​How many times have you heard someone say – “I am learning by doing?” I know I have heard and said such phrase many times, and I continue to say that to this day. It’s one thing to sit in a classroom setting participating in training or conference, learning about a process, new product, or functionality, where all you are left with is a lot of information that’s stored in your memory bank for a period of time. However, it’s completely different when you are given an opportunity to actually participate in the new process flow yourself, seeing how it works, applying hand on approach, or explore a new product or functionality where you have an opportunity to experience it first hand and see how it works in the real life vs. what you may be hearing from someone else.

I certainly learn best by doing. Now, I do believe that it is very important to first have a base knowledge about a new process, procedure, requirement, or new product, before engaging in the hands-on experience. However, that could be where you read about it at your own pace and apply what you’ve learned in practice. In my opinion, we should not be expecting for someone to be perfect or expect perfection right off the bet. Everyone should be given an opportunity to learn, practice, improve, and repeat, until the level of expected proficiency is reached by an individual. Does this work like this in the real life? Of course, not. Often, we may be expected to be subject matter experts in the particular filed or process or know everything about how a particular new product or system works, simply by observing someone else using it. But what happens then? When, we are finally given an opportunity to interact with a particular process, system, or product, we are trying to recall in our head what we are supposed to do based on presentation that we’ve observed some time ago. This often results in delays, the need for research, asking follow up questions, and less than expected level of quality of work or performance that’s being delivered in the meantime, which almost always leads to a loss of revenue and/or deterioration of customer/client experience. So, why not create an environment  where everyone involved have an opportunity to learn first, practice using hands-on approach second, and after becoming a true subject matter expert through continuous training and feedback implementation, be held accountable on delivering against set suite of deliverables and expectations in the real word?

Using such approach to learning something new, including starting a new job or new role, introducing a new process or procedure within an existing business, would help in developing high performing employees and team, who will then create high performing business organizations.

​We all have such an enormous amount of strength within us that we can always reach in and use it when necessary amount of additional strength is required to accomplish something that we hope to achieve or reach. This could be us trying to reach a goal of ours, or for us needing to complete a particular task or objective at work. However, I believe, that many of us often forget how much inner strength that we actually have. We tend to forget that we are capable of accomplishing virtually anything, as long as we believe in our own abilities and our own strengths and use them when needed.

Instead, we often choose to create excuses or build our own obstacles, trying to convince ourselves and others why we believe we cannot do something or cannot achieve a particular want, need, or dream of ours. We create our own roadblocks along the way vs. just do what we say we are going to do, no matter what. Sure, we do not have some superpowers to get things done in the instant, however, we all have inner desire to succeed and be happy with what we accomplish, while reaching or getting close to reaching our goals and dreams. It may certainly take a while for us to get there, but we can, if we simply believe in ourselves and our own powerful inner strength.

We are capable of overcoming obstacles on our path and find solutions to various problems that we often face, but only if we truly believe that in our own hear and in mind. People do not become champions of their craft by listening to their own self-limiting beliefs or listening to limiting beliefs of others. Champions believe in themselves first and foremost, they know that it will be very difficult to reach that top spot on the podium and win, but instead of creating excuses, they push themselves harder each day, working towards their goals until objective set has been reached. We all can be champions if we believe that we can, and we are capable of achieving amazing things in life through hard work, persistence, determination, inner drive, and strength of the champion, that’s always been part of who we are from the very first day we were born. So, let’s go out there and show the world our true inner strength, and become champions not just within us but also show what we are capable of achieving to the entire world. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

​Let me know if you had found this article useful for you or someone else that you may know. If so, please feel free to share this post if you know someone who may benefit from reading it same way you did