This blog will have different things that I write including just short stories and writing practice. It is very possible that none of if will be good haha, so bare that in mind when reading these short practices of writing. It will be filled with emotion and some of the questions that I am pondering. It might be related to me , or it might be simply parts of the imagination.

I will call these sections - A Ravens Feather - for the book mark I used at one point when reading. Enjoy and let your mind be open and free.

I am in the middle of watching Castle Rock on Hulu, which is based off of Stephan Kings universe, so I am feeling a but horrific, if one can feel that way.

Focus on the Skills

I often look at life, particularly my life, and try to take stock of who I am and who I might want to become. This leads to a list of traits that I want and skills I want to gain. Skill is the ability to do something. An expertise. High skill means you can perform the skill well, lower not well. The perception of the skill can sometimes be judged by the enviroment. A place where low skill is only known, means that slighlty higher skill might mean much, but in the grander sense, the mastery of the skill is still low.

I believe the more skils that you have, the more interesting and successful you can become. Now you might be thinking, jack of all trades, master at none. You need to specialize! Master the one thing and make your mark with it. I do not disagree with this, but in my research or at least readings I have noticed that a new level of mastery and when you reach the top of mastery the climb to the top is not up, but sideways and up.

There are many stories of people of master getting to the top to only hit a ceiling. A skill ceiling? No, becaue there is more to be learned, gained and mastered. It just isn’t in the same road anymore. You are forced to innovate, combine skills to move on. Instead of just working with a hammer, you start to use a chisel as well. You master the hammer, but gain the skill of using a chisel, then combine them both. Hammering the chisel. Instead of just punching, you kick as well. Your body moves in a different way, puts you in different postions, opens up possibilites for new moves and motions. Exposes flaws in technique and demands you improve both skills to move forward.

It also helps that people are attracted to a person of many talents. You play an instruement? Do card tricks? Excellent at math or can explain sceience wine? Color me impressed if you drop this on me at a party. All humans are interesting whether we want to admit it or not. With more skills, you can become more intersting.

The How

How do you gain a new skill? This is a question that led me down a road of trying answer the question of how do we learn. How do you learn to learn better? Intersting question, we are never taught how to learn. It is just something we do. School, at least mine, did not teach me such things. So my quest began.

How

How

• used to ask about the condition or quality of something.
• in what way or manner; by what means.

Lately I have been trying to improve my self-talk. As I move through my day I notice more negative thoughts or questions enter my mind. Particularly dealing with my current actions and the future.

Questions such as
1. Why am I not doing what I want to do?
2. Why do I want to do this/that?
3. Why am I still at my current job, doing the same thing?
4. Why can’t I get it together?

Looking at these questions it is no wonder why I seem to feel stuck. These questions, if answered, only give me a meaning, the cause of situation. What it does not give me, which I desperately need, is action. What to do next.

While watching a video of Dan Lok,a successful entrepreneur and deal maker, he talks about deep questions. To get yourself to the next level of your life and to keep improving, you must ask yourself deep questions. The thing I noticed is that the questions he framed were always with “How”. Such as -

How do I make $50,000 more with the same products and customers?

And you could add more conditions onto this question to further deepen it. When looking at “How” I started to realize that it is very hard to make a “How” question negative and that “How” usually led to an action.

Let us tackle the negative statement first.

To make “How” negative we must do something like -

How can I not perform?
How do I fail at this all the time?

When saying these two questions, they feel forced. They seem to long even when writing them. You automatically want to ask the why. Why can’t I perform, why do I fail all the time. Using “How” it just seems out of place. Let’s reverse these into true “How” questions.

How can I perform?
How can I succeed all the time?

Not only are these positive versions of the questions above, they give you a gate to head towards. You have the end goal already set with the question, now it is time to figure out the road.

Action Phase

This is where the action comes in. When you answer these questions, you get the action.

To perform, you must practice.
To Succeed all the time, you must prepare. (if even possible haha)

From there you can ask the questions what? Where? and then Why? At the end of the day, if the “Why” is not there, then the action will not matter. Which I still believe in asking the “Why”, but I think that asking the “Why” is the second question, not the first in situations that you know you want to do. A lot of times we already know the “Why” and still don’t do what we want. This is because the actions are not clear to us, or there are too many actions. Using “How” we can narrow these down.

Question Chain

Let’s look at the chain of questions that might occur. Let our question be - How can I speak Japanese?

Simple answer? Practice every day. But practice what?

What do you want to talk about? - Food and Travel

How do I talk about food and travel in Japanese?

Learn the vocabulary for these subjects and basic Japanese sentence structure.

This process could go on until you are at the very basic word/structure that you want to learn or the skill that you would like to learn.

By using questions, we can narrow down the steps that we need to take and get to the next action to take in our Journey to master the skill or get to the next level of our lives.

Using “How” at the beginning can help start the chain and pinpoint what we need to do next. Also, it forces us to use our imagination and thinking power to find the possibilities to get us to the end goal.

Your turn!

Next time you find yourself talking to yourself and asking “Why” something is happening or you are not doing something, change it into a “How” and see what happens.

The Start of Something

Welcome,

If you have stumbled upon this, or have been invited, I welcome you. This place is one for writing and thoughts. It may convey some meaning to you, or it might just be something that you like to read once and awhile to gather new ideas.

I implore you to not think of every post as being something, but rather take it with open eyes and heart. Most might be bad or just random expressions from myself. I intend to post as much as I can. To fill this space with myself and ideas. Take them and spread them to the world if you wish. If I can inspire or make ideas come alive for you, then that is all I can do.

Welcome to this haunted place, where the ghosts of my memories and imagination swirl through the walls.

Welcome to the Ghostly Hotel.