Becoming an Expert

My older brother Kenneth, like most first born children, has a Type-A personality. Rather than taking the easiest path towards a goal, he tends to head for the diamond slopes (really, when he skis, he skis the black). He has always been a high achiever, from good grades in school, to sports, to music, to his career. And when he finds something he is interested in, he becomes an expert on it. For example:

When Ken was 7½ years old, he decided he wanted to ride a unicycle. Now, I don’t know if you have ever tried to ride a unicycle, but it is crazy-hard to do. Ken practiced and practiced and practiced; and let me tell you, he became an expert at riding that thing! He would pedal to the store, to school, up and down the driveway, over curbs – it was amazing to see. I tried it a couple times and it was a lucky thing I didn’t split my head wide open! (By the way, that’s Grey Girl in his arms. Hopefully he put her down before climbing on the cycle!)

Ken had a wide variety of jobs in high school, and one of the more interesting ones was working for a caterer. If I was working for a caterer, I suppose I would show up, put on my hairnet, and dip potatoes onto people’s plates. Not Ken. Just showing up to work was not good enough. Instead, he learned all about catering, and got involved in every aspect of his employer’s business. Heck, if the Ludwig’s had fallen sick, I am quite sure he could have run the business himself. In a very short time Ken became an expert on catering.

Now that he is all grown up, my brother has a career that requires him to travel. A lot. All over the world. And he really enjoys it too, which is always a good thing. He is good at his job, and I am quite sure he is an expert at what he does. But he has also become an expert on business travel itself. Check out his blog: http://www.allbusiness.com/4058092-1.html. He can tell you how to avoid long lines, make your hotel stay better, deal with lost luggage, get the seat you want on a plane – just about anything related to business travel.

Many people are not an expert on anything. They just float along through life, relying on what other people tell them to do or think. (This is especially really scary during an election year!) Others are “experts on everything,” or they think they are. We generally call these folks know-it-alls, and if you are one of them, STOP IT, because it annoys the cheese out of the rest of us!

Anyhow.

If you are diabetic, trying to lose weight, trying to get healthy, or all of the above, I submit to you that you need to become an expert.
You need to become an expert on diabetes: what is happening in your body physically, why/how the meds help you, how to avoid and deal with complications.
You need to become an expert on weight loss: what works, what doesn’t work, how to eat, how to exercise, how to improve your metabolism.
You need to become an expert on nutrition: what foods contain, what your body needs, what an appropriate portion size is (are you listening, restaurant industry?), and about glycemic load.
Most importantly, you need to become an expert on yourself: how your mind works, how your body responds when you change what you are doing, what motivates you, where you are weak, or strong.

Most of the time, becoming an expert is not something that just happens to you. There are exceptions, of course – babies, for example, are experts at getting what they need/want; and I am quite sure that if you had Shania Twain music pumped into your house 24 hours a day for a year, you would become an expert on her lyrics. Usually, however, becoming an expert is a choice. You need to decide that “yes, this is important, and I need to be knowledgeable about this.” And I’m not about to tell you that becoming an expert on something is an easy thing today. Some people call this “the information age,” but in many ways we are living in “the misinformation age,” because having all of this information at our fingertips (literally) means sifting through a lot of garbage to get to the good stuff. But it is worth the effort, and it may make the difference in whether or not you succeed on this journey.

You can’t be an expert on all things, and thank goodness for people who are experts on things like business travel, because we can call upon them for information when we need it. But you owe it to yourself to become an expert on yourself, whether your personality is Type A, B, C, D or Q!