In my last blog post, How To Achieve Everything You Desire and Aspire To, we focused on the first half of the basic recipe for growth: increased awareness. Now we move on to action. Like the ancient symbol for yin and yang, these two halves of our lives (our internal and external journeys) are perfectly complementary, and the essence of each resides in the heart of the other. We need both knowing and doing for a dynamic and continuous spiral of growth that reinforces itself.

If we are to truly evolve and grow, it’s not enough to read about concepts. We must also incorporate them into our lives. Unless they are applied, and unless their worth is verified and validated through personal experience, their influence will be minimal. To really be effective, learning also has to be experiential. We must act upon ideas for them to be fully understood and eventually integrated. And they need to be reinforced so that new habits and orientations can be cultivated.

There are things in life that we simply must experience in order to know. Someone can tell you what it feels like to experience or witness the birth of your first child, but the actual experience is in another realm altogether. The same is true of love. You can read sonnets, hear romantic songs and understand the biochemistry, but until you experience love, it’s all just a bunch of words.

Stephen R. Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, put it this way: “To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”

Universal Skills

In research for Elevate, as I considered the essential wisdom that has been handed down to us for millennia, it became clear that some skills are so fundamental that they apply to virtually everything we care about and every aspect of our life that we wish to improve.

However, most how-to books teach task-specific skills. They prescribe specific actions aimed at achieving specific results: how to start a business, manage employees, play better golf, talk to teenagers, improve your marriage and so forth. But certain skills are so basic, so fundamental, so universally applicable that they drive achievement in every conceivable activity.

Does that sound far-fetched? Not if you realize that we’ve all grown up learning universal competencies and have depended on them all our lives. Remember the “three R’s”—reading, writing and ’rithmetic? There are very few areas of life where the ability to read and write and to add, subtract, multiply and divide, are not relevant. Communication skills are another example: Where would you be, at work, at home, or at play, without the ability to speak to and listen to other human beings?

Like tree branches, the disparate activities we engage in have similar roots, just as our most important endeavors share similar paths to success. In other words, we can accelerate growth, achievement and improvement by understanding and applying the principles that form the foundation for all achievement.

Ex-athletes, for example, don’t succeed in their post-retirement days only by cashing in on their fame and connections; those factors merely open doors. Retired athletes who continue to flourish draw upon the same skills that helped them excel on the field. They simply transfer them to their next career, redirecting techniques such as knowing how to practice and improve, how to work with teammates, how to listen, how to persevere through setbacks and how to lead. Likewise, they know the value of coaching, cross-training, competition and nutrition—all things that will put them at their best on game day, even if the game is now being played in an office. Consider how celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nicklaus, Jessica Alba, Dwayne Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and many others applied the disciplines that made them great in one arena to similar levels of success elsewhere.

Unfortunately, not all people understand this critical insight and therefore fail to apply the basic techniques that helped them excel in one area of life to all of their other undertakings. A classic example is the guy who’s great building a business, but doesn’t enjoy similar success in his relationships. Chances are that while his business has an agreed-upon vision, a strategic plan, key metrics (and periodic reviews of them), targeted learning, briefing and debriefing sessions, team retreats and expert coaches where appropriate, his primary personal relationship may have few if any of those same ingredients. Hmmm.

So what are these powerful universal building blocks? The following list identifies 10 that are explored in Elevate. While they are not meant to be a complete list by any means, they are all incredibly powerful and pervasive. In addition, each skill also reinforces and enhances the others, triggering a multiplier effect:

1. Ask … and receive
2. Listen … and learn
3. Program … and take control
4. Motivate … and get what you want
5. Structure … and win by design
6. Energize … and fuel the machine
7. Leverage … and lead
8. Love … and be loved
9. Appreciate … and make every moment a miracle
10. Refine … and elevate

You will no doubt recognize familiar topics here. You might react with, “I already know that.” And perhaps you do. Then again, maybe you know only some of it. Or you may be familiar with a proven technique, but you don’t use it regularly. If you find yourself resisting any of these powerful skills, ask yourself why, and don’t stop asking until you get to the real answers. There is always something new to learn, and the journey of self-discovery is endlessly fascinating and rewarding.

Skill No. 1, “Ask,” is especially interesting. We can literally find the answers to anything we seek by asking questions—of ourselves and others. Our brains are designed to answer questions and we have no limits on how many we can ask … but we rarely take advantage of this gift. Why is that?

Imagine that you’re the contestant on a quiz show. And if you can answer the questions, you’ll win everything you’ve ever wanted. Now imagine that you can play that game and have access to the Internet … and you can also have as many “life lines” as you desire—you’re free to ask for help from anyone and everyone. Nor are you limited to how many questions and people and search engines you can access. Wouldn’t that be incredible? Well, that’s exactly what we all have. Plus, asking questions is free, easy and available 24/7. It can unlock the secrets to all and everything… but we have to do it.

Listening is another basic skill that I thought I knew all about. But I didn’t. Many years ago when my business was in big trouble, I realized that the underlying problem was me, i.e., my inadequacies. If we were going to succeed, I had to fill significant gaps in my knowledge and experience. So I enrolled in an executive education course at Harvard Business School. Over the course of three years, I learned a ton. But the list was too long and unwieldy. It needed to be distilled to be practical. Eventually, after whittling away, I finally got it down to just 40 line items. But that was still too long, so I kept searching for the core skill that I needed … and it turned out to be listening.

We think we listen, but few people really do it well. That’s why so many of us say that we have trouble remembering names—the fact is we’re not really paying attention. True listening is a skill that runs deep and wide. It includes things both big and little. Facts and trends—both minor and macro. It includes the world around us and the world within. It incorporates not just our hearing, but all of our senses. And it includes everything from the faint whisper of our souls all the way up to big data and beyond.

Turning Problems Into Puzzles

Alice Walker said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

By applying universal skills to different areas of life, another powerful element kicks in: We realize that we’re not nearly as limited as we thought we were. Even the most confident people can see themselves as more constrained in some areas than they actually are. When we understand that we already know how to achieve much more than we currently do, and that we already possess many of the required skills that a new endeavor supposedly requires, a whole new world of possibility and probability opens before us.

In a very real sense, we are primarily limited by our beliefs and self-image. But when each step of improvement brings proof of our skill, competence, and ability to accomplish our goals, we understand, on a very deep and powerful level, that we can do much more and do it more easily. As a consequence, our belief in ourselves increases, and we venture more confidently into new territory. Our capacities expand, which in turn elevates our self-esteem and self-confidence, as we strive for still higher levels. This further enhances our capacities. And on and on it goes in an ever-ascending spiral.

At a certain point, a powerful new mindset kicks in. Now, when we’re faced with a new challenge, instead of responding with the self-limiting refrain of “I can’t do that” or “But I haven’t learned how to do that yet,” we react with the enabling, energizing realization that “I have the basic skills to attempt and accomplish just about anything.” And that changes everything!

(Excerpt originally written for Financial Advisor Magazine)