The Key To Success: Cross-Train!

There is no single way to achieve success in life and there is no "right" or "wrong" path.

Some people seem to be able to achieve all of their goals in an effortless way while others work hard for many years to get there.

There are many books, videos, seminars, courses and other different forms of advice available on subjects of personal development and on specific skills, but which ones should you go on? Should you even bother or can you achieve all of your goals without looking to others for help?

Well, there are people through the ages who have been massively successful without going on any courses. They worked it out themselves - and you could too.

Accelerate the learning process

However, the great benefit of learning from others is that it accelerates the learning process. It is one of the primary reasons for the human species: the ability to pass on knowledge from one generation to another; the ability for us to learn from others to build our capabilities and to avoid repeating mistakes.

I personally am constantly reading and learning. Every experience in my life - no matter how mundane - is an opportunity to enjoy life and to learn something. Even if the learning is simply building on something you already know, it is still all experience.

Multiple "right" answers

There are many people claiming to have "the answer". A lot of these "answers" are quite different approaches to the same thing; many more are re-packaged or re-worded versions of the same approach, with a slightly different spin.

In my experience, many of these "answers" can have some truth in them and can provide some extra insight that will help you.

The most important thing is to evaluate techniques and use your own intelligence in deciding what you are going to take away from them. How does what these techniques provide build on your own view on the world? What additional value does it bring, how will it help you do something better or avoid doing something that is not as constructive as it could be?

At the same time, everything must be taken with a pinch of salt. Many of the people selling these thoughts are very good marketers and will try to convince you that their way is the only way and the right way. Buy their products and you will achieve ultimate enlightenment and a long and happy fulfilled life!

Take the best bits but don't be brainwashed by this way of thinking. We as human being create models to help us better understand the world and to be able to deal with things, but they are only models: only approximations for us to understand and do things that would be beyond our capabilities without these simplifications.

Why cross-training is so important

We all learn in very different ways and getting lots of different perspectives is a very constructive thing to do as it exposes us to alternative ways of understanding things that may be more in tune with our learning style. It can also "fill the gaps" in the jigsaw of our understanding such that we are able to achieve an even greater insight than even the people who are providing the advice.

If we just look at one way of doing something, we will never be able to achieve this insight.

When I talk about cross-training, I'm not just talking about personal development/self help approaches. I'm talking about everything: relationships, work, technologies, hobbies; academic and practical; subjective and objective.

At work, I often make use of skills that I have picked up from widely different areas of study and experience. It is the fact that I apply this range of skills and continuously build my skills that makes me so effective. Specialism and depth of knowledge is extremely useful, but without the ability to apply it using the range of other skills that we have at our disposal our expertise would remain a blunt instrument.

In the world of personal development, there are loads of different theories and approaches and it really is worth considering a variety of them - even things that may seem dubious to you at first: it was actually a very "fluffy", almost "spiritual" book that I read that had the most profound and constructive impact on me, even though I don't believe all of its pseudo-science, many of the techniques and ideas suddenly made a lot of what I had read in the past fall in to place, and by putting them into effect I have experienced a radical change.

So - cross train and become as rounded an individual as you can be. It really could make the difference in terms of both the amount of success that you experience and in the speed at which you experience it!