How to Become the Person You Want to Become

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Whether it’s a new dribble skill you just learned at the court or a work skill you’ve had for a while (and are quite good at), you can improve them by implementing this one thing. In fact, you don’t have to limit it to a “skill” set. It could be a mindset you recently read about in a book and now you want to become the person with that attitude. And you can indeed permanently adapt to your desired mental habit by doing this one thing.

That one remarkable thing, which will change your life, is deliberate practice.

Educators and coaches everywhere have been using deliberate practice to teach musical proteges, train world-class athletes, and grow the talents and potentials of their pupils. But the beauty of deliberate practice is its endless applicability. You can use it to improve almost every kind of mental and physical activities. That is, deliberate practice makes it possible for you to cultivate a desired personality trait and become the person you want to be.

For example, you are not just born a patient person, you can develop patience through deliberate practice. You can become more compassionate. You can become more peaceful. You can become the person you’ve always wanted.

What is deliberate practice?

According to Peak by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, deliberate practice is focused, goal-oriented, and clearly planned. You need to track your progress with a coach or a teacher in a timely manner. If you don’t have a coach or a teacher, you should have a way to check and evaluate your growth and receive prompt feedback. And, most importantly, deliberate practice requires you to get out of your comfort zone and push yourself just right. James Clear calls this the Goldilocks Rule, “A challenge of just manageable difficulty.”

Criteria of Deliberate Practice:

Have a clear goal.

Have a clear plan.

Get a coach who can give you timely feedback. Or have a self-feedback system.

Push yourself just right.

1. Have a Clear Goal.

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• What is the goal you want to accomplish?
• What is the skill you want to improve on?
• What is the personality trait that you want to cultivate?
• What does it look like to have that skill or that personal characteristic?

The more specific you get, the better it is. You need to clarify what win looks like.

Don’t just say, I want to be able to play the piano or I want to be more self-controlled. Say, “I want to play this song without a mistake by the end of this month.” Say, “I want to stay calm when I feel nervous before doing public speech.” Have a clear goal in mind.

2. Have a Clear Plan.

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Now that you know where you want to go, you need a clear plan to get there. The key in this planning phase is coming up with a step-by-step process.

After finding out where you are, what steps do you need to take in order to get to where you want to be?

You don’t have to have the perfect plan. There is no one right way to get to your destination. There are many viable ways and you just need to come up with a plan. You can ask your coach for one. You can find a role model who has already accomplished the goal you want to achieve and follow his or her footsteps. It’s inevitable that your plan will change along the way. But you need a plan, nonetheless, to take a leap toward your goal.

Another point you need to remember about planning is that your plan needs to be as small and specific as possible.

For example,

• If your goal is to master a series of chords on the guitar, start with one chord at a time.
• If you want to stay relaxed before giving a public speech, start with doing a one-minute meditation or breathing exercise.
• If you want to forgive yourself for making a certain mistake in the past, start with making one positive affirmation statement about yourself.

3. Get a Coach.

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A coach provides the feedback you need to make sure you are moving toward the goal. Your practice won’t be effective without this kind of feedback. Also, you need to apply the coach’s feedback into your practice right away.

Be conscientious and attentive to the coach’s direction. Trust your coach and stick to his or her coaching meticulously if you want to improve.

In case you don’t have a coach, get one. But if that’s not possible, you can coach yourself by being self-aware of how you practice. This is not as easy as it sounds. We are often blinded by our own preconceived notion of self. It’s hard to self-evaluate how we do things correctly and give helpful feedback to ourselves. However, there is a way to come up with your own self-feedback system that can be helpful.

For example,

• If it’s playing an instrument that you want to get better at, you can record yourself playing and listen for self-feedback.
• If it’s a sport, you can record how you execute the move you want to improve and review the video to find out what you need to work on.
• If you want to improve your writing, you can post your articles online and see how people respond and react to your work.
• If it’s about changing your personality, you can use journaling to review how you “performed” in accordance with the new personality trait you wish to nurture.

4. Push Yourself Just Right.

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Never forget to push yourself to the limit if you want to get better at whatever you do. A simple repetition of going through the motions or going though a routine will not make you better at the skill you want to grow. When you feel like the practice is easy, you are not pushing yourself enough. However, if you push yourself too much, that won’t help you either. In fact, you will get hurt from practicing too rigorously.

You need to find the right level of difficulty in order to get to the next level.

• When you feel like you can’t lift any more, just do one more rep.
• When you feel like you really don’t want to volunteer to speak in front of the class that day, just do it one more time.
• When you feel like you can’t get up at 4:50AM today and just want to push the snooze button, just roll out of your bed one more time.

Magic happens when you push yourself to do that one rep after you reach your limit.

Not everyone wants to put in the necessary work to get better or make improvements. But few people have a clear goal to become extraordinary. They set up a clear plan to become extraordinary. They follow through their plan, make adjustments according to the feedback they receive from a coach or a self-feedback system. And they keep pushing their limits until they break them and achieve excellence.