Mastery Once Again

Mastery is a simple concept that is difficult to understand, harder to teach, and a monumental struggle to consistently embrace. Yet once you fully grasp the ideal of mastery, everything changes. Activity is no longer confused with progress and every action you take has a sense of purpose. Everything you do is another step forward on the relentless march toward your goals.

Sometimes it is easier to define something by identifying what it is not. Mastery is not a part time commitment. Either you are on the path to mastery or you are not. If you challenge yourself to give up a bad habit for a month and then resume your old ways after the month is up, the whole exercise only served to stroke your ego without generating any lasting benefit. Mastery brings permanent change and permanent change requires full time commitment.

Mastery is not a sacrifice, it is an investment. If your path to mastery feels like a responsibility rather than an opportunity, you are on the wrong path. The path to mastery serves you, you do not serve it. Mastery is a process you adopt, not a program you complete.

Steps toward mastery:

• Change your self talk. Excuses are motivation killers. If I put my mind to it I can come up with hundreds of excuses to not complete my 180 pushups a day. The second I give air time to excuses the 180 pushups start to look like 1000 pushups. Change the self talk into a positive motivational tool. Find an excuse to do the pushups. For me that is easy because the pushups are an opportunity for me to reinforce my level of engagement, build my strength, and strengthen my resolve.

• Embrace structure. Habits provide a baseline to which we return to when our mental engagement level is low. Ensure those habits are positive habits that serve your commitment to mastery, My day is structured to guarantee I make progress toward my goals everyday. I never deviate from that structure because I remember how hard it was to get those healthy habits into place and, due to past failures, I understand intimately how easy they are to break.

• Reject mediocrity. From our political leaders to the substandard quality of the goods we consume, we all accept mediocrity. This needs to stop. Everything is changeable. In fact change is the only guarantee in life. We have the power to change things for the better. Before we can reject mediocrity we must first open our eyes and identify it. When a person says "good enough", I hear "mediocre". I accept nothing but the best from myself. I know I have a lot of mediocrity in my life but I am a work in progress. I acknowledge the mediocrity and I am working diligently to eliminate it.

• Share your journey. Everyone needs help. Build a support structure of mentors and other like-minded individuals who can help you when your focus begins to wane. Any support structure is only as useful as you allow it to be. Build it AND use it.

While I believe that anyone can embrace mastery, I acknowledge that mastery is not for everyone. Each of us are the sum of our experiences. so we all have different strengths and weaknesses. The playing field is never level but as long as the focus is on the journey and not the destination, the playing field is irrelevant.

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Posted with Blogsy