We have all heard of instant success stories. Whether it be an average householder who hits the multimillion dollar lottery jackpot, the super-food for quick weight loss, or a startup CEO that sells his company for billions of dollars, such claims are regularly in our face through the media. Unfortunately, reality is vastly different.
Success is always a process. Proficiency and mastery in any field comes from consistent, disciplined, and steady practice. Social researchers have concluded that the difference between expert performers and normal adults reflects a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.
Malcom Gladwell in his famous book, Outliers, popularised the widely used rule of thumb of about 10,000 hours of practice for excellence in any field of human endeavour. Hence, those who climb to great heights are the ones who voluntarily embrace the discomfort of practice, hard work, and continuous effort.
Let us take inspiration from the story of the legendary field hockey player, Dhyan Chand. He began practicing field hockey upon joining the Indian Army. He would put the ball on the railway track and run with it for miles. Fervently driven, he would go out to practice at night under the moon. The result was proficiency and mastery par excellence.
Dhyan Chand led India to win gold in the 1924 Olympics and became the highest scorer of the tournament in the 1936 Olympics. Subsequently, Dhyan Chand with three Olympic gold medals under his belt continued to play and in international hockey, he scored 440-plus goals in his life.
The secret of Dhyan Chand’s mastery was the immense practice he put into his craft. Science too corroborates this fact. The theory of Hebbian Learning explains that when the axon of one cell activates the firing of a second neuron repeatedly, organic changes take place that later make it easier for the first axon to fire the second neuron. Hence, practice grows those organic changes in the neural pathways making it easier to carry out any task. The takeaway then is that practice is the price for success; there is no shortcut.
Let us next discuss techniques to empower ourselves to keep going strong with our efforts to achieve our desired goals.
Practice Self-Control and Growing Your Willpower
Most problems, personal and social, centre around our lack of self-control. Underachievement at school, procrastination at work, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, rude behaviour, etc are all connected to poor self-control. On the other hand, the abundance of willpower enables us to practice discipline in life. It provides us with the strength to resist temptations, shun fleeting attractions, and accomplish brilliant results. An effective method to grow your willpower is through the practice of meditation. In meditation, we aim to focus the mind while avoiding distractions. This requires the exercise of self-control to prevent the mind from being lured by distractions. As we grow our willpower and repeatedly practice discipline, we will easily achieve our goals and attain mastery in every sphere of life.
Utilise Willpower to Form Productive Habits
We can use our willpower wisely to our advantage to form good habits. Initially, we need to expend a huge amount of willpower to break the gravitational pull of bad habits. But as momentum picks up, it becomes increasingly easier to adopt a beneficial habit. For example, when you repeatedly respond positively to a negative circumstance, you create a habit of thinking positively, thereby improving your outlook. The result of the mindset of positivity is that no matter what happens, your mind generates happy thoughts.In habit creation, consistency in practice is of paramount importance. If we skip the practice, it breaks the impact of repetition. And if skipping the practice happens a few times, the habit never gets formed. Hence, the creation of good habits requires dedication and hard work that comes from the attitude of discipline.
Harness the Power of Incremental Steps—The one percent Rule
Greatness and success are not stand-alone events, rather the sum-total of a journey that is covered in many little steps. A book of 300 pages begins with its first line and a masterpiece is initiated with its first brush stroke. Hence, many steps in succession create a giant leap!
The incremental improvements and hard work that we put in day after day, or year after year, forge a reliable path to prosperity. This is the “one percent rule.” You cannot go from sinner to saint in a day. Instead, if you keep progressing just a delta of one percent every day, then within a year, you will achieve a transformation of more than 350 percent.Hence, practice making good choices, one choice at a time. Every repetition will increase the velocity of your self-transformation.
Practice is What Counts Ultimately
Somebody said: “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” You may have a dozen good ideas but they are not worth a broken nickel until we put them into practice. Practice is ultimately what counts. When we hear good things, read illuminating wisdom, and watch inspiring content, we then should resolve to practice it and move towards success and mastery.
The author is a yogi, spiritual teacher, bhakti saint, an authority on mind management, and the founder of JKYog