Hello and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast. This is episode number 156.

I am your host Noah Rasheda and today I'm going to talk about the Circle of Skills.

As always keep in mind you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use what you learn to be a better whatever you already are.

If you're interested in learning more about Buddhism, check out my book, No Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners.

Available on Amazon or listen to the first five episodes of this podcast.

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For today's podcast episode, I've been thinking about the concept of the Circle of Skills.

I want to give you a little background why this topic popped up for me.

When I first learned to paraglide my instructor as I was finishing up training, he gave me this neat little analogy that has stuck with me ever since.

He said, now that you've learned the basics, imagine a circle and inside that circle are all of the skills that you've acquired here during flight training.

Now for that circle to grow, you need to try things, maneuvers that are just outside of the circle of skills.

And then when you achieve that, the circle grows.

Now the trick is to slowly grow the circle. Don't attempt something that's way out of your circle of skills because that's what puts you in danger.

It's very risky to do that.

And if you slowly grow the circle of skills, the circle becomes much bigger over time, but the key is to do that, to grow that slowly.

And that stuck with me for years as I've spent more and more time in the sport, attempting different styles of flying, different places, different conditions to fly in, different types of wings.

Every single step that I take slightly out of the circle of skills makes the circle of skills grow.

And now I'm in a position where that circle of skills is significantly bigger than it was when I started.

And I try to convey that same teaching to my students when they're learning to fly. The biggest mistake a new pilot could make is to assume, well now that I know the basics, I can go attempt this difficult maneuver or something that can jeopardize your safety and your enjoyment of the sport because you could get hurt, you could get killed.

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