Good morning,

This is the day the Lord has made, let's rejoice in it, and make today a masterpiece!

Today is Speak Life Saturday (The Faith Accelerator)

(You can learn more about the 7 Accelerators here) 

Focus on speaking life today... With the words that you speak and the tone you speak with. 

Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 

Let your speech always be seasoned with grace. 

Here is this week's Yearly Cycle communion meditation.

Click Here for the Video and Audio

At the beginning of a brand-new year, a good habit is to think about the new skills that you'll need to develop to reach your goals. 

What are the 1-3 new skills you need to master this year? These might be new mindsets or skill sets, such as health (which is a skill, by the way), business, marketing, leadership, or cooking.

Setting goals and looking for areas of growth causes us to become better. To learn and master new skills requires consistency, courage to get started, humility to try something new, persistence to keep going when it looks impossible, faith, and patience. This process builds our character.

So how do we build these new skills? Any new topic or skill has a language that must be learned. For example, with fitness the language is squats, pushups, deadlifts, and power-cleans. With nutrition, it is carbohydrates, proteins, and macronutrients. With music, it is chords, notes, and frets. With finances, it is ROI, dividends, assets, and liabilities. With marketing, it is copywriting, sales letters, and retargeting.

All new skill sets require learning a new language, and we must give ourselves permission to take the time to learn the language. Think about new babies, who typically take a year to be able to understand some of what we are telling them. This learning comes through book-learning, taking courses, or finding a coach/mentor.

The next step is understanding that each skill set has just a few fundamentals. Typically, each new area will have 3-5 fundamental skills that need to be mastered. This is where having a coach or mentor is handy, because they can show us the fundamentals to focus on.

A year of learning the language and practicing these fundamentals will do a lot of good. For example, in fitness the first thing is to master showing up consistently. Then, master the ability to do squats, push-ups, and pull-ups with a full range of motion. For nutrition, master cutting back on junk food, making water the main beverage, and eating balanced plates of food on a consistent schedule.

One of my friends is a high-level drum player. He once told me that his teacher made him spend a lot of time mastering the basics. He wanted to move ahead faster, but his teacher forced him to continue practicing the fundamentals before moving on. He has since played at places such as Madison Square Garden for famous music artists, and he said that looking back now, the fundamentals were the best thing he could have done.

Another way to accelerate learning is to find someone who has mastered the skill and begin to learn from them. Apprentices had to replicate their mentors’ work before they could create their own. For example, I once read that when Michelangelo was studying with his mentor, he had to replicate the mentor’s work before he could make his own art.

Many marketers use this same method. They will find marketing messages from people who have mastered the skill of copywriting, and they will copy the messages by hand. This is how children learn so quickly. They imitate. The most powerful way to apply this principle is by scribing/copying the Bible, so that we are copying God. It is good to learn from others, but we aren’t supposed to copy people. We are to copy God.

In today's communion we are asking God to help us get clear on the skills we need to develop this year. 

I am praying for you.

Daniel

P.S. We are building a new coaching/mentoring program and are looking for 10 people. If you are interested in coaching, you can reply back to this email.