You have some skills, admit it. You may be able to sing better than most people or you may be able to do tricks with a fidget spinner that other people can’t. Or, maybe you are really good at writing, comedy, drawing, helping other people, cleaning, cooking, gardening, or reading. A skill is defined as the ability to do something well. Having skills is a good thing for many reasons, but many of us don’t try to improve our skills because that takes effort and practice; instead, we just stay content with how good we are at certain things and leave it at that. I want to challenge you to improve your current skills and become even more skilled than you are now. Why?
5 Reasons To Improve Your Current Skills
1. It Can Improve Your Income
The more you sharpen your skills, the more income you can make. This doesn’t mean that you will get a raise if you work for someone or a company that doesn’t give you raises (it could, but it’s not guaranteed), but it does mean you can use your skills to teach other people and earn an income off that. You can start blogging or vlogging, or you could teach a group of friends in your home.
For instance, a friend of mine is a great artist. She is an amazing drawer and she can paint, but she lacked confidence in her painting. She worked on developing her painting skills and soon she felt confident enough to host a class in her home with her friends and charge them to come! Now she’s earning extra income from her in-home classes.
How could you earn money from your skills?
- You could write an eBook.
- You could teach people in person for a charge.
- You could videotape yourself and make revenue through YouTube. I find all the best vloggers have a skill that is the central focus of their channel (doing makeup, cleaning, being a good father, and so much more), and it’s surprising how many people are looking to them to develop their own skills.
- You could blog and earn money from monetizing or recommending products as an affiliate.
- You could create stuff and sell it online or at your local farmer’s market.
There are so many ways to earn income from your skills nowadays.
2. It Can Make You More Productive
- If your skill is reading, wouldn’t you want to learn how to read faster and comprehend more? That way you could read more in less time and enjoy many more books that you would have enjoyed before.
- If your skill is scrapbooking, don’t you want to use your time more wisely so you can put together amazing spreads in a smaller amount of time?
- If your skill is math, don’t you want to improve your math skills so you can figure out equations quicker?
The more skilled you are, the faster you will be at accomplishing things related to that skill. You will also be able to think outside of the box and be more creative.
For instance, my grandfather knew everything there was to know about gold mining. He spent years developing his skills out in the gold mines. But, he wanted to make it even easier on himself. So, when he was home, he created a machine that would separate the gold from the rocks and other stuff. It increased his productivity and his yield!
For me, when I went vegan, I became decent at making vegan cheese. But, once I decided to improve my skill of making vegan cheese, I became a superstar at it. I can make cheese quickly now because I know exactly what I’m doing and never have to second guess myself.
3. Want To Be A Genius?
A genius can be someone who is extremely intelligent or a person who is exceptionally awesome in a particular area of life. Geniuses are the best of the best. You can be a genius in dating, physics, music, chess, teaching, or anything else.
To be the best, everyone has to work on their skills, even if those skills are natural. If they don’t, someone with less skill can surpass them in talent and be considered more of a genius in their field than the other person. All they need to do is work twice as hard to develop their skills and rise to the top.
In other words, if you take on a challenge to improve your current skills, and you are serious about it, you could be seen as a genius. From the above example, I definitely considered my grandfather a genius in many areas of life, not just gold mining. He was always working on improving his skills and becoming better.
4. Boost Your Self-Confidence
Being really good at something is a huge confidence booster. It’s something you can turn to when you are feeling inadequate in another area of your life and remind yourself of just how adequate you are!
The more you improve your skill, the more of a sense of achievement you will feel. And that will transform into other areas of your life.
For instance, a friend of mine enjoyed energy medicine and she was good at it. But, when she took a course by a well-known energy medicine teacher, she improved her techniques in a big way. From there, she felt really good about herself and her level of skill in energy medicine. That self-confidence transferred into her work life and relationships at work, and she ended up getting a lot of praise from her boss for being so upbeat and positive. Eventually, she got a promotion with a big pay raise, and it all started because she boosted a skill that had nothing to do with her work.
When you feel personal satisfaction in one area of your life, it affects all the other areas of your life positively.
5. Develop And Boost Other Skills
When you start to improve a skill and feel more self-confident, you become more willing to improve other skills – despite how good or not good you are at them. And, because you know you are capable of improving your abilities, you stick with the learning and growing process.
I had an older friend who was always willing to try something new. She was skilled in baking, sewing, knitting, and so many other crafty things, but she had never played an instrument in her life. At the age of 74, after a lifetime of learning and improving in many areas of life, she started to learn the piano, and by the age of 75, she was skilled at playing it.
The great thing is that the more skills you develop, the more interesting you become both to yourself and to other people. You will never get bored with you around when you have a ton of skills!
Don’t Sweat The Hard Skills Or Soft Skills
You may know about hard and soft skills. A hard skill is something that you can measure, such as your computer programming ability. A soft skill is harder to measure, such as being a good communicator or having the ability to persuade people.
It doesn’t matter what type of skill you focus on for this challenge. It can be hard or soft – you just want to improve something that you are already pretty good at doing. That should be your focus. If the skill is a soft skill, you will be able to tell if your skill is improving or not without concrete measurements.
Then, once you developed your skill, you may want to create your own challenge where you develop a new skill that you may not have. For most people, a soft skill is a good idea to tackle because soft skills deal with emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and other things that are valuable when it comes to work, relationships, and everyday life.
But, for this challenge, just pick something you are currently good at and focus on improving that skill so you get into the habit of working on developing your skill each day.
Challenge: Improve Your Current Skills
Dedicate 30 days to this challenge. That means you will get 30 days of learning and growing in your skill. If you think you need more time, then go ahead and add more days. We all learn and improve at different rates, so there is no ‘right’ amount of time for this challenge. However, I would suggest dedicating yourself to improving your skills for at least 30 days. That will give you a chance to learn at least 30 new things.
So, what do you do now?
1. Admit You Don’t Know Everything
Even if you think you are the best at whatever you do, it’s time to admit that you could learn more. Once you get into that frame of mind, you will want to learn more and get busy with this challenge.
So, anytime you hear a voice in your head saying, “You know enough, just stop,” I want you to counteract it with an affirmation that says, “I can never know enough about this and I enjoy learning as much as I can.”
2. Find Your Mentors or Teachers
You can do this in two ways. For me, the first one would be easiest, but if you are the type of person who likes to get out of the house a lot, then the second one would probably be more for you. Obviously, it might be easier to develop certain skills offline or online.
Either way, you will want to make sure that you learn something new every single day about the skill you are developing. Your goal is to improve little by little each day so that by the end of the month, you have improved a lot!
a. Find An Online Resource (Or A Few) For The Month
You need to find some reputable sources online that will help you improve your current skills. Thankfully there are plenty of them out there.
You may find a course that you can do daily for the month or you may find a few popular blogs that publish tips and lessons in the area of your skill. You may also find a forum where you can ask questions and interact with other people to learn more about the skill you are developing.
b. Find An Offline Resources For The Month
By looking for someone to help you develop your skill offline, you will almost guarantee that you will be taking action on everything you do.
- You can go to workshops.
- You can find a mentor.
- You can volunteer somewhere in exchange for knowledge.
- You can attend a class.
- You can get together with people who are already experts in the area you want to develop.
3. Get Ready To Take Action On What You Learn
A skill will only be improved by taking action. It doesn’t matter what it is.
For example, if you want to improve your skill of meditating, you can’t just read about it. You need to actually practice what you learn and meditate! Or, if you want to improve your skill of playing the piano, sitting around thinking about what you learn won’t help you… you need to sit down and play.
Think about being a kid. To develop any skill, kids need to do something. That should be your motto going forward: Do something.
Depending on the skill you are developing, taking action could take a few minutes a day or a few hours a day. Make time in your day to do what you need to do. It’s important. It’s valuable. It deserves some of your time.
Extra Note For This Challenge
Normally we include a worksheet for our challenges, but because everyone will be so different, we didn’t have any worksheet ideas. If you can think of one, please suggest it in the comment below.
We do recommend, however, you keep track of what you do during this challenge. Grab a new journal dedicated to improving your skills, create a title page for the skill you are going to focus on in this challenge, and then keep track daily of what you learn, what you do, how you feel, how much you improve, and anything else you want.
