- To reach your goals, you must make the mental shift from glorifying knowledge to magnifying practice.
- You become by doing, you grow in wisdom by practice
In my view, knowledge alone does not make people effective because access to excess knowledge in the twenty-first century has given rise to knowledge-hoarders. These people know so much but do little or nothing with what they know. However, they believe that having knowledge is enough, and herein lies the challenge.
In modern culture, people genuinely believe that possessing knowledge alone is transformation. This is faulty thinking because knowing does not necessarily mean that you have become what you know.
Furthermore, practice is more powerful than knowledge – this is the willingness and capacity to consistently engage your talent to the point of mastery. Practice separates those who merely acquire knowledge from those who attain mastery of their craft. You can be taught the details of swimming, but if you never swim, what you know is useless. Only those who practice swimming eventually become swimmers.
To reach your goals, you must make the mental shift from glorifying knowledge to magnifying practice. The accumulation of knowledge without practice does not lead to mastery. You become by doing, you grow in wisdom by practice. Refining what you know through practice will bring you these three benefits.
Practice Creates Focus: The renowned motivational speaker, Dr. Mike Murdock, said that: “the reason men fail is broken focus.” Now, it is becoming more difficult to maintain focus because of the excess knowledge that we have, but practice changes this. It helps you attain and sustain focus until you experience success. With practice, you can hold your attention on a goal, thereby enhancing your gains.
Practice increases your learning: When I decided to become an executive coach, I went to get trained. In the process, I acquired much knowledge and got certified. However, years of practice have increased my knowledge of coaching far beyond my training. In practice, you discover unique perspectives that can only be found by doing and in this process, you learn much more.
Practice builds your confidence: There is a confidence that a surgeon has that a fresh medical school graduate lacks, and the difference is years of practice. The more you practice a skill, the more your confidence grows in it. To help people grow in confidence, I advocate more practice over the mere acquisition of knowledge. Basking in knowledge alone strokes the ego, but consistently doing what you know builds in you the confidence that seasoned craftspeople enjoy. This confidence in turn brings good reward and makes the time and energy invested in practice worth it.
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