“You get good at playing music, a sport, or any ability through correct practice. You go from not being able to do it at all to getting okay, then good, then better, then best. This process is one of mastery. Along the way there will be plateaus where it will seem your development has stalled. It hasn’t, but the pause button is pushed while you subconsciously integrate the learning and skills. It’s all part of it.

You can readily make the changes you want! You can learn anything and master it. You WILL have to apply yourself and KEEP with it until you get the changes you want AND you can do it! Simply take it bit by bit, step by step and you will surprise yourself. As you learn there’s a phase when you must talk yourself through it, just as you did when you learned to ride a bike or drive a car (any skill).

There are periods of time when we are klutzy. Sometimes we do well and other times not so well.  Ultimately, the process streamlines, and we become more competent riders or drivers or more talented acquiring any skill. This process whereby this happens is through correct, consistent, spaced repetition. Our subconscious eventually makes it a habit. It becomes a reliable and automatic skill.

Live Life On Your Terms: Create The Life You Want

Correctly repeat the desired behaviors consistently, for long enough and they wire in. Our brains lay down new neural pathways. We learn the behavior. Eventually we no longer must think or talk ourselves through it. We’ve acquired the skill. We go from bad to okay to good to better to best. You learn quickest and easiest if during the process you suspend judgement and criticism of your learning.

The same is true about getting over anxiety or eliminating any unwanted behavior. Whenever you discover yourself going into the unwanted behavior you STOP and break state or pattern interrupt, I previously discussed. It’s like moving through the gears in your transmission. To get from one gear to the next your transmission passes through neutral. Get this! From neutral you shift into the new gear.

You stop the old pattern, interrupt it and shift into neutral. From neutral you think, feel, say or do the new behavior you want instead. You shift away from the old into neutral and from neutral you shift into the new replacement behavior. It is not that but this. Not that unwanted behavior but this new positive behavior! You practice the new way. Notice the old. Stop it. Go to neutral. Practice the new.

Live Life On Your Terms: Create The Life You Want

As you practice it might not seem like magic, but as you stick with it, eventually it will work like magic because you develop the new skill set. You just must stick with it and get through the difficult or awkward phase. Learning to do this new thing is the same as learning to do anything else. Doing the new thinking and behaving repeatedly wires it in. You do it repeatedly.

Enough times over a time and you develop the skill as a habit. Since you have learned many things, you can learn this too. You can learn a new skill and get good at it or eliminate unwanted behavior and wire in something new in its place. YOU must replace the old behavior with a new one. Nature abhors a vacuum. So out with the old and in with the new.

The more fun, delight and enjoyment you bring to learning the faster, easier and better you get. You can practice anything and master it, if only you stick with it. The more you like something the easier it is to remain doing it. So make learning and having fun the priority. Find ways to enjoy it. When learning to juggle you’ll like it better when you realize dropping balls is part of the process. Eventually, you drop them less. Get it? More next time. Celebrate everything!” Rex Sikes