What is mastery, you may ask? According to http://ardictionary.com, mastery is victory; triumph; preeminence; or great skillfulness and knowledge of some subject or activity. In the last few years in this journey called life, I have realized how important mastery is through my leadership reading and my experiences. The bigger question is..
how do we attain mastery? Obviously, it will not be easy, otherwise everyone would have attained it. Also, it is one of those things that comes at a price…. success (and mastery) does not go on sale, there is no easy road… no quick scheme…. find the price and pay it. It is simple equation, but not easy. There is also a parallel thinking called ‘dream – struggle – victory’ which is the paradigm built on nature’s way: the creation of a new life or a beautiful flourishing garden. In order to attain victory after the conception of the dream, one ABSOLUTELY MUST go through the struggle. Short-cuts will not create a true long lasting victory.
So again … what is the price? Well, of course it depends on what you are trying to master, each idea/concept will have specific nuances to conquer. Here are the common threads however. It turns out that there is a 10 000 hour rule. According to the Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller ‘Outliers’, he demonstrates what masters like Bill Gates,
Mozart, Picasso, Michael Jordan have in common, despite the differences in the content of their mastery. They all put in the required minimum 10 000 hours of hard work, of diligent practice in their area and were prepared and shaped by those fires. This led to their ultimate mastery and success in their field. You can be the smartest person on earth and/or the most talented, but if you do not have those 10 000 hours of practice, you will not be prepared when your many BIG opportunities for success arise. You have to become what John Maxwell calls a ‘talent plus’ person. The talent is not enough and without some effort at mastery the opportunities will pass you by, unfruitful.
Success through mastery will only be possible when your talent meets opportunity after thorough preparedness. The other thing to remember is that whatever you are trying to do is going to be hard for a long time until it gets easier. Of course, then you will ascend another learning curve and you will go through the hard labor until it gets easier again. When you overcome obstacle after obstacle, growth spurt after growth spurt in your endeavor, whether it is playing an instrument or creating your business, you will eventually achieve the ability to create splendid masterpieces. At that time, others will look at your work in awe and talk about your overnight success. Only you and other masters like you will truly understand that growing any sort of talent takes a similar tough journey, in the body, mind and spirit. The actual journey of becoming a master is as important as the the technical skills necessary to become a master. This is because the journey shapes your habits, your ability to persevere and your belief in yourself as well as your actual love and passion for what you do.
Another important thing to remember if this… 10 000 hours works out to be about 3 hours/day, 365 days/year for 10 years or 6 hours/day, 365 days/year for 5 years. This is not trivial. Think about it, this explains how a baby becomes amazingly fluent in his/her mother-tongue. The baby is spoken to when awake which is more than 6 hours a day and the 10 000 hours adds up really easily and quickly. The baby becomes a mother-tongue master, intuiting complicated and simple grammar rules by him/herself and is able to articulate thoughts and feelings by the tender ages of 2, 3, 4, 5 years. This is truly amazing. What this non-trivial fact also tell us is this… we cannot become masters of too many things. The saying ‘Jack of all trades.. master of none!’ warns that if we spread ourselves too thin on what we want to focus on, we will end up mediocre in some and maybe good in others…. but alas we will never become great in a single one or two things. We only have so many sets of 10 000 hours, so we must choose wisely where to spend that time, our effort and money for growth.
The last angle I want to discuss is our children. For our children to gain mastery in something they love, they need three ingredients… yes you guessed it 1. 10 000 hours in the area to study, 2. love and encouragement to cheer them through those tough times… and .. what is the last of the three? Well, it is actually the hardest… we have to draw out what special talents were given to them, something they are interested in and help them cultivate it in the first place.
Good luck digging and unearthing yours and your children’s beautiful special talents.
Beautiful.