Read and then tell me what you think
Confused ideas, superficial interests, fear of making mistakes and going around in circles. These are the thoughts that crowd the mind of those who live the first phase of change.
It is a real labor: there is trepidation, there is anxiety. But most of all, there is a devastating sense of ineffectiveness that annihilates the spirit of initiative and reduces your mind to an unreasonable grub.
Still, there are things you have learned over the years, things you have been or are still a proud storyteller about. Simple things, like the preparation of an aphrodisiac dish or an unforgettable dinner, or even more sophisticated and technical things, like the repair of an electric gate or the athletic preparation of a football team, or even more scientific and delicate, like the cure of a conjunctivitis with natural remedies or the preparation of a university exam with a fast and effective method.
When I was a teenager and all I thought about was having fun on the moped, my friends often called me to talk to adults when needed. They said I was the most persuasive, that I could talk, and that I would have a better chance of convincing a stubborn parent or an angry janitor than the others in the party.
We made trouble, like all the boys, after all. But if there was a need to defend the group, at least to mitigate the consequences or reduce the punishment of the parents, I was the one in charge. Alas.
Now, I don't know if I became a communicator because I was a bit inclined to it, or if the role imposed by adolescent circumstances made me believe I had to follow this path, pushing me to take care of it with a different sensitivity and curiosity. Perhaps, I would never have considered the idea of talking to convince someone, if my friends, shrewd but also a little cowardly, hadn't taken a step back every time there was a need to "quibble". The fact is that communication has become my job.
You can't get rid of your talents, even when you think you don't have them. Because there are, although dormant, silent, ankylosed. If anything, neglected, set aside, still rough. But still you live somewhere inside of you.
I'm not saying that a good drawing hand is enough to make you an amazing cartoonist or a course author for aspiring designers. Just as your passion for engines and your ability to disassemble and reassemble every part of your car does not make you a Ferrari technician or an expert in automotive mechanics. But both with drawing and with mechanics - and for any other passion or talent you decided to close in a drawer many years ago - the secret is to brush up on interest and get back into the game with patience.
Don't think about the immediate gain you could make from your eventual commitment to what you love to do. Because the reasoning on earning is the same that puts you in a crisis in terms of self-esteem. You know that to sell your talent or skills you have to develop something worth buying. Your intellectual honesty leads you to measure the value of what you can offer on the market today. And here the answers are devastating. You realize you are not up to par with a salable product and your thoughts go haywire. And you think you don't have clear ideas.
The only consequence of this involutional reasoning is that in the end you decide to move on to something else. You begin to fall back on alternative solutions: you try to intercept something expendable in your experience, something that can be sold, without unleashing the discontent of your future customers. But all this happens because you think about the sale, the customers, and therefore the profit. If, on the other hand, you look at it from a different perspective, you realize that there is a lot of substance you can work on right away. That's how.
1st rule: hook the passion
The first rule is to hook what you are truly passionate about.
Recover your memories, the feelings of pleasure you felt while carrying out a certain activity (manual or thought, it doesn't matter).
Recover items and utensils that have brought you closer to that type of business in the past. If you loved fishing, retrieve your fishing rod and any other tools of the trade stored in the attic. If you loved playing the guitar, run to get it from the cellar. Put it back in circulation. Arrange the strings. Strum something. If you liked reading esoteric books, take out the chest in which you hid them. Find them. Get the chessboard back, if you loved the game of chess.
Without ever thinking about making money and selling, so as not to be a victim of performance anxiety, just focus on the content.
2nd rule: hone skills
The second rule, in fact, is to brush up on old skills, albeit elementary, and then treat them and refine them with a new cycle of studies and practice on the subject. No profit. Training only. Reinforcement training, in-depth training, specialist training.
You can't escape your talent, but you have to reinforce it with discipline. Talent and discipline together will make you a professional, a point of reference, a person to consult or to take as an example on the subject in question.
3rd rule: give in order to have
The third rule is about "giving", without expecting anything in return. Believe it or not, the universe shapes your future in relation to your ability to give help to those in need.
Remember that you are brushing up or broadening your skills on a certain topic. You are in the running-in phase. And everything you offer others in terms of know-how equates to an invigorating internship period.
Start talking about it. Make speeches to express yourself at your best. Let others know, without exaggerating, that your knowledge on that subject is not superficial.
People almost always speak by "hearsay" or with a very approximate level of knowledge of the subject. At the bar, in the gym, on the beach or at the station, wherever occasional lounges for conversation are created, the scientific depth of the dissertation is lacking. And it is also right that this is the case. Imagine how boring if in every place where people usually chat without obligation we had to put up with a symposium on the best systems.
The third rule doesn't want you to be the know-it-all who flaunts his knowledge in line at the supermarket checkout. The third rule simply wants your expertise to start to light up and then to shine just enough to make you a small point of reference.
You can become a researcher, a scholar, one who spends most of his time reading and developing specific skills on a given topic. In short, a sentence, a quote, a historical reference, small argumentative wits are enough to alert your interlocutors and raise the level of conversation, if necessary.
Without showing off. A step at a time. Exercise after exercise. And without ever thinking about earning. Leave people a little of you, of your knowledge. Offer useful information. Help others do something better in your field of interest.
Over time, you will discover that you have an important skill. You will understand this from the number of people who draw help from your information or from your example, but also from those who without asking for help make choices that are right or wrong turn out to be in accordance with your predictions or intuitions.
Without thinking about earning, dusting off old passions and applying yourself with commitment and dedication to deepening the topics or activities you love, you will find yourself in a year or two with such preparation and competence that people will think of you as a genius, and will be willing to pay you handsomely to get your advice, read your book or access your course. And it will do so even when the market should express one or more competitors, because at that point it will not be the new production of Tizio or Caio that will interest the buyers, but their specific experience. Not the product, but the way it is told.
Maybe it takes time if you're not ready yet. Especially if in all these years you have never believed in yourself. You could have cultivated your passions regardless of the work you do to make ends meet. You could have read, practiced, listened to those who before you have understood the right path of growth and are sharing its tricks and nuances.
If you did, so much the better. You are already ahead. You have expendable skills and you can start working on your change project right away. If, on the other hand, you have put everything aside, abandoning yourself to the system of scribblers and bureaucrats, of employees and factories, of competitions and resumes, and only now you are realizing that you have wasted a good part of your life, then take the necessary time to make up for your mistakes. Anyway, things don't change in the old system. They will get worse and worse. Factories and shops will continue to close. The unemployed will increase. The unemployed will increase even more, those who have never done a job, because they are completely unable to offer valuable collaborations to new generation companies.
Conversely, there will be a need for training. People will have to learn more to earn more, adapt quickly to make up for it quickly. They will have to explore new fields of human knowledge and read books and attend courses of those who, before them, have already gained specific experiences and knowledge that can be spent.
Many will arrive on their deathbed in indecision. They will be victims of their own fears, of their cowardice. And they will sometimes be pathetic and indecent, because they will exhale their last breath without honor, attributing blame to others. But some will cross the ford. They will know how to react with courage. They will understand that weirdness and unconsciousness are no longer negative connotations, but symbols of the revolution, of a biological revolution, before being philosophical and intellectual, because it is founded on the need for a life according to nature, that is, free.
Don't have reinforcement training, in-depth training, specialized training.
You can't escape your talent, but you have to reinforce it with discipline. Talent and discipline together will make you a professional, a point of reference, a person to consult or to take as an example on the subject in question.
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