Imagine… waking up tomorrow with the ability to master any skill instantly… no practice, no struggle, just expertise. What skill would you choose and why?
Maybe you would become fluent in every language? Master a musical instrument? Cook gourmet meals effortlessly? Perhaps you’d pick something unconventional, like having a perfect memory or expert-level negotiation skills!
Share your dream skill and what makes it so appealing to you!
I’m looking forward to hearing from you all. I might even share my own dream skill!
Definitely language fluency. Recently I spent a year learning spanish with a mix of on-line live group classes, tutors and several different in person language schools - in Mexico, Ecuador and Argentina. I invest tons of hours and have a year, have a very, very basic rudimentary ability to communicate in spanish. It became frustrating as I plateaued and just didnt progress beyond an advanced beginner level. I would LOVE to just be able to communicate in other languages.
If we were talking about super powers, I’d like to mind read.
Otherwise, I’d want world-class CFO skills (I’m not a finance person), because that would mean I could work at any company or other org in the world, and/or advise them. Plus, I’d potentially also be terrific at investing then.
At this point, I still have no interest in retiring and am intensely curious about many types of businesses, so I’d like to be qualified to hop into any that I want to. To me, working in startups in particular is like being paid to eat potato chips.
@Cleeflang I feel this!!
I have also worked at learning Spanish for many many years and I do pretty well - maybe advanced beginner or low intermediate - but I also feel stagnant and if I don’t use it at all for many months I feel like I’ve digressed tremendously. Thankfully, I’m fluent in French, so this helps a great deal for me with Spanish when in a Spanish speaking country.
In Mexico I communicate relatively well but when I got to Spain I was completely deflated!! They understood me very well but I understood NOTHING in return. It was SO frustrating and discouraging.
Now if I could master Italian I would be giddy with joy. While only useful in one country compared to Spanish, it is HANDS DOWN the most beautiful language on the planet!!
@carpediem16 Yay! My twin super skills person! I’ve always secretely believed there is a world class pianist inside of me…yet I have never even tried to play!
And like you I’d love to become fluent in any language i choose- my top three would be Spanish, (always loved it) German (my hubbys mother tongue, not my favourite language but I’d love to be able to communicate more easily with all our German grandkids!) and Hindi (I’ve always loved how it sounds! And we are often in India so I’d love to speak it )
@Lokstar
oh, interesting choices, yes!
Hm to choose three…well, my top pick for beauty is Italian…I swear people are singing when they speak. My knees buckle when Josh Groban sings in Italian. Then Spanish bc it’s so practical. I speak it enough to survive but oh to be fluent! Since I speak French fluently already (but not at a mastery level to understand complex and highly intellectual content) and am an American Sign Language interpreter, I’d love to master French Sign Language though it would do precious little for my world travels. ha. I’d love to have a second signed language.
Oh but also Chinese! Certainly not for its beauty but imagine having total fluency in an Asian language as a white Western person - imagine the looks from Chinese people. Not that I plan to visit China. Maybe Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese. I might want to travel there instead. But Chinese would be cool bc it’s so difficult.
Ah, screw it. I want the super power of mastery of all languages. Just make me a true polyglot! I so envy those people!!
Thanks so much for sharing your dream skills, it’s been amazing to read through what everyone would choose!
I’ve moderated a few comments where it looked like a slightly negative dialogue was beginning, apologies if I missed a couple of comments on my first sweep, I’ve gone back through and made sure that I’ve moderated both sides of things.
Back to dream skills, I think if I could master anything, it would be sewing and knitting! I am very clumsy and have terrible dexterity, and any attempts at sewing or knitting have ended badly.
I’d really love to be able to knit my own scarves, socks etc, and to sew my own clothes!
Chinese is hard. My husband has been trying to learn for decades, but the tones defeat him. Like if you say, “I’m hungry” off tone, it can end up as “I have diarrhea.”
He’s undaunted, though. It annoys me when he speaks to our dog in Chinese, because a dog can learn only so much and I don’t want our dog to learn a crummy version of Chinese that only my husband speaks.
My daughter and I attended Chinese School when she was young. An entire year was spent learning to pronounce the sounds and tones. We remember very little now, but here’s an example of how the tone of a word affects the meaning. The phrase, *Mama ma ma * means, mother scolds the horse.
To be a polyglot would be enormously beneficial. Travel, work opportunities, social experiences. It would be a whole new world(s). Too bad I barely passed high school French. One’s brain must be built differently.
This post makes me happy and a bit teary because I studied Modern Languages in uni, so I can speak French, Spanish and English fluently. However, when I was still studying a lot of people told me I was never going to be able to find a job . Guess what? They were wrong! Kuddos to everyone who’s learning another language!
Now, there are a LOT of skills I’d like to master instantly:
Be a great baker, one of those whose cakes are not only delicious but look fantastic.
Like @Maggie8K, top financial skills would be nice to have!
. Guess what? They were wrong! Kuddos to everyone who’s learning another language!