I’ve been MIA since my last blog post on April 7th. I had some personal health issues to contend with, but everything is okay, and I’m back. For the last week or so, I could not come up with anything to write about. I thought I had lost my creative writing mojo. Then, my husband played a YouTube video of a woman violinist, Nina D, playing an Eruption Van Halen cover. It shook me out of my funk and I got inspired to write this blog post. She is amazing!

I wondered, what makes some people so good at something?  We’ve all been taught that the only way anyone gets good at their craft is by practice. That’s number one. If you want to be good at whatever, you need to put in the time to learn it well.

But there are other things needed to be good at something. We need to love it, and have to believe in our abilities, not with cockiness, just a humble belief that we are good enough. No one knows everything, and no one can play an instrument or sing or drive a race car and be exempt from improvement. So, we need to keep our ego in check. And by the same token, we need to believe in ourselves and know we’re good enough.

The most important thing to being good at something is to take action—real, I’m in it to win it attitude, action.

When we do an action toward that thing we want to be good at, it can be difficult at first. When I created my website, I had to walk away a few times from the frustration of not understanding how to do it. I read books, watched YouTube videos, took notes, and eventually learned how to create my website using WordPress. Even though I know what I’m doing, there’s much more I could learn. But, the goal was achieved because I created a website. I took action and did it.

We can accomplish whatever we want just by taking action.

Action speaks louder than words. You can tell someone you love them love, but if you don’t do some action to show them, what is that? Is it real love or lip service? Words are just words but action shows others that we mean it and it’s important to us. However, for us to do an action, it’s got to be something we want, or else we’re wasting our time.

Doing an action helps build self-confidence and self-esteem and helps us overcome anxiety and depression, too. When we create something from nothing, we come out of our heads and make our thoughts into something real. That is cool! How do you feel when you build or make something and it’s done? Don’t you feel a sense of accomplishment (like something was checked off the list)? I know I do, and it feels good.

If we ever think there’s no way I could do that or I’d never be able to learn how to do that, stop it. We can learn anything. We just need to be willing to do the action.

I was in a sound therapy class, where the instructor created sounds with large jars hit with a mallet meant to induce relaxation. It was not for me and didn’t help me relax, but she told a story I found worth remembering before the class. I’m paraphrasing; I don’t remember it word for word.

She said that when you’re learning something new, it seems like you’re walking through a tall grass field and can’t see your way. It’s frustrating and scary. But if you keep taking that path, eventually, the grass gets pushed down, and one day, the path is an open dirt path from repeated use.  In other words, the more you do something, the easier it becomes.

Don’t ever give up on something you can’t stop thinking about.

When we first learn an action, such as riding a bike, cooking, or learning another language, it’s hard! We’re going to make mistakes and get frustrated. No one comes out of the gate as an expert. It takes time, patience, and continuous action.

Over and over. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Fumble. Fall. Get up. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Smile.

Just think back to something you wanted to do or learn and how it felt when you first did it. It was challenging, wasn’t it? But if you stuck to it, it got easier, right?

Jen Sincero, who penned the book series, You Are a Badass wrote,

“Each time you grow, you get to learn something new, which basically means you have to get uncomfortable again. Because when you arrive at a level you’ve never been at before, you’re faced with challenges you’ve never experienced before. It’s the willingness to keep pushing through new challenges, not shrink from them back into your comfort zone, that separates the successful from the unsuccessful.”

Boy, did that resonate with me. I’ve done that before—”shrink from them back into my comfort zone.” It’s so easy to do, right? Why should I learn how to do that when I could do something easy and think I’ve been productive? When we do all the easy things, we stay stuck and never get to grow or evolve—or attain our goals.

If we want to achieve a goal, we need to take action toward it.

I think I’ve been afraid, and that’s why I haven’t taken the actions needed to achieve my goals. The unknown is scary. But like Jen Sincero wrote, “we have to push through new challenges.”

Today, try to take one action towards what you want. If you want to lose weight, let your action be being mindful when you eat to eat less. It’s a small action that can produce tremendous results. It’s something I need to do because I’m always rushing to eat and eating too fast – and then overeating. But it’s a simple action that only requires us to be more attentive to ourselves when we eat. Writing those words from the last sentence really hit me hard that when we eat better, we are honoring our bodies. I wasn’t doing that by eating too fast. I get it, but the challenge for me is to be mindful.

So, that’s what I have for today. I hope I’ve given you some inspiration to work with. That’s my goal here. I appreciate you reading this and I’ll have another thought-provoking post in a few days.

To taking action,

Francesca