Are You Willing To Commit 10,000 Hours?

What would you be willing to sacrifice in order to master the skills that are important to you? Would you be willing to sacrifice your ego? Would you be willing to sacrifice your spare time? Would you be willing to truly invest time and energy into your desires and commit 10,000 hours to become a master at a given skill?

Achieving all that you want in life is never going to be easy. In fact, there are some who would go as far as to say that achieving all that you want is an impossible expectation to have. These are also the same individuals who will never actually put forth the effort to achieve the things that matter to them. It’s not because the reality is impossible to achieve, though, but rather because they give up on themselves as soon as they experience any obstacle that stands in their way.

If this sounds like you, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you will never become successful and you will never actually master any skill if you are willing to give up at the first bit of difficulty that you encounter.

The few that do achieve all that they desire, do so because of their relentlessness to never give up despite the obstacles that they encounter. They realize that everything that they want to get out of life is already out there and all they need to do is to commit 10,000 hours that it takes on average to get there.

How Much Time Is 10,000 Hours

Before you say that you are going to commit 10,000 hours to master a certain skill, it’s important to realize what you are getting yourself into so that you can fully commit to the process. Let’s face it, 10,000 hours of anything is just that – a process.

I have often wondered how close I am to achieving the success that I envision for myself and wonder what more I need to do in order to achieve that success. If I am being completely honest, though, I have only been actively chasing my goals for just over a year now.

Let’s say that hypothetically, I was pursuing my goals for 24 hours straight for 365 consecutive days. Not only is this physically impossible, but I would still only be at a total of 8,760 hours. That’s right, 24 hours for 365 consecutive days, and I would still be more than 1,200 hours short of what is said to be the average time required to reach any level of mastery.

What if you only worked eight hours per day? How long would it take you to master a certain skill set if you were to treat it like your full-time job? Well, to get to 10,000 hours while working eight hours per day, you would need to work 1,250 straight days. Another way to put it, you would need to work every single day for just shy of three and a half years to master a certain skill.

Let’s be a little more realistic, though, and assume that you have a full-time job, a family, and can maybe squeeze in an extra four hours per day to focus on a certain task. There isn’t anything wrong with this as this is the route that most take, but just know that it is going to be a long ride that is going to last nearly seven years.

This isn’t meant to discourage anyone, but rather, to help you to open your eyes. You can achieve anything that you wish to achieve, but you better be willing to work for it. Remember that 10,000 is the average time that it takes to master a certain skill set. Maybe it takes less time, maybe it takes more, but unless you are willing to act, you will never know.

Let Go Of Your Ego

Mastery doesn’t mean that you simply put in the 10,000 hours of work and expect everything to become a reality. Mastery means that you let go of your ego, try to come up with new answers in ways to which you have not yet thought of, and constantly try to challenge yourself as much as you possibly can. There is always room to grow and always room to learn. Somebody who seeks the ultimate success realizes this and allows nothing to stop them short of becoming the very best that they can be.

I know that it’s hard to believe, but we don’t have all the right answers. If we did, well, then we would be a lot further along in life than we are now. That is why we need to continue learning and never allow ourselves to settle for what we already know.

Take A Moment To Reflect

Part of me is feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work that I have left to do if I want to become successful. On the other hand, though, I am also excited. I know that the goals I am currently pursuing are what I am meant to be doing, and I am fully committed to achieving these goals. So however long it takes, I know that I am all in.

Take a moment to reflect on your life as well. Ask yourself if you are willing to dedicate 10,000 hours of your life to master the skills in which you desire. If not, then you are already determining your own reality. But if you are, you know what you need to do. All that’s left is actually doing it. The longer you wait, the longer of a process it will be. Take action on the things that you desire to achieve, and paint your reality how you want it to be.

Michael Bonnell

6/19/2019

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