4 Skills That Are Hard To Adopt But Pays Off

Speaking up
One of the things you would want to be sure to do is whether you like it or not, get very comfortable, it make take awhile, with public speaking for example.

I mean, that’s an asset that will last you 50 or 60 years and it’s a liability if you don’t like doing it or are uncomfortable doing it that will also last you 50 or 60 years and it’s a necessary skill.

Being Honest With Yourself.
One of the big things that all startups do is they lie to themselves, over and over and over. Mine’s faster, mine’s cheaper, mine’s better, mine’s this, mine’s that.

No it’s not and the reason it’s not is because whoever it is you’re competing with, it’s not like they’re ignoring you. It’s not like, oh my goodness, this guy just started on Shopify in the startup competition and he’s doing a million dollars this year, woe is me, I might as well close up the doors.

What are they doing? I’m going to copy what they’re doing and now you’ve got to stay ahead and so, you know, you’ve got to be very careful as a entrepreneur to be brutally honest with yourself and those are some of the things that you’ll hear from me as a mentor. That know what you know, know what you don’t know, but you got to know your business better than anybody.

Having Confidence.
I don’t know if you’d agree with me on this, but in many ways, one of the key factors to legendary success isn’t your natural ability.

It’s not whether you have the right product, it’s not whether you’re in the right field, it’s not whether you’ve had a blessed background. It’s not whether you have the right IQ.

I want you to really think about and deconstruct and play with maybe later tonight win your journal.

I want you to deconstruct this idea of confidence and it seems like a very simple work but just think about it in your own life.

When you have confidence or we could even call it fire, when you have that fire within you, that confidence, that interior bravery, you almost have this power to do whatever it takes to get your brave vision done.

You see, in this world, it’s not about, in many ways, your strategy and your business or your ability in your life, it’s about this thing called confidence and we’ve all had these times in our lives when we are full of confidence and what other people see as a problem, we simply do see as an opportunity.

Other people see it as a stumbling block or a wall and we see it as a stepping stone or this solution. So confidence is simply something that you really want to wire in.

Confidence is something you really want to develop, confidence is a practice, confidence is a muscle and like any muscle, the more you focus on it and practice it and train it, the stronger your confidence is going to grow and I just have to say it again.

When you are at a place in your life, when there is ongoing, steady stream of confidence moving through your mindset, moving though your heartset, you do the heroic in your business and you achieve the remarkable in your life.

Listening
Nelson Mandela is a particularly special case study in the leadership world because he is universally regarded as a great leader.

You can take other personalities and depending on the nation you go to, we have different opinions about other personalities but Nelson Mandela , across the world, is universally regarded as a great leader.

He was actually the son of a tribal chief and he was asked one day, how did you learn to be a great leader?

And he responded that he would go with his father to tribal meetings and he remembers two things when his father would meet with other elders.

One, they would always sit in a circle and two, his father was always the last to speak.

You will be told your whole life that you need to learn to listen. I would say that you need to learn to be the last to speak. I see it in board rooms every day of the week.

Even people who consider themselves good leaders who may actually be decent leaders will walk into a room and say, here’s the problem, here’s what I think, but I’m interested in your opinion, let’s go around the room. It’s too late.

The skill to hold your opinions to yourself until everyone has spoken does two things.

One, it gives everybody else the feeling that they have been heard. It gives everyone else the ability to feel that they have contributed.

And two, you get the benefit of hearing what everybody else has to think before you render your opinion. The skill is really to keep your opinions to yourself.

If you agree with somebody, don’t nod yes. If you disagree with somebody, don’t nod no.

Simply sit there, take it all in, and the only thing you’re allowed to do is ask questions so that you can understand what they mean and why they have the opinion that they have, you must understand from where they are speaking, why they have the opinion they have, not just what they are saying and at the end, you will get your turn. It sounds easy, it’s not. Practice being the last to speak. That’s what Nelson Mandela did.