Invincibility, the ability to take on any problem and solve it with ease, a goal of many but a reality for few. It is widely bereaved to be impossible with many people trying, failing then giving up and falling back to mediocrity.

Regardless of what these people believe, it is possible. Invincibility is not a single action, nor the accumulation of knowledge, or a natural ability that only some have. It is a sequence of events, repetitive failures and learning from them.

Here are 6 things which will help you to achieve the goal of Invincibility:

1. Be self-educating

   It is no mistake to think that the path to invincibility lies in knowledge and ones ability to apply it. Traditionally the only way to obtain said knowledge was through the education system. You can learn much from formal education, but there is one thing that it does not teach you: how to teach yourself.

   The world is constantly changing, in order to adapt to whatever problem gets thrown your way you must be able to learn. Ether you can spend your whole life in education, never getting anything worthwhile done. Or you can learn to teach yourself.

   When you are self-educating, you can pick up the knowledge required to solve a problem while you are solving it. This means that you can always stay up to date with the latest developments with no additional work.

2. Be obsessive

   Knowledge is great, but without the experience to put it into practice, it is worthless. Experience does not come from the class room, it comes from practice, applying your existing knowledge in creative ways to solve problems.

   Ultimately the only way to achieve this is to obsess, devote all of your time to one thing and one thing only. Don’t just practice your passions, live them. As quickly as you can, find ways to apply your knowledge to real world situations, not just made up classroom scenarios. Offer to do volunteer work for people, start a community around your passion or do some freelancing.

3. Never give up

   On the path to invincibility you will fail, a lot. Don’t let this failure get you down, every time you fail you learn something. Although they are worth little on there own, cumulatively these lessons add up to a massive improvement in your ability.

   After each failure you will feel down and may want to give up, don’t. The only difference between the successful people and failures in this world is persistence. Behind every successful person you will find a long road of failures. Where the unsuccessful give up at some point on this path, the successes push through it.

4. Don’t be afraid to break the rules

   Rules are put in place to keep people constrained to mediocrity, to keep people “in there place”. No body has ever changed the world by following the rules, you have to break them.

   As you develop, you will discover that rules are actually a lot less fixed than they first appear. How do you work around them? I leave that problem as an exercise for the reader, it’s a lot easier than you may think.

5. Use “down time” wisely

   The number one excuse people give when they fail is that they did not have enough time. The typical day includes a lot of short blocs of “down time” such as waiting in a queues, commuting or waiting for that email.

   If put to use, these small blocks of time quickly add up and things start getting done. How can you actually use this time? For one thing, modern mobile phones are basically just portable computers and can be used for work, or just reading articles on the net.

   Failing that, you always have access to a scratch pad that no one can take away, your mind. Insted of just doing nothing, plan something in your mind, then write it down when you next have access to a computer.

6. Get rid of your TV

   Passive entertainment like TV is of no use to anyone and prevents you from completing worthwhile work. TV is designed to be addictive, if you sit down to watch one program, you will suddenly realise that the last 5 hours have just vanished.

   If you get rid of your TV, you will suddenly have a massive amount of time available, which you can put to good use doing work that matters.