I was watching a video about selling art and the presenter said ‘Get good enough at anything and someone will pay you to do it.‘
Examine that sentence for a second and feel the truth of it.
This is a profound and liberating truth. It means that you can either pick something you are already quite good at and become excellent. Alternatively, pick something you enjoy and focus on becoming the top expert in that area.
This is the key to success.
It requires focus, dedication and hard work to become the expert at anything.
Some say that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. I don’t know whether it would take 1,000 hours or even 100,000 hours but it does take focus and dedication until you work your way into the top position.
If you are going to dedicate this amount of time to becoming excellent then its probably better to pick something that you enjoy.
However, even if that’s not the case, if you start to become an acknowledged expert in any area, the chances are that you will enjoy the recognition and rewards that flow from that activity anyway.
Bringing your full attention to the present moment and using your creativity and skill in the moment are critical – sometimes this is called ‘being in the flow’ – it’s where you have achieved a state of unconscious competence.
Another artist was talking about how he became an illustrator simply by drawing a sketch every day for 1 year – he shared his results on social media to garner criticism and feedback in order to improve his work. At the end of the year he held an exhibition of his work.
It takes this kind of dedication to become great at anything or to get to a point where it looks easy to do what you do. If you can do it to a point where you are as good, or better, than other people then you will find someone to pay you for your expertise.
Another marketer, Sean Mize, talks about making a goal to change other people’s lives rather than having a goal of ‘making money’ because one will flow from the other. The more you can positively impact the lives of others then the bigger the rewards will be.
Anyone can decide to create a plan to become great at anything. You could decide right now, dear reader, that you will become the top expert on a subject of your choice.
Chances are you could do this relatively quickly if you just decided to focus on achieving a focused goal. Don’t make the mistake of trying to spread yourself too thinly.
Just start by getting really good at one thing that will improve the lives of other people and show them what you can do. They will pay you to do it for them or will pay you to show them how you do it. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
So just decide right now that you will get good enough at something, make a plan on how you are going to achieve your goal and get to work today. It will take discipline and hard work.
Make sure you enjoy the process by working in the moment rather than thinking about your past or what the future might be – the past is over and the future cannot be foretold, so the present moment is all we ever have and the only moment we can be alive in.
When you work in the moment you will be surprised at what your creativity will produce – gold will spring forth from seemingly ‘thin air’ in ways that are entirely unexpected. Your creativity requires you to be in motion, to be engaged in ‘doing’ rather than dreaming of a successful outcome.
Your plan will make sure that you know what you have to do each day. Tackle one task at a time and put everything you have into that task.
If you get stuck then either keep working until the solution arrives or take a break and walk somewhere peaceful – you will be surprised by the ideas that flow from distancing yourself from the problem. Your subconscious will work away to find a solution when you least expect it.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” — Henry David Thoreau
If you can get good enough at anything then someone will pay you to do it. This is a philosophy for success. You just need to decide what you want to get good at, create a plan and then go and do it. As the meerkats say ‘it’s simples’!