Flipping the Switch

I’ve learned that mindset can be far more important than skill set when it comes to being an expert in your niche.
SL Taylor

Becoming an expert obviously takes skill. According to Malcolm Gladwell, he writes in his book Outliers, that researchers have determined the magic number is 10,000 hours of practice to develop true expertise in a subject or niche.

But as I learned the hard way if you wait for that magical 10,000 hours to have passed you’re not making very much forward headway. It certainly takes practicing your skill and educating yourself to become an expert.

But more than any of that, I believe it takes the right mindset. Let’s use the analogy of becoming a brain surgeon. It takes four years of college. Four years of medical school. One year of surgical residency. Then an additional five to seven years of neurosurgical residency.

Fourteen-sixteen total years of hard work and study. Then you must get your state medical license and “practice” your craft for several more years before you can become board certified. But, at some point along the way you go from “becoming” a brain surgeon to “being” a brain surgeon.

Once you’ve actually developed that mindset, you’re changed forever. You’ve flipped the switch from becoming to being and your mindset is totally different, you can now embrace being a brain surgeon.

Since you’re reading a post about becoming a writer, it’s a safe bet that it takes a whole lot less than sixteen years to develop your craft. But…the change in mindset from “becoming” to “being” is the same process. At some point you have to stop becoming a writer and start being a writer, and that’s way more about mindset than it is about skill set.

When I first started out way back in 2007, I wanted to be a copywriter for non profit organizations. I took the necessary courses, learned all about marketing and copywritng, but it took years for me to see myself as a writer. In the first several years of my business, I couldn’t flip the switch. I never felt like I was enough of an expert to consider myself a writer. In some ways I felt more like a fraud.

I believed that people would see me as fraud, that I didn’t know what I was writing about. It’s like I was waiting for permission from some unknown entity before I could feel like an expert in my niche. I think a lot of us fall into this category.

Validation

We seek outward validation for the things we want to do. When we don’t get it, it’s as if we feel we’ve failed in some way. It seems, we’re all trying to live up to what others expect from us, not necessarily what we expect from ourselves.

It’s not until we can flip the switch and believe in ourselves, our talents and our abilities that we stop seeking validation from others. My aha moment came, oddly enough from outside validation. I was approached by another writer who asked me to write a chapter in a compilation book they were creating with other experts.

That was it, up until that point I never considered myself an expert in my niche. But once I was recognized as one I was able to flip that switch and let go of my self-limiting belief. I stopped wanting to become a writer and actually start being a writer.

Becoming vs Being

The being part is usually what gets in the way. When you’re busy becoming something, mistakes and even failures are expected. You’re in the learning phase, you can’t be expected to know it all.

But…when you’re in the process of being something, now all of a sudden there’s no room for mistakes or failures. And, you better well know everything there is to know about your niche. This is where mindset becomes far more important than skill set. No matter how much you know, mistakes will still happen and to a degree failure is inevitable.

You have to be able to believe in yourself, your talents and your abilities and know without a doubt that you’re always putting forth your best effort. Believe that everything you do is good enough and stop looking for validation. Your belief in yourself is all the validation you’ll ever need. Now go and start being a writer.

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