To become a master at any skill, it takes the total effort of your: heart, mind, and soul working together in tandem.
― Maurice Young
The idea of mastery often evokes admiration and awe. Perhaps you have felt it. Flowing through your work with a sense of peace, safety, and predictability. We marvel at the skill of artists, musicians, athletes, scientists, or leaders who emit energy and fierce knowledge in their field as if it were a part of their genetic makeup. We may also aspire to achieve mastery, hoping to reach a level of excellence that sets us apart. But first: what does mastery really mean?
Different definitions of mastery explain it as comprehensive knowledge or skill in something. Possession or a display of great skill. Complete control. Outstanding expertise. What does it all have in common?
It suggests that mastery is a state of being, a final destination. But is that really true?
The source of many people’s anxiety is allowing their lives to be dynamic. To trust the way and, in a sense, surrender to it. The world is frightening. But if you stay on the path and try to keep learning, it may at least lead to someplace interesting.
One of the leading books about it, by George Leonard, expresses how it’s about accumulating peace without surrendering long-term ambition—to enjoy continual improvement for its own sake while letting the results come naturally.
The beginning parable in the book explains an athlete who wanted to become an exceptional tennis player and was forced to realise that the training process didn’t look like the results he wanted to achieve. The basics come first: learning how to grip the racquet, perfecting contact with the ball and learning how to track it. There was nothing thrilling about this practice. And when the athlete grew impatient enough to ask his coach how long until he competes and wins real matches, the coach replied, “I would say you could probably start playing after about six months. But you shouldn’t start playing with winning as a major consideration until you have reasonable control of forehand, backhand and serve. And that would be about a year or a year and a half”.
When I started writing, the results didn’t matter to me. Luckily it rarely clouded my mind. And that’s what made my results come earlier. Though, it got worse later on. It’s hard not to. This world worships results, especially after a while of doing things. But before I could expect to earn results from writing, I needed to spend my time cultivating excellence with the basics: writing clearly and understanding my readers.
Pursuing results—especially ones we feel responsible for—makes it tempting to undermine the behaviours determining long-term success. We’d rather search for quick fixes and “hacks”. We tell ourselves that it’s harmless. But it’s like taking silly performance enhancers over understanding the fundamental issues limiting us. And all of this is because we find it painful to return to the basics.
Mastery is about the things you do before the destination. It is not the end of the road—it is the whole road. It’s not a once-and-for-all; it’s a path that has no end. And as Nathan Baschez says: “the point is to stay on it”.
The source of many people’s anxiety is allowing their lives to be dynamic. To trust the way and, in a sense, surrender to it. The world is frightening. But if you stay on the path and try to keep learning, it may at least lead to someplace interesting.
The alarming thing about mastery is you’re not aiming at a fixed point but a moving target. You have no choice but to continually learn, grow, improve and adapt. It asks for curiosity, passion, dedication, discipline, and humility. And it demands feedback, challenge, experimentation, and innovation.
Think about someone whose work impresses you. Do you think they stop learning once they reach a certain level of proficiency? Do they rest on their laurels and repeat what they already know? Do they close their minds to new ideas and perspectives?
Of course not.
It’d be easy to obsess over unimportant details and not track whether you’re heading in the right direction. It takes a lot to trust a system. But we often forget that it is also easy to end up facing the wrong way.
In the long run, results don’t lie. But they can in the short term. The best artists know this, so they ensure they can love what they do. They do it because they’re driven by their personal quest for excellence. Because they know there is always more to learn.
And so, rituals are the best tools to remind you that mastery is having your work come alive. And to love it for its own sake. Of course, you want to care about the results too. But the journey may be long and uncertain. So you must instead make it rewarding, fulfilling and fun the entire way through. Not only at the end. Because in time, you’ll find it easier to realise it never was about the destination in the first place.