First blog post! So a friend recently sent me the following article about a couple who sold it all, bought a boat, and followed their dream.
Their dream hit a major roadblock on day 2 when they sunk their boat!
This is a dream of ours (I’ll cover this in the future), so it got me thinking about experience and risk. There is risk in everything we do. So how do you balance risk of an activity with the joy it brings? I reflected back on my life to see if I could think of an activity where I was once perceived as a greater risk than I am today.
What I came up with was driving.
When I wanted to drive, I didn’t just get behind the wheel and go. I had to go through a process. So what was that process? How did I go from being a risky driver, to become a not so risky driver? I listed all the steps that I went through: Drivers education, driving permits, time practicing behind the wheel, drivers test, proficiency test, and finally a license. Then I continued to think, where else did I learn and build skill and proficiency driving? I added Near misses and fender benders to the list.
At the end of this I realized that experience is a long and tedious process.
It exist to ensure that we are capable at performing at a safe level, but by no means makes you “proficient” and by no means mitigates all the risk. One can have a lot of experience and still not be good at something. Proficiency means you’re good at it, practiced, and developed the skill. At the end of the day
Proficiency means you’ve learned.
So back to sailing. Starting with a dream where the risks are real, it’s critical that I develop my own experience to one day become proficient. I summarized this is a list of actions which can be applied to any dream or skill you want to develop.
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Become a life-long learner
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Find mentors
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Build your skills
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Learn from your mistakes
I think with #4 you can also learn from others mistakes. I’ve definitely learned many lessons from the mistakes of this couple. I definitely wish them the best and am happy they are alive and well. I hope they reflect on their tragedy and build the required experience and proficiency in the future.Thanks for reading my first blog. My list is by no means exhaustive,
What are other things I should consider or add to my list to build experience and proficiency?
Add your comments below.