A Private Level of Skills Assessment I've learned never to make the assumption, first of all, with myself, let alone with business people, that I have consciously assessed all of the skills I possess.
When those closest to me, watch me focus on developing a certain skill set, they see, but they, more often than not, do not comprehend.
I develop new skills, out of a childhood of necessity and a lifetime of self-reliance.
Some of us are more fortunate than others, not because we are born with a silver spoon in our mouths, and have everything handed to us on a matching silver platter.
No.
I consider myself fortunate for exactly the opposite reason.
My dad incessantly drilled into me a core set of values, one of which was to never ask others to do for you, what you may learn to do for yourself.
My dad was your typical split personality.
He would insist that I figure out how to do a task on my own.
Let's use the example of how to properly align, set a pole, mix and pour concrete around it, and stretch the fence.
In his wisdom, he would show me they way he learned to do it, which of course, was the right way, even it was not the most efficient, or even the correct way.
In his impatience, however, if I didn't get it quickly, he would take the tools from me and say, "No, no, no!.
That's not how I showed you!" Now, watch me, again, and learn.
I wish I had an accurate count for how many times my dad and I did this dance.
I can say, in all honesty, it was many hundreds of times over the course of my childhood and early teens, until I entered the military and adult life.
Looking back at these early, and often tough lessons my dad, who was a depression era baby, was trying to teach me, I realize, now, that he was teaching me how to fish.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
For some strange reason I may never understand, this Chinese proverb never found me, until a few years, ago.
I will give you my interpretation of this saying, updated, for the moment of time in which we find ourselves living.
"Show a person how to develop a survival skill, and you are teaching him or her how to embrace the value of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
Show a person how to enlarge the picture frame to include the possibility of showing everyone around him or her how to develop a survival skill, and you are showing an entire family, or village, how to embrace the value of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and consequently, how to build a culture of pulling together to survive in the face of hardship.
" I started out this article by saying, I've learned never to make the assumption, first of all, with myself, let alone with business people, that I have consciously assessed all of the skills I possess.
Finishing the thought, now, I personally conclude that it is not until I show another person, as my dad showed me, how to develop the skill of writing, for example, how unconsciously many persons live, never allowing themselves to believe they can do what they see you or someone do, with such seeming ease.
That statement takes me back to my dad, one more time.
The man I seldom appreciated forced me to start mowing lawns for neighbors at the unripe young age of 8.
By nine, I had graduated to bailing hay for local farmers.
By the time I left home, in my late teens, I possessed a magnificent skill set, which prepared me to enter the military, where I learned a greater level of self-discipline.
The Reason So Many Persons Fail on the Internet.
Sharing with others around me the simple secret of why writing appears to come so easily to me, the bare naked truth is, it doesn't come to me, easily.
No thing I have ever done has been "easy.
" In fact, I view myself as a plodding turtle, compared to all of those wily wabbits that ooze with the knowledge of applied sciences and technical skills.
I will get there, eventually, in my own time and my own way.
Those wily wabbits, however, would kill for one simple skill I've forced myself to develop over the years, which I began to force myself to do, while completing my tour of duty in the military.
I carry a notepad with me everywhere I go.
No.
It is not for text messaging others in manual mode.
It is precisely for writing down the thoughts that come me to throughout my work day, no matter where I happen to be.
And consider this.
If such a simple skill as carrying a notepad with you, everywhere you go, were easy, why doesn't everyone do it? What does it take to develop such a simple, yet powerful skill, in the act of teaching oneself how to let words flow? One all-powerful answer...
the force of will to focus on acquiring one skill at a time, until you are its master...
And you are only its master, when you possess that skill...
forever...