PNTV: Mastery by George Leonard (#39)

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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. As always, great book. Today we've got Mastery by George Leonard and of course, six page PDF Philosopher's Note, where I've got some of my favorite big ideas. A little mind map going on over here. So Mastery George Leonard. George Weynerd's an awesome guy. He recently passed away and he was one of the leading authorities on aikido, a martial art that he didn't start studying until, I believe, his early 40s. And he was also the chairman of the Esalen Institute. So really, really extraordinary guy. And this book is fantastic. Nice and small, super concise, densely packed with wisdom. Good stuff. So first, when we talk about mastery, George Leonard makes the important distinction that we aren't talking about perfection. Too often we make the mistake of thinking that mastery is about perfection. He says, no, no, no, no, no. What mastery is about is the practice of growth, the practice of giving ourselves to our lives. Not attaining some ideal of perfection, but, but moving toward it and giving ourselves consistently. Tal Ben Shahar in the Pursuit of Perfect, talks about something similar. He says, look, we need to use our ideals as a guiding star, something to orient ourselves to and move toward. But don't think of them as a distant shore that we think we're going to get to someday. He's like, no, you're never going to get there. We're never going to get to any level of perfection, really, in any sense. But we can use our high ideals as a guiding star to guide us as we move toward them. But we get disillusioned when we think that we're ever going to attain a level of perfection. So mastery is about seeing our potential as a guiding star and then moving toward, consistently, patiently, diligently, that we're going to talk about in this note. So good, good, good stuff. First, though, let's look at a couple of other alternatives. He says that the path of mastery is challenging. It's rocky, and things don't always go our way, and oftentimes we veer off into other directions, other paths other than mastery. A few of them that he talks about are the following. One, the dabbler. This one happens to be my specialty. When I'm not on my path of mastery. The dabbler gets really excited about something or a lot of things, but they get really excited about something and they go all into it, right? And they go off on it and then they realize that, interested in it. And then they kind of go off really excited, plateau, I'm going to leave. And then the obsessive is a bottom line kind of person who wants to get it right the first time out. And they want to get it right, get it right, get it right. And they kind of grind as they push and obsess about doing something right. Then pretty soon they burn out and they're gone. And then the hacker is the third type dabbler, obsessive, and now hackers. The hacker is someone who never even really goes for mastery and just kind of goes at it, kind of sort of goes for it, but not really. That's the hacker. So you want to check in and see which of those three Personas do you tend to go to when you aren't on a path of mastery. Right. So as I said, I tend to go into the dabbler. Whether it was in sports or in relationship or in creative projects. It's easy for me to get excited, then I'll kind of bail. So important for me to see that and then choose what I'm going to give myself to as a master and on the path of master. So think about that. Where do you tend to show up? And now we'll think about some ways we can get on the path of the master of mastery. So number one rule of mastery is diligence. You've heard me say this a million times now. But we've got to work diligently, patiently, persistently, and I like to say playfully, diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully. That's the path of mastery. Too often we do anything but that. We want results immediately, and if we don't get them, then we bail. He says that one of the greatest obstacles to mastery is obsessive goal orientation, where we're always thinking about our goals and where we want to be and we're not here. Then we get disillusioned when we don't get what we want as quickly as we want it. So we give up. Another huge obstacle to mastery and in addition to obsessive goal setting is laziness. Then we have this idea, this vision. We're just imagining it. Goal setting, goal setting, goal setting. And then we don't take action. Frankly, this is part of the challenge behind a movie like the Secret. And a lot of the self help and self development stuff out there is just constant visualization without the path of mastery. Where we're giving ourselves to this moment is a recipe for failure, really, and for unfulfilled desires and for disillusionment and frustration. So what we want to do. And he talks about the importance of goals and how that catalyzes our energy in a very important way. But then we want to come back and hold the tension through being in this moment and loving what we're doing. In fact, loving it so much. He says that our goal, whatever finish line we want, we love what we're doing so much that for every mile we take toward our goal, we actually hope the destination is two miles further away. Isn't that amazing? For every mile we head toward our destination, when we really, really love what we're doing, we actually hope that the destination. Hope. That was pretty high pitch there. We hope that the destination is actually further away. Why? Because it gives us a deeper opportunity to explore something that we're so passionate about. That's huge. So diligence, avoiding obsessive goal orientation. Don't get rid of your goals completely, but let's not obsess about them. And then let's be present and work hard, not be lazy. He has another huge idea. He says that our culture is essentially in an all out war against mastery. And that what they do is they show a level of energy in life that's just totally unrealistic. And he says watch any commercial or watch any television show or movie. What it is is one climax after another. Endless climaxes, right? So you work for two seconds in the beer commercial and then it's Miller time. You get to check out and go.

Play volleyball on the beach.

Whatever it is you do, it's one climax after another. There's no plateau. It's not okay to have a really exciting time and then a plateau and a plateau and a plateau and a plateau and then another good time. Everything always needs to be up, up, up. It's a terrible assault, as he says on mastery. So we've got to recognize that and realize we've got to get deeply into our own set of values and. And learn to love the plateau. Life is about the plateau, with beautiful opportunities for expansion and state experiences that are fantastic. We've got to learn to love the plateau. It's a huge idea. I talk about it more in the note. Another big idea is making our life a practice and choosing to create a practice as a noun. So if you practice basketball or you practice this or you practice that, that's a verb. But we want to make certain things a practice, a noun, right? So my meditation is a practice. It's something that I do diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully every day. So we want to identify what Are our practices and on a high level, make our life a practice. Right? Make our life an opportunity. Every moment gives us an opportunity to be present, to be in this moment and to create vitality, etc. So. So again, the idea here is consistency. He says consistency of practice is the mark of a master. I've mentioned Robin Sharma a number of times. We're going to do his book this week as well. He says that consistency on the fundamentals is the hallmark of greatness. Consistency on the fundamentals. So again, what are your fundamentals? If we want happiness, we want any level of success or well being or joy consistently. What we've got to be consistent on those fundamentals. So identifying them is huge. Another really big idea here is homeostasis. So you know how you have a thermostat in your house? You can set it to a certain temperature. If it goes below it, it will bring the temperature up. If it gets too hot, it will bring it down. He says the same thing happens in our life. And when we embark on a path of mastery or we look to improve ourselves, we need to remember the fact that we have a homeostatic point. We're used to operating at a certain level and as we improve, we have this homeostatic point and we often bring ourselves back to that point because we're used to being there. We're grooved in a certain pattern. And when we recognize that, we aren't surprised when we hit a road bump and things don't go quite the way we want them to go and we can chillax into it a little bit more and continue to work diligently and patiently without being disillusioned. So we have a homeostatic point and. And we got to patiently let it come up. But when we really push, sometimes we feel ourselves coming back to that homeostatic point of where we were. He says that's normal. The key here is appreciate it. Appreciate the fact that sometimes you're going to slide backwards. That's part of the deal. Don't get disillusioned and completely give up. Honor that process and get back to your work. Get back to your practice. It's a really big idea. We've got some cool ideas on how to rock that. More. I already talked about some of the pitfalls on the path of mastery, Obsessive goal orientation and laziness. He's also got some great ideas on getting energy for mastery. One of the big ideas here is you got to set priorities and make decisions. Not making decisions drains energy. It leaks energy. So make decisions, take action, go out and rock it. That's a quick look at mastery. Hope you dug it. Share more soon. See you.

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Huya.

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