How to be a learner?

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    Learning New Skills

    When I  start working with a new client , I ask them, how do you think I can help you? The answer is never what a coach would like to hear. I would like to hear some romantic, grandiose version of how awesome coaching can be and how it can change your life for good in ALL the aspects.  But of course it’s never this. The standard answer is structure and accountability. Which usually translates to: tell me what to do and make me do it.  My very first task is to reframe that idea for my athlete, more than providing structure and accountability what I do is create contexts in which they can find what works best for them, and what they want. I create contexts in which they thrive.

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    Just Chill, Commit to Mastery

    No matter what skill you choose, you can visualize mastery. You can see it. Now imagine what it would take to get there... I bet that in your visualization that mastery does not happen in 6 months. In my mind’s eye I can see myself creating awful noises for quite some time before actually playing a tune. I imagine that if your thing was to master German, in your vision you can see yourself stumbling through words before you can actually write amazingly good emails. By the same token, I bet that if you imagine your teachers for that journey, you don’t see slicky guys selling you fast results or trying to trap you with hard sells and gimicky marketing. In that vision, mastery is a continuous, long, and difficult process of learning. It’s slow and tedious. This is why it’s so rare. (In other words, mastery is what Hollywood movies show in a super fast montage with the subscript “five years later”.)

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    Don't be lazy, have higher standards

    I bet you are thinking I mean you should  go out workout more and workout harder. Memories of all those times you said you would wake up and work out and you didn’t will run through your head. You might remember those workouts during which you were tired and you did not push as hard as you feel you should have,  But nope, that is not what I mean. That is just your guilt. Your consistency on a given program is often not a laziness problem as much as an organizational problem. How hard you can push on a given workout is very seldom a willpower problem, as it is a self-regulation problem. I  am not here to guilt trip you. Let me tell you what I DO mean.