Dictionary definition:
A person who has comprehensive or authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.

You would have heard someone say that “I am an expert” on one or more topics. You might have also said that you are an expert on one more topics. While it is good to be an expert on something, you might have some problems if you start believing it as if it’s 100% truth. The risk is that you stop all your investments to grow and learn on the same topic where you claimed your expertise.

In reality, the more you know about any topic, the more you realize that you don’t know much about it. In fact as noted author and Stanford Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer puts it nicely, “You need to be reasonably competent on a topic to know your level of incompetence on that topic.”

Besides if you remember the “strengths theory,” you should really focus on strengthening your strengths rather than trying to fix your weaknesses.

Think about why you gained the so-called expertise on a particular topic. It is because you spent a lot of time working on that topic. You worked for a long time on that topic because you liked that topic. You liked the topic because that topic matched your interests.

See, there is already an incentive to be a “lifelong student” on the topic of your expertise. Go ahead and use that and strive to be the best in the area of your expertise.

Really, when you love what you are doing, it does not seem like work. Continuing to build on your area of expertise is just that – doing what you really love to do.

All the very best!

You can listen to the audio here:

Note:

Illustration by Ming. Ming is the creator of the Fantasy Story webcomic. He is also a freelance illustrator, designer, painting instructor and occasional luxury car salesman. Ming is based in Penang, Malaysia. You can find him on twitter @Artmaker

I don’t know about you, but this certainly makes my head spin!

Before we set out on our little quest to untangle this, lets start by stating a core truth of life. Everyone needs help. [If you feel you do not belong to this category, try living 1 day of your life without using the bridges (built by others), electricity (discovered by others), food (grown in farms by others)… you get the drift].

What I just said is so fundamental, it is worth repeating again. Everyone needs help. Now, lets begin to untangle the first part of the title of this post…

“Help yourself… by helping others”.

Given that everyone needs help, so do you. The question then becomes: How do you get good help? The answer lies, ironically, in the question: “How good of a help can you provide others?” This is indeed, quite logical as the better help you can provide others with, the more they will be willing to help you, in return. Pick your favorite leader or entrepreneur and read their autobiography (or biography); you’ll find many stories of how much help they gave and got back.

Time to untangle the final portion, now…

“helping others … by helping yourself, first”

This simply means that before you provide good help to others, you must increase your own capacity to help. In other words, you need to help yourself first by investing in your education, your skills and your knowledge. Once you are an expert in your field of work, you can help others… and once you help others, some of them will help you back! Lets go back to thinking about your favorite leader or entrepreneur… and you’ll notice that they would have been always working to learn more, gain more knowledge and increase their competence in what they do… so that they have the capacity to help others.

That’s how you get good help… by helping others… but, start with helping yourself, first!

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