How Mastery Allows You To Take Control Over Your Life!
"The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus." - Robert Greene
What is my purpose? How can I enjoy my career more? How can I be more successful? How can I have a better life?
You may ask yourself these questions. I’m gonna show you how these two areas of mastery will help you achieve that goal. The two areas are: Self-Mastery and Skill Mastery.
Self-Mastery
Self-mastery is the ability to take control of your life. It allows you to understand how your mind works: your thought processes, habits and behaviors. It is the way you choose to be within the world. The path to self-mastery begins by developing self-awareness. The more you understand yourself, the more control you have over your life. When we think negative thoughts, our emotions become vulnerable. This leads to negative reactions. With self-mastery, you control these impulses and make rational decisions rather than act upon emotion.
Personal mastery goes beyond competence and skills. It’s the approach of one’s life as a creative work, living creatively instead of reactively. It’s about living a life with purpose and meaning, knowing where you want to go and how you’re getting there, finding your purpose is the epitome of achieving personal mastery. You are reactive when you don’t understand yourself or your direction. As you take on the journey of personal mastery and you start to build your understanding and awareness, you become proactive and pace towards where you want to go.
Personal mastery helps you achieve absolute success in whatever your purpose is. The journey towards personal mastery takes away the fears, the self-limiting beliefs and enhances your confidence. It helps you make better decisions so you can balance your life more effectively.
To be your own master, you have to take full responsibility of your life. It’s knowing your fears and mastering them. It is a lifelong journey where you keep finding new ways of mastering yourself. Achieving self-mastery takes real discipline. Someone who has mastered themselves will know they have to let the instant gratification go for the sake of their future pleasures.
“Once you have gone through self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-development, it becomes possible for you to achieve self-mastery.”
According to Aristotle, the aim is not to remove pleasure, but, to attain a higher quality of happiness in life. This higher virtue is gained after learning self-control and self-mastery. The aim of this state is to enjoy life more and to have a more meaningful life, and avoid the traps of decadence.
Spending time reflecting on who you are, what stereotypes you fit most, will help you when you deal with other people. You also need to know how other people see you and your own strengths and weaknesses. Your strengths won’t make you fail, but your weaknesses will. Letting confidence in one area trick you into thinking you’re good at other areas is a real risk of success if you don’t know yourself well enough.
This is confirmation bias: we all tend to be uncritical of data that supports our beliefs and very critical of unsupportive data.
Confidence in itself, without humility and wisdom, is merely arrogance. Misplaced confidence is as damaging as habitual shyness. The main step for those who lack confidence is to fake it. People can learn to be confident, which means you can just snap into confident mode for certain situations. You will end up finding no difference between faking it and having it. Once you know and feel the strength that comes from this you attain: confidence and lack of self-consciousness; combine this with the development of personal skills and you can make yourself useful.
Skill Mastery
Mastery is the proficiency and comprehensive knowledge in one or more subjects. It can only be achieved through the development of a comprehensive knowledge or skill. Mastery does not require you to be perfect, but it requires you to pursue perfection. The road to best achieve mastery is through deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is systematic. Regular practice includes mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention. It helps you maximize your potential. The myth of deliberate practice is that you can fashion yourself into anything, but you actually need to train hard and apply deliberate practice in areas where the genetic odds are in your favor.
While human beings possess a remarkable ability to develop their skills, there are limits to how far anyone can go. Your genes set boundaries around the possible outcomes. Your genes will impact everything from your short-term memory to your mental processing speed to your willingness to practice. It has been estimated that our genes account for 25-35% of our differences in performance. But while genetics influence performance, they don’t determine performance. You have better opportunities if you are dealt a better hand, but you also need to play the hand well to win.
If you can’t win by being better. win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce competition, which makes it easier to stand out regardless of your genetic abilities.
“In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won.”
In order to maximize your potential, you need not only to engage in consistent and deliberate practice, but also to align your ambitions with your natural abilities.
The Five Stages Of Mastery:
Understanding: you know a little about the job. You don’t know enough to do anything or have an opinion, but are aware of what others do or think.
Basic Competence: you have solid understanding of the key concepts. You could explain it and get most of the work done.
Fluency: the level of a normal professional. You know all the key aspects and can execute them efficiently and without assistance.
Creativity: the level of a professional with a specialty or unique ability that sets them apart from the average person at the fluency level.
Mastery: you understand your field, craft, skill so well that there is nothing you can’t do. You are able to solve unique problems that others cannot.
The 10X Rule:
This rule states that each level takes approximately 10x more time to attain. True mastery is a lifetime pursuit. But there is often a 10x function to your returns as well.
Unless you are already performing at 100%, you have room to improve. You have to continually graduate to the next level.
This drive to be the best has always been something a small number of individuals chose to do. Mastery involves being great, and being great is a lot of work. Much easier to die forgotten.
Pursuing mastery requires a sacrifice. If you truly want to become the best you can be, you must actively choose to spend your time there and avoid other pursuits. You must sacrifice for your craft. We are defined by what we make time to do, not by what we do when we have time.
The moments when you feel fulfilled by your craft are only found along the path to mastery. They are discovered between sacrifice and perfection, and it’s a reassurance that you are walking the right path. Fulfillment does not come from perfecting your craft, but from attempting to perfect it. And as your message spreads, new opportunities will arise. Because when we set out on a difficult journey we are presented with opportunities that we never could have imagined.
Our world is obsesses with results. We have a tendency to put so much emphasis on wether or not the arrow hits the target. If we focus that intensity into the process then winning is just a consequence.
Zanshin:
Choosing to live your life intentionally and acting with purpose rather than mindlessly falling victim to whatever comes your way. What matters is the way we approach the goal. Everything is aiming.
And remember, you don’t have to be the best if you are the only.
Mastery is something everyone should strive for. Great article. I will feature you on my next newsletter so other people could read and subscribe.