The Mindset Mentor - 10,000 Hours

Episode Date: January 17, 2018

Episode 377 - Have you heard of the 10,000 hour rule? It is one of my favorite concepts. Why? Because to me it means that we can do anything that we want to if we are willing to dedicate our lives to it. Tune in to today's episode as I speak about this empowering concept! Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

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Okay, so what I'm going to talk about today is 10,000 hours, which is probably my favorite topic. And I wanted to make sure that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it justice. And the way I'm going to start is I'm actually going to give you a quote that I saw the other day from Conor McGregor, who is the current UFC featherweight champion. And he says this, he says, there is no talent here. This is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist. We are all equals as human beings. You could be anyone if you put time into it. You will reach the top and that's that. I'm not talented. I'm obsessed. And I love this. And someone actually commented back when I put this

up on the Instagram and the Facebook, and they said, I can't disagree with you more. I think that talent does exist. And personally, I don't think it exists. And the reason why I think people might be blessed with certain things, but I don't think that talent is anything. I think talent is a word that is used to take credit away from somebody putting in hours and hours and hours, thousands of hours of hard work into something. So the 10,000 hour rule, this is actually something that I've got on my wrist that says 10,000 hours to remind me to work hard at what I want. And in the book, Talent is Overrated, which is my favorite book talking about the 10,000 hour rule. I've currently read three or four books. I know at least three books on the 10,000 hour rule. I've currently read three or four books. I know at least three

books on the 10,000 hour rule. But if you want to read the book, Talent is Overrated, or you want to get the audio book, you can get it for free at mwfbook.com. You'll get a free subscription to audible.com and you can download it there if you want. But the rule of 10,000 hours says that in order to become an expert at something like truly world-class, amazing at something, it will take about 10,000 hours or 10 years. And by truly world-class, I mean like the top 0.01% at that skill. It will take about 10,000 hours or about 10 years. And some of you might be out there listening and saying, well, I have 10 years of industry knowledge in the space that I'm in. I've been working in this industry for 10 years. And some of you might be out there listening and saying, well, I have 10 years of industry knowledge in the space that I'm in. I've been working in this industry for 10 years.

And with that, I might challenge you or challenge some other people to say, is it 10 years of industry experience, like where you've been pushing yourself to get better every single year? Or is it your first year of knowledge done over 10 times? So is it that you've been learning and you've been improving and you've been getting better every single year and pushing yourself? Or is it just that you hit about one to two years in and you just kind of kept the same knowledge and you've been going through the motions? So it's important not just for those that want to be world class to understand this 10,000 hours, but for everybody

listening who wants to improve at anything at all. If you want to improve at something, and we all know if you want to improve at something, you have to put in hard work. But you have to think of it this way. If you make $50,000 per year and you want to make $100,000 per year, you have to double your value that you bring to your employer in order to double your income. How do you double your value? Well, you have to get better with your skills. You need deliberate practice that can help you develop your skills and give you the skills that you need to acquire.

So 10,000 hours, what it means, and like I said, this goes to everybody, whether you have one thing that you're completely obsessed with, like if you're obsessed with music or you're obsessed with being a painter or you're not, and you have a lot of different hobbies, but you do want to really start to get better at something. You don't have to be world-class in it, but if you want to be world-class at something, you can be. And deliberate practice is practice that is hard. It pushes you. It pushes you outside of your comfort zone and it pushes you every single time that you do it. See, here's the problem. Most people, they start something new and they start to get better. You know, when you're new at something, you start to get better

because you have been doing it for so little amount of time that any practice that you put into it is going to push you to be better every single time that you do it. But over time, people get to six months to a year. Let's say like playing, let's use playing guitar as an example. You play guitar, you're not really good at it, but you put in a month and you can notice difference because you went from zero to a little bit further in. But over time, over six months, over a year, over two years, you plateau. And that is when most people quit or most people think, oh, this wasn't for me. This isn't my thing. And they quit. Or they just play guitar and they play the exact same thing that they learned in the first six

months over and over again for 10 years. So like I said, with guitar as an example, you can learn, you can try to get better, and you can put in a few hours, you can put in six months of work and you can... We all know that there's somebody who put in six months of work into playing guitar and they play the exact same guitar songs and the exact same songs and chords every single time they pick up a guitar. But there are some people that once they hit that plateau, they keep pushing themselves outside of their comfort zone. They get out of the comfort zone. Playing the same song over and over again, that's inside of your comfort zone.

Your skill will not improve unless you keep pushing yourself over and over again. So with deliberate practice, deliberate practice is not fun. It's pushing yourself for hours to learn a song that you know that you can't play right now and going over one small part of a song over and over and over and over again until your fingers hurt, your fingers start bleeding and slowing it down until you get it right. That is deliberate practice and you can use this in anything, not just playing guitar, obviously. So there's only one reason why people get really, really good at something. And we all know the answer to that. The answer is hard work. Talent does not exist. I'm sorry. I'm going to break it to you. We all know people like, for instance, Michael Jordan, who obviously is the greatest

basketball player to ever live. But Michael Jordan was actually cut from his high school basketball team. So what does that mean? It means that he was not born talented at basketball. It means that he sucked at basketball when he was in high school. But what he did was he worked harder than everybody else. He showed up to every single practice from then out an hour before everybody and stayed an hour later. And it became an obsession to him. Kobe Bryant's the exact same way. There's stories about when he was in the Olympics and the rest of the Olympic players, the best players in the world would come in at eight o'clock for practice. And Kobe Bryant would already be sweating because he had already put three hours into it. He would wake up at five o'clock and start working as hard as he possibly could because he wanted to be the best. So the only reason why you get really good at something is because you put the hard work into

it. So if you're somebody who wants to be world-class at something, know that you're going to have to put 10,000 hours into it. If you're somebody who wants to improve and get better at it, know that you're going to have to work hard at it and you're going to have to put a lot of time and you're going to have to put the deliberate practice. And once again, deliberate practice is the practice that pushes you outside of your comfort zone so that you're constantly growing and you're constantly getting better. It's the exact same thing as if you go and work out. If you go and work out and you keep lifting 20 pounds every single time that you work out, your muscles are not going to grow.

You have to physically lift more than you can to force your muscles to grow. It's the exact same thing. You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone for weight training. You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone for learning and trying to get better at something. And once again, talent is something that just takes away from hard work that the person put into it. It's a word that's made up that takes away from all of the hard work they put into their craft. The best part about the 10,000 hour rule is it means this. It means that we as humans can become whatever we want. And some people say something

like, oh, well, what about Mozart? Mozart's father, just so you know, was a famous composer. Mozart's father hired an expert teacher to live with them and teach him at a very young age. And when his father quit composing his own stuff, that also happened to be the exact same time that Mozart started composing his own stuff. And it's also thought to think that Mozart's father helped him compose his first few things. But his first true solo composition was at the age of 21. So if you're saying, well, you know, he was this musical prodigy. He was just born talented. It wasn't born talented. His father literally, literally, and I'm using this word correctly, not just like some girl, school girl walking down the street, literally wrote the book on how to teach music to children.

He wrote that book. Go figure. Of course, this son's going to be really good at music. So his first true solo composition was at the age of 21, which means that he had been practicing deliberately for 18 years. He was well over 10,000 hours. So you can't say that he was just talented. and was a self-proclaimed golf addict. And when he gave Tiger his first set of metal clubs, he gave him his first set of metal clubs,

not the cheap plastic clubs, at seven months old before he could even walk. And before Tiger was two years old, he was already golfing and practicing regularly with his father. And then he won his first major win at the age of 17, which means that he had been putting 15 years of deliberate practice and coaching from his father. That's well over 10,000 hours. So there's so many examples of this.

So many examples of people. Ed Sheeran, you've heard me talk about him many times. I listened to him play a recording of when he was 16 years old and it was the first song he wrote. He was terrible. I mean, his music, his voice was absolutely horrible. And you listen to him now and you're like, man, he's just so talented. He's got a beautiful voice. I wish I had that voice. Well, you can actually learn how to sing. I can personally say that because I've been taking vocal lessons for about four years now. So the thing about that is you have to realize that he wasn't born talented. He wasn't born a great singer. These are all things that he learned he put 10,000 hours into. He would play over 300 shows every single year, which means that he was putting his time in. So there's so many examples of this. Michael Jordan, like I said, Kobe Bryant,

like I said, people who are the absolute best. Will Smith would, just so you know, Will Smith was obviously a rapper that turned into an actor when he went on to the Fresh Prince. Will Smith was so obsessed with trying to get better and trying to improve and putting 10,000 hours into acting that he would not only memorize his lines on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he memorized every single person's line to make sure that he didn't mess up. And at the first year of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you can actually see him mouthing some of the words for other people as they're actually saying it. So this is an

obsession. If you want to become world-class at something, you really can. You just have to put a lot of time into it. If you don't want to be world-class, but you want to improve, it means that you really can improve at anything that you want to, but you have to put the hard work into it. So the question is, do you have something that you love so bad that you're willing to put 10,000 hours of hard work and deliberate practice into it? And if you don't, could you find something that you love so much you could put 10,000 hours into, become world-class at? And if you're world-class at anything, you're going to make a lot of money doing it. If you don't want to become world-class, do you have something right now that you need to improve at, that you could improve at?

Like I said at the beginning, if you make $50,000 a year and you want to make $100,000 a year, what skills do you need to develop to be the type of person who is worth $100,000 a year to an employer? That's the question you need to ask yourself. If you're self-employed, what skills do you need to develop to get your income higher? If you're anything and you want to improve at anything, we all know it's hard work, but the problem is this. Most people don't want to put in the hard work. They don't want to take the time and put it into it. Let the problem is this. Most people don't want to put in the hard work. They don't want to take the time and put it into it. Let me ask you this. Please, please, for my sake, for your sake, find something that you could be good at. Put a lot of time into it and try to

become good at something and try to improve yourself every single day. Because we all know that you don't want to get to the end of your life and be like, well, damn, I wish I would have worked harder at this. Damn, I wish I would have gotten better at playing the violin. I wish I would have become a better painter and put more time into it. Find some hobbies to improve at, to get better at. Find anything at all. So the question once again, do you have something that you love so bad that you're willing to put in 10,000 hours? And if you don't, could you find something? And if you don't want to become world-class at it, what do you need to improve at right now? Right now to make sure that you get a raise or get on the track that you want to be or retire early or whatever it might be. What can you do today to

make steps to improve and put hard work into something to become better at it? And with that, I'll leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission today to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com.

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