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Your
Personal Knowledge is Your Power
By Peter Nguyen - Jan
1, 2008
Your personal knowledge is your most valuable asset in life, so it's worth
managing it carefully. Any amount of time, money or effort that you spend clarifying, developing, refining and sharing your knowledge is a wise investment.
But what is "personal knowledge" exactly?
It's the sum of everything that you know, either through life experiences, formal education or reading.
The key to converting knowledge into power is to clearly discern what it is that you know that is worth something to someone.
Personally, I've discovered that it is very difficult to determine what knowledge of mine is most valuable to people unless I share it with them and then ask: "So what do you think? Would you pay for that knowledge? How much?"
How much people will pay to receive your knowledge has less to do with the intrinsic nature of what you know, and more to do with their specific circumstances.
For example, knowledge can be compared to water, whose value depends on the circumstances: if you were a man walking across a desert, then water is of great value and you would pay a lot for it.
But if you were sitting beside a lake, and somebody passing by offered to sell you some water, then you wouldn't spend a dime on it.
So the value of your knowledge lies in the degree to which people need it and the extent to which they know what to do with it.
The funny thing is this: You cannot know how people will use your knowledge unless you first share it with them!
There are two good news. First, the Internet makes it easier than ever to share your knowledge.
Second, by sharing your knowledge, you actually increase it. For instance, every time a workshop participant asks questions, they will inevitably help the workshop leader to clarify his teachings and, in so doing, his teachings expand.
Another good reason for sharing your knowledge as fast as possible is that it helps you to separate your "descriptive" knowledge from your "procedural" knowledge.
Descriptive knowledge refers to "what is" whereas procedural knowledge refers to "how to do something."
An encyclopedia, for instance, is full of descriptive knowledge. A grandmother's cake recipe, on the other hand, is procedural knowledge: it clearly describes the specific steps in order to produce something desirable.
The goal of a sound personal knowledge strategy is to continually develop your procedural knowledge, because that is the sort of knowledge that employers and clients are willing to pay for.
Once you develop the habit of seeking, understanding and mastering procedural knowledge, you will truly feel self-confident and be able to accomplish anything you desire. That is because, unlike most people, you will have fully grasped the meaning of the saying "knowledge is power."
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