Have you read the book Mastery by George Leonard? If yes please share your opinions in the comments on facebook and we’ll chat. If not, I’ll give you Ray’s rip report at the end of this books “best take-aways” below.
Although this book is titled Mastery, it’s really about PROCESS.
To start on that theme…
I thought a jog down to the river where the beavers are busy chewing trees, building dams and lodges. Kind of a cool visual to show process.
I went down many days waiting for the two big trees to fall. Every day except today the trees had not fallen… but this shows another part of the book. Plateau.
There’s a seemingly endless road ahead of you in any complex task… with numerous setbacks along the way and most important – plenty of time on the plateau, where long hours of diligent practice gain you no apparent progress at all. Not a happy situation for one who is highly goal-orientated.
This is where focus and concentration become your superpowers.
But this is the Masters journey and more importantly, when you understand it, there is joy and happiness in the PROCESS.
The increase in anxiety shows that todays quick fix, fast, temporary relief, bottom line mentality doesn’t work in the long run. It’s eventually destructive to the individual and our society. If there is a sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long term essentially goalless process of mastery.
The Masters Journey:
There is a choice that comes up countless times in each of our lives. It happens with just about everything to do with learning, development and change. Sometimes we choose after careful deliberation, but most often its barely a conscious one. Seduced by the siren song of a consumerist quick fix society, we sometimes choose a course of action that brings only the illusion of accomplishment, the shadow of satisfaction.
**Ray – It’s not about lost potential but the loss of daily satisfaction and contentedness that can be gleaned by being in the flow. Mastery isn’t only about excelling but getting into flow and the consolidation of mental fragmentation. Chaos to order internally. Our life’s flow.
You’ll probably end up learning as much about yourself as about the skill you’re pursuing. **I can be impatient and always looking for a hack to quicken the process. I am afraid of wasting time. Death approaches quickly.
In the media you see very little process around you. It’s always a climatic moment edited to only the good bits. The body is already built. The race is run and won. People shown working for 3 seconds and then it’s miller time. The rhythm of this is destructive. One epiphany follows another whereas in real life, you can be lost for a long time. On TV, one fantasy is crowded out by the next. Climax is piled upon climax. There’s no plateau to be seen publicly… everyone is getting results without grind.
So what do we do when our own day to day existence doesn’t match up? How do we keep those climatic moments coming without instruction or discipline or practice. Its easy. Take a drug.
Of course it doesn’t work. In the long run it destroys you. But who in the popular and commercial culture has much to say about the long run? Who would be willing to warn in their commercial messages that every attempt to achieve an endless series of climatic moments, whether drug powered or not ends like this – an epic fall. The masses want instant results and are robbed of the joys of process.
Life is 90% process and only moments of arrival. Most of your life will be a plateau. We are told to do one thing only so that we can get something else. But life is happening right now. In this seemingly ordinary moment.
You go to school not for joy but to get a job. A job not for joy but for money. Money to save to retire.
We spend our lives stretched on an iron rack of contingencies. The real juice of life, wether it be sweet or bitter is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our effort as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive. Now.
Love your work, be willing to stay with it even in the absence of extrinsic reward.
Goals and contingencies, are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. To love the plateau and the process is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.
Actually, the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes. Simple basics done savagely well.
I learned a lot about process and sticking with the basics when I was learning the pistol squat.
Choose Your Path To Mastery
Before you use your potential energy, you have to decide what you’re going to do with it. And in making any choice, you face a monstrous fact: to move in one direction, you must forgo all others. To choose one goal is to forsake a very large number of other possible goals. If you keep all your options open, you can’t do a damned thing. Offering too many choices, tempts you to make none. Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.
A human being is the kind of machine that wears out from lack of use. There are limits of course and we do need healthful rest and relaxation, but for the most part we gain energy by using energy. Often the best remedy for physical weariness is thirty minutes of aerobic exercise. In hte same way, mental and spiritual lassitude is often cured by decisive action or the clear intention to act.
Ultimately, liberation comes through the acceptance of limits. You cant do everything, but you can do one thing, and then another and another. In terms of energy its better to make a wrong decision then to make no decision at all.
When you take a journey, make sure its for the joy of the journey and not just the destination. Pick your goals likewise.
A regular practice not only elicits energy but tames it. It might well be that much of the worlds depression and discontent can be traced to our unused energy and untapped potential. People who’s energy is flowing don’t need to take a drug, commit a crime or go to war to feel fully awake and alive..
Remember to laugh in the process. Without laughter the rough and rocky places on the path might be too painful to bear. Humour not only lightens your load it also broadens your prospective. To be deadly serious is to suffer tunnel vision.
When in doubt, make the commonplace your domain of mastery. Master life by being a master of the moment. Master the dishes, the bed making, the lovemaking, the talking and listening. Give your full attention to what you are doing in a calm, relaxed way with a touch of humour. Above all don’t hurry. You might discover that by not hurrying you’ll finish the dishes sooner than would ordinarily be the case. The odds are very good that you’ll feel better at the end.
Remember – Process over product.
Ray’s Rip Score: 29/190 = 15 out of 50
Ray’s Rip Score Legend:
0-7 Horrid and bailed on it.
8-14 Should have been an article
15-25 good amount of filler but some real good stuff
26- 31 A real solid book. Must read.
32-50 is epic and life changing. Can’t make notes because it’s all highlights.