Finding Your Own Mastery
For much of my life I’ve dove into hobbies and interests with deep desire to learn them well.
Often this time and energy has led to disappointment – ultimately never realizing the ‘excellence’ I set out for myself. It is exhausting.
Now after years of maturing and understanding my capabilities (I’m still pretty immature), I realize that becoming proficient in something should come at the sacrifice of fulfillment. To master anything is to give yourself up, lean in and have fun.
Ultimately, Mastery = Mystery. You’re going to break the sound barrier on some field that nobody has ever gone that fast or that far. You’re going to find your own unique combination of passions that make you the best in the world at that combination.
What if nobody cares? That’s ok also. You care.
What if you never go for the mystery. What if you settle back into the known, the comfortable, the stress-free existence of your peers and colleagues and everyone you ever knew.
The world might not allow it. What you thought was comfortable might’ve been a myth also.
Only this moment matters. Health-wise: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Can you move forward today in each? Small simply steps
Then you will attract the mastery and the mystery.
Here Are A Few Things I Learned:
A) Train to do things that you can’t do…Practice matters.
I hate to say it, but talent is a factor.
There’s a myth that everyone is talented at certain things and you just have to find it.
This isn’t true.
Most people are not talented at anything. Most people can be pretty good at something.
Manifesting true talent takes work. It takes practice.
For people such as doctors or lawyers, work is an evolving area of practice and a structure playground for continuous learning. Every day, they practice.
Why can’t we view ourselves as being in the practice of “our field” – whatever that may be.
Like an elite athlete, you train. You practice. It is a way of “being”.
When all the chips are counted, you will never reach your level of expectations, you would default to your level of training.
B) There is no can’t.
People have been convinced that as an adult you’re pretty much fixed - that there’s a limit on what you can do.
They’re wrong.
Whenever you start something you start at zero. Because you can’t do it… yet.
C) Predict today. Just today.
I don’t want to always know my future – the far future. I want to take small simply steps. Long predictions are dreams that become worries.
How do you change your life? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what works for me.
Do things you love. Everyday.
Practice. Improve 1% a day.
Practicing something you love takes away the pain – this includes things that are hard.
And time passes.
Your future slips in. And you’re there with new skills. New opportunities. And a new future.
No predictions. Just presence.
D) Follow your motivating source.
Writing often helps me sort things out. And lets me help people. Maybe you. I hope.
Hope is not a strategy. Dammit.
That’s my motivating source.
To live life with gratitude, loyalty and serving others
Look at “the joy you get in everything”.
There’s a fountain inside. You have one. And if you follow it, you’ll always have something that flows. A key to reaching exceptional levels.
E) Get a teacher/mentor…
F) …the right teacher/mentor
All the greats had great teachers.
A specialized teacher helps to build accumulated knowledge.
First you learn the basics. Then practice. Get feedback. And advance.
G) Learn by doing
You can’t really be capable of anything until you do it.
So you have to try.
Willingness to fail is at the heart
Find joy in the process.
PERSISTENCE.
Add up all of the above and you get persistence. Persistence creates luck.
Persistence overcomes failure. Persistence gets you experience. Persistence is a sentence of failures punctuated by the briefest of successes, and eventually those successes will start to propel you towards mastery.
Not one success or two. But many many many.
How do you get persistent when life is filled with changing careers, relationships, responsibilities, economic crashes, historical upswings, and so many things that can get in your way.
There’s no answer at all. That’s why it’s called persistence. Because no matter where you are, there you are, doing what you always did. Not letting any of the above stop you. Using all of the above in your Mastery Arsenal to propel you to higher successes and deeper failures and then even higher successes.
It’s painful and brutal and no fun and nobody will ever understand why. And when you achieve success people will act as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to have happened to you.
And you try to explain, “No, there was this one time…” but they don’t want to hear it. They want to know what their next move should be so they can be where you are.
There’s no next move. There’s only your next move.
THE GOOD NEWS:
You don’t have to be the master of the world. You don’t have to do any of the above.
Very few people do. And many of them experienced much hardship and pain along the way. And will continue to experience that hardship.
We live in a culture where it’s almost a damnation to be considered mediocre. But society has no clue about what real mastery is. Don’t listen to any of the “Top 10 things…” articles. Don’t listen to anyone. Not even me.
Freud has said that our two goals in life are human connection and achievement.
But often it’s a reasonable goal to overcome these evolutionary inclinations.
To be happy with your loved ones. To be satisfied for every gift in your life, for every moment, not rushing to the next moment of mastery.
True mastery can be found right here, right now.
Choosing yourself right now in how you treat yourself, how you treat the people around you, how you treat your efforts and your loves.
Nothing is more important than this. Nothing compounds into greater happiness in life more than this.
Because when you rush to get to a mythical THERE, one day you will arrive and realize you missed all of the pleasures and mysteries along the way.
