Hey, Amy here.

My martial arts teacher was talking with us at the end of class last night.

 

He was telling us not to focus on the end result, to focus on the process. 

He said, 

"The end result will be what it will be. We only need to be concerned with the process."

 

He said our job is to practice as much as we can and fail and learn from our mistakes and practice some more. And that over time we will become more proficient... but that proficiency comes by focusing on the process, not the end result.

 

I love this because it carries over into so many areas of our lives... including our businesses. 

 

For example, we can't do something when it comes to marketing strategies only for the end result that we are hoping for.

As a matter of fact, the chance of you having a noticeable end result with anything right out of the gate is slim to none.

 

The key is to practice every day, and get better and better at the skills you are learning, and fail over and over to become more proficient... focusing on the process, not the end result.

 

And, over time, we get better and better at our skills.

We get more comfortable in front of the camera, we get faster and are able to get more done in less time, we develop systems for all of the tasks we do on a daily basis, and we just just keep getting better and better in so many different ways. 

And, as we do, we will likely start to see more of an end result, but that's never what we are focusing on... we are focusing on the process.

 

And he said if we want to get better faster at our process, he recommends that we come in to help teach in the beginner's class. He said it's one thing to learn the skills, but you will learn them more deeply and 10 times faster if you teach them. Especially when you are teaching beginners that don't know the difference... they don't have any of the skills yet... you have to break everything down for them. 

He said he guarantees that we will get much better much faster and ingrain our own skills for ourselves if we come in and teach... and he recommended that we all consider doing that.

 

I know this to be true for me based on my own experience teaching other things, including marketing. 

 

And this is why we always talk about the concept of learn-do-teach... because not only is it a great way to provide value to the marketplace because you are teaching things as you learn them and helping others... but also because it makes you better at the same time.

 

He also shared how martial arts is a perishable skillset.... meaning, if you don't do it consistently and practice consistently, you will get worse at it over time, or forget how to do certain things. Things will no longer be second nature if we don't practice regularly.

This is also true with skills in other areas of our lives...

So, it's definitely important to stay consistent so that we can hold onto the skills that we have worked so hard to learn.