The 5 Mentalities of Mastery | Robin Sharma

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Hi, this is Robin Sharma. Welcome to this mastery session. This mastery session is called the Five Mentalities of Mastery. And I'm going to start off with Muhammad Ali, the great, legendary, iconic boxing champion. And to paraphrase one of his famous quotes, he said, you know, I hated every time I went in into the gym, but I said to myself, don't quit. Suffer now and spend the rest of your life as a champion. And so there are a series of mindsets and mentalities that the great masters and champions of sports and business and the arts and the sciences and the humanities all have. And in this mastery session, I want to share five of them with you. And I'm going to dig right in. The first one is really the lunchbox versus the executive mentality. You see, the thing about a master is she never thinks she's a master. The thing about a professional is he always thinks like an amateur. And what I mean by that is, you want to maintain this lunchbox mentality. You want to be boots on the ground, relentless learning, a humble servant of your craft. Because the moment you think you're an executive or a master, you start to lose the very winning formula that made you so successful. And I think of Bruce Springsteen. You know, Bruce Springsteen, he's been performing for decades and decades, and yet if you have ever seen a Bruce Springsteen show, he brings it on versus mails it in. And so I'm going to challenge you with great love and respect, as I always want to do in these mastery sessions. But are you still maintaining that lunchbox mentality, like the laborers carrying the lunchbox when they go to the job site? Are you still hungry? You still have a fire in your belly? Do you still go the extra mile for your customers? Do you still go the extra mile for your organization? Or are you just showing up? I mean, for me, I've been teaching leadership and personal mastery for almost two decades, and I really believe I am a laborer. I'm a plumber of high performance. You know, I really feel like a laborer. I roll up my sleeves, I still get dirty. I still deconstruct the way I do things in my meditations, in my journaling. I do my very best to come from a place of utter humility and service, you know, and I see myself with that lunchbox mentality, and I'm not perfect. But I encourage you to maintain that mindset because it is part of what will keep you at a level of mastery, not only in your work, but in your personal life. Number two, the rigorous versus superficial mentality this is a big one. When I watch people right now, there is what I call the collective unprofessionalization of business. If you look at people, let's say at airports, you look at gate agents, they're chatting with their friends. You go into a shoe store and rather than welcoming you into the shoe store, the person behind the counter is checking their Facebook page. You go to a restaurant and rather being attentive to you and your loved ones, the people are chit chatting and gossiping and looking at videos of dancing cats or bloopers or bleepers or weepers or whatever they're called. And my point is simply, this is an incredibly gorgeous opportunity for you. In this world of so much unprofessionalism, where people are just clocking it in versus bringing it on, where people are lost in this trance of distraction, suffering from collective attention deficit disorder, you can operate and apply this second mentality rather than being superficial. Be really rigorous. Be a professional. If you're not over prepared for a meeting, you're underprepared. Spend a lot of your free time reading and learning about your career, about your industry, about the work that you do, get a mentor. If you are serious about being rigorous around your craft, make the time at least once a week to pull out your journal and deconstruct your week. Just deconstruct the way you do things. When you are working on a project, don't just slap it together, don't just rush right through it. There is such an attraction to doing things quickly now because everything is quick. You know, messaging is coming to us so quickly. We can access information so quickly, we can access entertainment so quickly. We get our food so quickly. And as a result of that, we do our work too quickly. Okay, this is the not superficial, the second mentality, the rigorous mentality. Go deep versus wide. Go deep versus wide. Go deep versus wide. If you look at any great master, they were monomaniacally focused on going deep around one thing. Kahlil Gibran wrote one of my favorite books, the Prophet. I heard he carried it around with him for five years to get every single word right. That's a craftsperson. You know, when you look at the great athletes. I recently was in San Francisco and I watched Steph Curry play. Steph Curry was fluid, like a ballerina on the court. You know, I have NBA superstars coming to my live events and when I watch them, they are so focused on going deep around their skill versus being all things to everyone. Third mentality of mastery is the Leader versus victim mentality. And if you've read the leader who had no title, you know, I talk about it a lot. But you have a choice. When you go to work every day, when you show up in business every day, you have a choice. You can be a victim or you can be a leader. You can't be both. And what's the hallmark of a victim? Well, you give away your power. You say, well, I'm not the boss, I don't need to bring on my a game today or went through a divorce 10 years ago and I'm going to blame my ex spouse and give away my power and be a bitter person versus an optimistic leader. That's what victims do. They say, well, I'm resigned to average. Why should I take the time to read a book? To build a friendship.

To transcend a fear? Why should I do that? That's how victims think. They use words like I hate and I can't and that would never work. And they love to criticize because every victim was once a dreamer who got hurt and now they sit back in their armchairs and they criticize other people because they're too frightened to get into the game. So you can be a victim not only in your work, but in your life or you can be a leader. And as you know, you can lead without a title. Right? I have seen janitors behave like leaders. I have seen taxi drivers be bring on their a game. I've seen so called ordinary people running so called ordinary jobs with a sparkle in their eye. And they work with love. They work with attention to detail. They work like their work is the most important work in the world. I mean, I remember grade five Cora Greenaway, you know, celebrate your mentors. And I was in grade five and really no one thought I would amount to very much. I was really dismissed by a lot of people. And Cora Greenaway, my Grade 5 history teacher, saw something in me that very few people saw. She saw the early sparks of some kind of a talent. And because she cared and because she was a leader, as a school teacher, she spent time with me, she stayed late with me, she encouraged me versus dismissed me. And here it is all these years later and deep in my heart, right at my core, I still feel not only appreciation but love for that school teacher. When I was in grade five with the glasses named Cora Greenaway. Which brings me to the fourth mentality of mastery that I want to share with you in this session. The future versus past mentality. You know, there are so many people on the planet and they're really operating from the past. And here's what I mean. Something happened to them when they were little kids. They were told not to dream too big. They were told to dress like everyone else. They had a dream and the dream failed. They. Or maybe you were a teenager and there was someone that you loved and you got rejected. Or Maybe you were 22 and you started a business and you failed in that business. And now it's 10 years later or 20 years later or 40 years later and you're still living in the past. I want you to really think about this. Most people on the planet today are not living in the present. They're certainly not living in the future. They are stuck in the resentments, the bitterness, the pain, the frustration, the disappointments of the past. And it could be a month ago, it could be 20 or 30 years ago. And if you don't work through what happened in your past, you are resigned to spend the rest of your future stuck in the past. If you want to play it. Mastery in your craft, you want to play it. Mastery in your thinking you want to play it. Mastery in your performance, you want to play it. Mastery in your income, you want to play it. Mastery in your service to humanity, God, you owe it to yourself and the best within you and the talent that resides within you to do the work required to let go of the past. I don't know what it's going to look like for you. It could be meditation, could be journaling, could be prayer, could be working with a healer, could be working with a mentor, could be affirmations, could be visualization, could be reading the books of the A players so that their thinking infuses and hypnotizes and recodes your neurobiology. But you owe it to yourself to release the past so you can free yourself from the things that happened that disappointed you and move into a bold and brilliant and gorgeous future. Please do not let a stained past.

Deny your spotless future. Which brings me to the fifth of the mentalities for mastery. I want to share with you in this session, which is be a helper versus a taker. One of the defining traits of the most successful people I have coached. The billionaires, the A players, the celebrity CEOs, the Fortune 500 companies, the fastest teams. They have installed a belief system that the person who serves the most wins. One of my favorite interviews is Charlie Rose interviewing Ted Turner. As you know, Ted Turner created cnn. Ted Turner was dismissed. He was laughed at. You know, no one ever imagined a 24 hour cable news channel would get any traction, you know, and this man, like I'd encourage you to really read and study about Ted Turner's life. I mean, he won America's cup, he started the Cartoon Network, he started the Goodwill Games. This man is an industry tit. Study as much as you can about the way he thinks, the way he behaves, his values, his rituals, his routines. Why? Because as you do and then apply them and execute them and wire them in, you will get the results he starts to get. But what I want to share with you is in this interview with Charlie Rose, he went back to Rotary. See, Ted Turner was a Rotarian, just like my father was a Rotarian. And he said, you know, he who serves the best prospers the most. I'm going to repeat that again because it's so profound, at least to me, and I'm sure it is to you. He who serves the best prospers the most. And at the end of the day, leadership and high performance and being a titan is about value distribution to as many people as possible. And if you really want to rise to mastery, wake up every morning and spend five minutes, well, that looks like 10 minutes, thinking about this fundamental question, reflecting on it, letting this question wash over your brain cells and your heart cells right to your very core. How may I serve the most people? Because if that becomes your obsession, you will work with love. Your work will be.

Van Gogh level, your passion will be Steph Curry level or Michael Jordan level or Muhammad Ali level or Djokovic level.

And everything else will take care of itself. So, you know, there's been a lot in this mastery session, I encourage you to pull out your journal or watch it with your team. And then deconstruct everything I've shared. Because with better awareness, you will make better choices. With better choices, you're going to see better results. That's my three step success formula. With better awareness, you make better choices. Better choices, you'll see better results. So share this, talk about it with your team, watch it with your family, deconstruct it and then most importantly, go out and live it. Because an idea not brilliantly executed on with utter consistency is just a fallacy. Love you a lot. Talk to you soon. Hi, this is Robin Sharma. I hope you received great value from this mastery session. If you'd like to receive potent training videos, blog posts, learning tools and information on my two live events, Personal Mastery Academy and my flagship four day experience, the Titan Summit, go ahead and visit robinsharmer. Com.