You spend a lifetime studying, training, attending lectures, learning, reading, practicing, working, going to conferences, hiring coaches and mentors, and it is not until you make the mistake that you understand the big picture of what you can do. The failure is where true expertise is born.
Experts have experience in their area of focus, but they also know where things go wrong, because they have experienced the failures as well as the successes.
The challenge for so many business owners is to figure out how they can call themselves an expert. I have had so many people say to me, “well I don’t want to sound arrogant” or “I don’t like to talk about myself” or other statements that show they are afraid to admit to their expertise. There are likely one of two reasons for this: 1. They don’t think they have learned enough to be an expert or 2. They don’t feel they have the right to name themselves an expert. It may also be because they know people that are not experts that have given themselves this title and they don’t want to be lumped in with “that type of person”.
The problem is, if you don’t believe you are an expert, no one else will. So to get you started on believing you are the expert at what you do I want you to make a list of your failures. When have you failed and what did you learn from it?
| Failure | What I learned |
|---|---|
Learning is important.
Doing the work is important.
But like the potter who molds the clay into pots and bowls on his pottery wheel, it is the empty space inside the vessel that makes it useful.
You mold your life with all your experiences, but it is your failures that makes your expertise useful to others.
Leave a Reply