Most people need to continually work at something for around 10 to 20 years to become great at it. And the studies done on this topic have shown that it is usually around the 10,000 hour mark that they “graduate” from amateur to professional or from good to great.

Not everyone needs 10,000 hours
Let’s remember that some people do not need 10,000 hours to become great at something. You might have grown up in a family which exposed you to your chosen discipline from an early age which might mean that you have a more “natural” propensity for it. It might take you a lot less time to catch on. Or the opposite might be true, you might have a physical or mental block that requires you to put in a lot more time to become an expert.

Good genes vs practice: the ongoing debate

photo credit: j_bischoff

Here is a subject that really grates on me. Many people think that the deciding factor is genetics, not practice. There are those sneaky and ever so depressing souls out there who would have us believe that not everyone can become great in any field. And they might be right. I often wonder if I could become a maths expert if I put in 10,000 hours. I’m not sure I could; my brain just hates maths. But there is a key word there – hate. I hate maths because I never had a good teacher and as such I lost confidence. Now when I need to do it I put up all sorts of emotional blocks that prevent me from advancing. And that is conditioned behavior, not genetic. My father is a maths whiz. My brother is a doctor. Its obviously not a genetic thing.

So how much of a role does genetics play in this debate? Obviously quite a lot. But at the same time not so much. Let me give you an example. I am under six foot tall. I have played soccer since I was young and have some small talent. The same goes for martial arts. But I am genetically disadvantaged when it comes to basketball. I am just too short. Does this mean I could never have become a professional basketball player? No. It just means it would have been harder. There have been lots of short basketball player – Muggsy Bogues was shorter than me and did quite well for himself.

Genetics is a head start but it is by no means the final stretch of the race. I would much rather be the guy with a genetic disadvantage and a good practice discipline than the naturally talented guy who doesn’t think he needs to work. Scientists now talk about genetics as a potential but not a deciding factor because they are always switching on and off. The factor that will determine whether or not you become great at something is practice. Over 10,000 hours worth.

Do you have what it comes to become great? Some tips.

photo credit: nerd.reynolds

So the question is not whether you have the potential to be great but whether or not you have the guts. Now that you know you need to practice hard, will you shy away from the task? If you believe you have the stomach for greatness there are a few tips you need to know in order to get to your goal.

1. Routine is your only friend
When it comes to practice there is only one word you need to know – routine. You need to make a regular time for your practice sessions and stick to it like you do eating dinner. You would never (rarely) go to bed without dinner and in the same way you should never miss a practice session. As soon as you miss one you will find reasons to miss another and before you know it a whole week has gone since you practiced. That time starts to add up. Make a routine and stick to it.

2. Define a solid goal with a time line
Sure, you might have a pie-in-the-sky dream about becoming a professional soccer player but do you have a goal with a time line? Do you know where you want to be in ten years time? If your dream is just some vague hope then it will never get done. You need to lock on to a target and fix in your mind what you want to achieve. Without that time line you are kidding yourself. I promise you will never make it. Add a time line to that goal, however, and you have a good shot.

3. Micro steps towards the goal
Okay so you have a goal with a time line. How are you going to get there? What steps do you need to take to make sure you are in the right place at the right time? Here is an example. Let’s say you want to be a professional soccer player by the year 2020 and you want to play for Barcelona. First of all you need to get really good. Then you need to get really fit, fast, agile, elements that will set you aside from other players. Then you need to be in the right place for the scouts to see you; Spain or perhaps playing in a team that Barcelona is associated with. That might mean saving up to move to Spain. These are all the steps you are going to need to take to achieve your goal. Write them out too. Make them specific.

4. Reinforce good habits
A few months ago I wrote a post about the habits that help cultivate greatness. These are things you need to pay attention to. Things like eating healthy, avoiding alcohol, sleeping regular hours, etc. are essential for your long and arduous journey. You have to give yourself every advantage and without these “extra” bits you are going to find it tough. Practicing for four hours a day is hard if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

5. Get an inspiring mentor
Almost all good behavior is learned. You get better at tennis by playing against better opponents. You get good at music by learning from an expert musician. And you stay on the path by being reinforced and inspired by a good mentor. Now, a mentor does not have to be someone you have personal contact with (although that is preferred). You might just pick a great athlete like Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan and try to emulate them by copying their sense of discipline, work ethic and training routines. That is a good start. You will need this inspiration when you don’t feel like getting out of bed for training on those early mornings.

6. Train smart
When I was playing state soccer in high school my coach said something that hit me like a tonne of bricks. He came up to me during drills and said, “Son, you are damn good at that right foot shot.” I looked at him, smiled and said thank you. His demeanor then changed dramatically and he barked, “So why the hell are you still practicing it? Work on the left”. And from that point on he would make me do laps if I shot with my right foot, even if it was the best option at the time. Now, his method might have been extreme but his lesson was priceless. Why spend your valuable time practicing what you are good at? You need to push your comfort zones and improve on your weaknesses. That’s what great players do; they find their weakness and then they train it until they are bleeding and sore.

Conclusion

As you can see, becoming expert or great at something takes a lot of time. But it also means a lot of other things like being in the right place at the right time, having a disciplined work ethic and being mentally tough when obstacles arise. I wonder how many people will be put off by the idea of putting in 10,000 hours work. Does that seem like a lot to you? Or has it inspired you to know that there is a specific target to aim for? I would love to hear your thoughts about the genetics argument as well so please leave a comment.

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