4 of 4 on your changeable brain: Most of us want to skip the learning curve. We want to be good at a new skill like we are good at our current skills. This is a normal feeling. After all, it is discouraging to try to learn something and feel incompetent.

However, when facing a new pit of success, there is no reason you should be better than you are right now. Your brain has not faced this challenge before. It does not have existing pathways and patterns to draw from. You cannot expect to be good yet.

Fortunately, you can make the same connections in your brain that the experts have built and you can respond more easily to your pit. While you cannot expect mastery in the first attempts, you can expect to figure it out with focus and repetition. That’s what your brain is designed to do.

You have to do it once (or twice or more) before you can be good at it. You cannot skip the learning curve, even though you really want to. Freedom comes from embracing the pit and embracing practice. This practice builds a path in your brain that you can use for years. You have a changeable brain that is ready to conquer any pit of success.

Adapted from “The Pit of Success: How Leaders Adapt, Succeed, and Repeat” by Dave Jennings and Amy Leishman available February 2021

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