Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 605 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! It’s good to be with you. I’m excited for this episode because it’s one of those that in my opinion if you apply it in your, it shows you how to get out ahead of things and how to stay ready rather than always playing catchup and also may answer a question you have of why lucky things happen to other people and not you. Sometimes it’s about luck, but most of the time it’s much more than that.
So I’ve talked about the online architectural drawing course I’ve been doing. I love love love it. Well there is a section in the course that is hand drafting. This is where you have lots of detail, lots of tiny lines, lots of numbers and measuring and remeasuring, lets just say a lot of detail and that hasn’t been my strong suit. I love big picture stuff. So when I got to that section I found myself talking myself out of doing it, saying to myself “I learned that in College, I know how to do it already, even though it’s been years and I would not have felt comfortable doing it for a project at the time, I still tried to talk myself out of it. But then I told myself that doing the hard stuff, doing the stuff nobody else wants to do, being prepared before you even need it, makes it possible to say yes when that project comes up. I actually said to myself, I will do this and then a project will pop up where I have to use it.
So I did it and it was surprisingly fun and yeah, I remembered a lot of what we were doing but it also showed me I can do it and it helps tremendously to be able to get that intimate with a project, you know every inch of it. That’s a beautiful thing in design. And I kid you not, a week later, a contractor called me for a kitchen renovation where they needed visualization and had no idea where to go but wanted to see it drawn and sketched. Exactly what I have been practicing in this course for the last few months. I excitedly said “absolutely” knowing I had the tools to nail it. I went in confident, took the measurements, and popped out two different layouts for them to choose from, both which were drawn so they could visually see what the finished product would look and feel like. It made the contractor look good, we got the entire project and the cabinets were recently installed and look amazing. I’m telling you this because had I not done the drafting part of the course, I would have still met with the client but I wouldn’t have been as confident, I would have been hesitant to offer drawings, knowing I was stale at it. But instead I nailed it. Because I prepared and learned the skill before I even needed it. Some might call it the law of attraction, which I tend to believe in others might call it “preparation meets timing”. Whatever you call it, when you learn a new skill that you’ve been dying to learn, or take a course you’ve been dying to take, maybe just read a book that you know advances your skill in a certain area, you are telling your brain “Hey this matters A Lot”. Your brain has a built in filter called RAS which is reticular activating system. It’s your personal radar for what matters to you. N When you practice something, even when it’s annoying, you mark it as important. And suddenly your brain starts flagging opportunities that match.
Think about it this way, have you ever decided you want to buy a red car and all of a sudden you see red cars everywhere, but then you decide I want a red range rover, you’re gonna start seeing red range rovers everywhere and you think that’s weird I never realized there were so many of those, I never really saw them like that before. They were always there, they just never came into your radar so to speak and now they do because you’ve decided that’s important to you, so you’re seeing them everywhere.
You see the contractor didn’t call me out of the blue, he called me because I’d just proven I could deliver what his client needed. Opportunity match. And together we nailed it because I was prepared in advance knowing the opportunity would show up. I was developing skills before I needed them so that when I did need them, I met the moment.
I like to think about it like a tree. Trees don’t sit around wishing for deep roots. It grows them in the dark, in the dirt, season after season, when no one’s watching. Then the storm hits and the tree that invested in roots stands tall while others snap. Your boring skills….those are those roots. Hand drafting, Learning contracts, nailing interview prep. Grow those roots quietly. The storm will show up and when it does, you’ll be ready.
That’s why those who study, who live and breath their craft, seem like the lucky ones, when in reality they’re attracting and matching to opportunities because they’re ready.
Success isn’t mystical. It’s readiness + reputation + timing. You control two of those things. The Hollywood line of “Build it and they will come”. There’s something to it but it’s not about blind faith. It’s about building the skill before anyone needs it from you. The client, the contract, the life you want, they don’t show up until the roots are there.
So what do you do? Well you could pick one skill that your intrigued with but have been dodging….mine was hand drafting yours might be pricing or systems or learning to sell without apologizing, I don’t know….pick one and give it 3 hours this week. It doesn’t have to be 30 hours, just three and tell one person you’re doing it, say it out loud, maybe post about it, whatever you’re comfortable with.
That’s my challenge to you today. Pick one thing you’ve been quietly wanting to learn and learn it. The worst that can happen is you’ve added to your talent stack, you’ve made yourself better, that’s the worst . I’ll take that. But my guess is the action and the activities you put into play by taking up that skill will snowball into a whole new opportunity match, the one that’s right for you. The one that leads to your version of a wildly successful life on your terms. And I love that for you. Share this with three people who have big dreams. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
