A Master of One

We’ve all heard of the 10,000-hour rule of mastery, which is the supposed amount of hours to become an expert at any skill. Although this can be true, we don’t necessarily need to be masters of a skill to be successful at it in life. What I’ve discovered in my “life experiments”, is that I’m quite proficient at learning anything, if given the time, belief, and dedication. From learning to salsa dance, scuba diving with 50 sharks in the ocean, learning to speak six languages, competing and winning in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament, performing a song in a foreign language in front of 300 people, acting on a tv show and on a feature film; I found out that achieving goals is not that difficult.

The more I’ve accomplished, the more I have realized that achieving smaller goals one at a time leads to accomplishing bigger goals, which inadvertently can lead to living out my dreams.

Find the sweet spot between talent and hard work

Now I’m not trying to gloat or boast how talented I am,  I don’t even consider myself as a master of any of these skills. What I’ve realized more and more is that it’s important to focus on strong skills or ones that come easy to you and nurture and grow those.  We all have gifts and it’s up to us to find out what they are and what they can be used for.  Listen to yourself some time and the answer is always there. 

Read more about who Alan Tek is here

Call out to the universe and see what happens

When I was living in Hong Kong, I had an idea of trying a life-long dream of mine in pursuing acting. I grew up watching a lot of movies from my parents being film enthusiasts, and since I was on my own I could try it out without criticism or fear of rejection from others.  After unsuccessfully landing an agent after multiple attempts, and meeting some scammy agencies, I gave up on my search.

I remember telling my girlfriend at the time, “I just wish someone would discover me, it would be so much easier!”.  Not long after I returned back to Canada, and while working at a restaurant between jobs, a customer approached me and asked if I ever considered acting or modelling. It was a strange moment in my life where I wasn’t sure how to act or what to say, but I was humbled and taken back from this odd encounter and told the lady that I never really thought of it (although I had). This lady ended up telling me that she was a talent agent and was interested in signing me with a contract. After some research and a later conversation with her, I signed and ended up landing a role in a commercial soon after and then a spot on a nationwide TV show on CBC and eventually a principal role in a feature film.

Dreams are not things you have when you sleep

Becoming a part of the acting community in the world was one of my dreams and I was able to achieve it with a bit of “luck” and calling out to the universe. I’m not saying that if you verbally speak out to the universe, all will come to you, but with some belief and will, sometimes the universe hears you and can speak back.  There is a certain connection we have on earth that ties us to one another and to our world, it’s energies that are alive and invisible to our eyes but I believe we can sense them. This “sensory” is better for another blog post.

Gratitude rules all

I am grateful for the successes, failures, and accomplishments I’ve achieved in my life so far. I have been moderately successful at some of them and achieved far more success than I would have ever imagined. For example, I could have studied a degree in Acting or performing and practiced many years and not have landed an agent or a role on a TV show or movie. However,  I was able to do so without necessarily dedicating 10,000 hours of practice. I did take a class on acting for the screen and practice does make perfect but,

I believe just the act of throwing it out there in the universe and attempting to seek out what I wanted, allowed the universe to set some wheels in motion for my life.

I am far from done in accomplishing my goals and learning from others is a great way to motivate and provide tools for goal achievement.  I give some credit to my mastery to one of my favorite authors, Tim Ferriss, who is a silent mentor of mine.  Read more about Tim here.

Check out my previous post on great podcasts and resources to learn from here