Mastery

The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

By George Leonard ; Plume, 1992

BOOK OF THE WEEK:

The modern world continuously
bombards people with
promises of immediate
fulfillment, instant success, and
fast-temporary relief. However,
success and fulfillment in life is
not to be found in the quick,
fast-temporary relief, and
bottom-line mentality that
prevail in society today. It is to
be found in the long-term,
essentially goalless process of
mastery. This is what best-
selling author George Leonard
shares in this book.
In Mastery, he shows how
people can attain a higher level
of excellence and a deeper
sense of satisfaction and
fulfillment in their daily lives
through the process of mastery.
By drawing on his knowledge of
Zen and his expertise in Aikido,
he outlines a guide to help you
master anything and become
successful in all areas of your
life. The practical wisdom found
in this book will be of immediate
use to those seeking to improve
their career, their relationships,
their self-esteem, or to those
who simply yearns for harmony
within.
read the summary

INSIDE THIS SUMMARY:

– Why Resolutions Fail and What to
– The Big Idea Do About It (Dealing with Change and
– The Master's Journey Homeostasis)
– The Three Personality Types that – Mastery and Energy
are Obstacles to Mastery
– The Five Essential Keys to Mastery

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The Master's Journey
Mastery isn't so much a goal or a destination. It is
more of a process, a journey if you will. There are
different paths to it, but they all lead in the same
general direction.
In addition, mastery isn't just reserved for those
talented or gifted individuals, or for those who had
an early start. Rather, mastery is for anyone willing
to embark on this journey and to keep at it.
Mastery begins every time you decide to learn a
new skill. This achieves a special poignancy in the
field of sports where mind, body, and spirit come
together in graceful and purposeful movements.
The Mastery Curve
Learning occurs in stages. When you learn a new
skill, you will experience brief spurts of progress,
each of which is followed by a slight fall to a plateau
that is somewhat higher than that which preceded it.
There's really no way around this, so just accept it
as it is.
Those relative brief upward surges are by no means
the only time when anything significant or exciting
happens. As you gradually hone your skills and
attain a new level of competence, you must not stop
with your practice. You also have to be willing to
spend most of your time on a plateau, and to keep
on practicing even when you seem to be getting
nowhere.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Author: George Leonard
Publisher: Plume
Date of Publication: 2002
ISBN : 0 452 26756 0
No. of Pages: 176 pages
Mastery by George Leonard
The Three Personality Types that
are Obstacles to Mastery
Not everyone is patient or resolute enough to
endure the long and arduous path to mastery.
Some people often seek out other paths paths
that offer them quick and easy pay-offs. In most
cases, the paths that they choose correspond to
their personality types. See if you can find yourself
in one of them.
The Dabbler
The dabbler is the type of person who starts each
activity, sport, relationship, or career opportunity
with lots of enthusiasm. He delights so much in the
rituals involved in getting started, in the spiffy
equipment, in the learning of a new lingo, and the
shine of newness.
Nevertheless, the dabbler is the kind of person
who gets discouraged easily and whose
enthusiasm quickly vanishes. The dabbler is more
closely comparable to Carl Jung's concept of the
“eternal kid” than to being an adventurer or a
connoisseur of novelty. Though the world and the
people around him may change, he just stays the
same.
The Obsessive
The obsessive is a bottom-line type of person and
does not settle for anything but the best. All this
person cares about are results, and he doesn't
care how to get them as long as he gets them
quick and fast.
Typically, the obsessive starts out strong and are
quite persistent to the point of stubbornness.
Moreover, he pushes himself mercilessly and
would usually turn a deaf ear to pleas of
moderation from friends or concerned individuals.
In whatever they do, the obsessive manages to
make brief spurts of upward progress, which are
often followed by sharp declines.
Unlike the dabbler, the obsessive lives for the
upward surge, the swelling background music,
and the trip to the stars in a relationship.
Relationships are like rollercoaster rides to this
guy, with stormy separations and steamy
reconciliations. If the relationship eventually fails,
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both parties get hurt a lot from the experience,
with little or no growth or learning to show for it.
The Hacker
The hacker is an altogether different person
from the dabbler and the obsessive. He is the
type who would be alright staying at the plateau
indefinitely after getting the hang out of things.
He doesn't mind skipping stages essential to
self-development as long as he can hang out
with fellow hackers. He does enough just to get
him by and he doesn't really do his job well, all
the while wondering why he keeps getting
passed over for promotions.
Additionally, the hacker looks at marriage or
relationships as a sort of comfortable refuge
from life's uncertainties. He would settle for the
traditional, static monogamy than one wherein
both partners get the opportunity to learn and
grow. This traditional arrangement sometimes
works well enough, but not all the time. When
one partner starts improving and getting better
and the other does not, the relationship
eventually breaks up.
The Five Essential Keys to
Mastery
Man is essentially a learning animal. However,
learning a new skill to which he is not
genetically predisposed to develop requires
certain doors to be opened. This is the case
with mastery.
Key 1: Instruction
To become a master yourself, you need to get a
first-rate instruction. There's nothing better
than to be in the hands of a master teacher and
to learn from him on a one-to-one basis or in a
small group.
But how do you ascertain a master teacher
from one who is not? Look at his credentials
and lineage. In so doing, you will get to know
who his teacher was, and his teacher's teacher
before that and so on. This is very important for
Mastery by George Leonard
it will tell you the ancestry of his art as well as help
you gain an insight into that person's character.
Nonetheless, do not go by credentials alone. A
first-rate instructor is one who is humble and is
able to work enthusiastically and effectively with
beginners or slow learners and advanced or
talented students alike. The essence of an
instructor's art lie not so much in his ability to make
advanced or talented students become better at
what they do, but in serving as a guide to
beginners and to those who are neither as fast nor
talented as others on the path to mastery.
Knowledge, expertise, technical skill, and
credentials are important indeed; however, these
merits are quite meaningless without the patience
and empathy that goes with teaching beginners.
For in helping beginners learn a new skill or art is
to penetrate not only the core of that skill or art but
also the process of mastery itself.
If you can, attend one session first and observe
how the teacher interacts with his students. Does
he instruct with praise or admonition? Does he
spend more time with advanced or talented
students than with beginners and slow learners?
Key 2: Practice
Practice will make you good at anything you do. It
is best conceived not as something that you do,
but as something that you are. For one who is on
the path of mastery, practice is the path upon
which you travel. It is the path of mastery itself. It is
comparable to the Chinese word “tao” and the
Japanese word “do,” both of which mean ”road or
path” literally. At the heart of it, mastery is practice,
and mastery is staying on the path despite the
many ups and downs that you'll encounter along
the way.
A practice can be anything you perform on a
regular basis as an integral part of your life. It may
be a sport, a career, or even a seemingly simple
activity such as gardening. But a practice is not
merely a way to make a living, or a collection of
clients or patients. It is more than that. You
practice not so much to gain rewards in life, but
you practice for practice's own sake. For a master,
the rewards gained along the way are fine, but
they are not the main reason for his journey. And
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ultimately, the master and the master's path will
become one.
A master goes along with the rhetoric of winning,
but secretly yearns for those games that are
filled with delicious twists and turns, great plays,
close calls, and magical finishes regardless of
who wins or loses. Furthermore, a master
devotes himself to a particular art or skill not to
get better at it, but because he just loves to
practice. And because of this, they definitely
tend to get better. Oddly enough, the more they
get better, the more they enjoy performing even
the basic moves of their art over and over again.
As an old martial arts proverb says: “The master
is the one who stays on the mat five minutes
longer everyday than anybody else.”
Key 3: Surrender
Surrendering means submitting yourself to your
teacher and to the demands of your discipline
willingly. The path of mastery demands nothing
less of you. In addition, surrendering also means
that you give up your hard-won proficiency in
order for you to reach a higher or different level of
competence.
Whenever you learn a new skill, it is unavoidable
for you to look clumsy and foolish. However, this
is quite natural. A certain degree of indignity is
always involved in any kind of significant
learning. There is simply no way around it. A
beginner who stands rigid and defiant will only
end up not learning anything at all.
Likewise, a beginner who does not persevere
and endure the drudgery and the endless
repetitions involved in mastering any skill or art
has little chance of success. Even so, there is a
big difference between mindless and mindful
repetition. For one, there is much satisfaction to
be gained from doing repetitions mindfully.
Surprisingly, you will discover an endless stream
of subtle variations on already familiar themes.
Nevertheless, surrendering does not mean that
you give up your own physical or moral center or
just passively accepting your teacher's
teachings. You must maintain a balance
between yourself and your teacher. If you
become too close to your teacher, you tend to
Mastery by George Leonard
lose perspective. As a result, you become more of a
disciple than a student. Remember, there are no
experts on the path of mastery, only learners, and
learning is a process that does not end.
Key 4: Intentionality
Intentionality is essential in the master's journey. It
is what makes the creation of an idea and
transforming that idea into reality possible. In
particular, intentionality involves envisioning the
outcome in your mind and doing your best to make
it happen. This transformation is sort of what the
process of mastery is all about.
Psychologists in the field of sports know
intentionality more familiarly as the mental game
willpower, attitude, or imaging. Moreover, every
winning athlete and notable sports figures know of
this, for they have experienced firsthand the effect
of the mind in upping their performance.
Every master is a master of vision, that is, they are
quite skillful in making use of the power of their
minds in helping them achieve their goals. More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
George Leonard is an
aikido black belt and
d e v e l o p e r o f a
psychophysical system
called Leonard Energy
Training. Former senior
editor of Look Magazine, he
is currently a consulting
editor to Esquire. He is also
a past-president of the
Association for Humanistic Psychology and author of
numerous books including Education and Ecstasy,
The Silent Pulse, The Ultimate Athlete, The
Transformation, and Walking on the Edge of the
World.
George Leonard has spent much of his life seeking to
master the ancient and demanding martial art of
aikido, in which flaws are magnified and the quick fix
is impossible. He soon learned that mastery is a
journey, and that the master must have the courage to
risk failure.
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often than not, the effectiveness of a technique
depends largely on the vividness of their image of
themselves executing that particular technique. In
aikido for instance, many aikido-ka will testify that the
imaged technique is considerably more effective
than a technique done through brute force alone.
Key 5: The Edge
Masters are, without a doubt, people dedicated to the
fundamentals of their art. They are zealots of practice
and connoisseurs of the incremental step, yet they
are also people who defy limits, take risks for the sake
of improving their skills further, and even become
obsessive at times in their pursuit of higher
performance.
This human desire for self-transcendence of going
further and beyond what everyone else have done
before is natural. It is part of what makes you human.
For these people, the admonitions of critics about any
attendant dangers in what they are doing are already
moot; instead, they just push their minds and bodies
to the limits and continuously press on the edges of
what others have deemed as possible.
However, “playing the edge” is a balancing act of
sorts. You need to be aware of those instances when
you are pushing yourself beyond your limits.
Ironically though, it is within this same awareness
that you also deliberately decide to challenge those
limits and commit yourself to attaining the
unattainable.
This may seem a foolhardy endeavor for some;
others may see it as a heroic struggle against
mediocrity. Perhaps the one is more correct than the
other, or perhaps both are correct in their
assessment. Nonetheless, masters have this foolish,
yet heroic desire to go beyond the possible and do
the impossible. Despite all that, you should have
many years of instruction, practice, surrender, and
intentionality before you should attempt playing with
the edge.
Why Resolutions Fail and What to Do
About It (Dealing with Change and
Homeostasis)
It's easy to get on the path of mastery. The real
Mastery by George Leonard
challenge lies in staying on it. Also, there will be
times when you will revert to your old ways. This is
really unavoidable. Everyone experiences some
sort of resistance to change, even if the change is
for their own good or benefit. This resistance to
change, this tendency toward a state of
equilibrium or the existing state of affairs, is called
homeostasis.
You can see homeostasis at work in all self-
regulating systems, from a bacterium to an
individual to an organization. It applies to
psychological states and behaviors as well as to
physical functioning. It works to keep things as
they are. This is actually good if the changes that
are happening will not really benefit the individual
or group.
This only becomes a problem when preserving
the status quo is not anymore beneficial to the
individual or to the group. Remember,
homeostasis resists all changes. It does not
distinguish between good changes or bad
changes.
However, change is inevitable. It is the only thing
that we could be certain of. The impact of change
becomes more pronounced as you begin to
embark on the path of mastery. To help you on
your journey, take note of the following five
guidelines.
1. Be aware of the way homeostasis
works.
Expect resistance and backlash. When the alarm
bells start ringing, it does not necessarily mean
that you have made a bad decision, or that you are
going the wrong way. In fact, you can take these
signals as indications that your life is definitely
changing. However, do not disregard these
warning completely. It might also mean that you
have started something that is not right for you. In
any case, only you can decide. Just don't panic or
give up at the first sign of trouble.
2. Be willing to negotiate with your
resistance to change.
If you do run into resistance, negotiation is the
best way to deal with it. You should not back off,
nor should you bull your way through it. Use
resistance as your best possible guide toward
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performance. If need be, take one step back for
every two steps forward, sometimes vice-versa. You
should also stay alert as you plod your way forward.
Simply pushing your way through without giving
heed to those warning signals only increase the
chances of backsliding.
3. Develop a support system.
It helps to have other people whom you can share
the joys and perils of the change you are making. Try
to involve people who have undergone or are going
through a similar experience as you right now. They
are the best kinds of people who can brace you up
when you start backsliding or encourage you to go
on when you feel like giving up.
4. Follow a regular practice.
Applying the principles of mastery to your profession
or to your life will become much easier if you have
been practicing some worthwhile activity on a more
or less regular basis. Any regular practice regimen
will provide you with a sort of stable base on which
you can gain stability and comfort in times of
instability.
5. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
To learn is to change, and since learning does not
really end, so does change. The lifelong learner is
one who has learned to deal with homeostasis.
Mastery and Energy
You may have learned from high school physics that
kinetic energy is measured in terms of motion. The
same thing is true of human energy. If people were
machines, they would be the kind that would more
likely wear out from lack of use instead of overuse.
Humans gain energy from using energy. More often
than not, the best remedy for physical weariness is
thirty minutes of aerobic exercise. Similarly, mental
and spiritual lethargy can often be cured by taking
decisive action.
The following guidelines will help you get started:
Mastery by George Leonard
1. Maintain physical fitness.
People who feel good about themselves and who
are in touch with nature and their own bodies are
more likely to use their energy for the good of the
world and its people.
2. Acknowledge the negative, but
accentuate the positive.
Acknowledging the negative things in your life
mean that you are facing up to the truth and
moving on. Denial only inhibits energy, while
realistic acknowledgment of the truth releases it.
Numerous studies show that people with a
positive outlook on life suffers less from sickness.
What's more, these people have more energy.
3. Try telling the truth.
Lies and secrets are poisons to any organization.
When people are truthful to their fellows, mistakes
are minimized and productivity intensifies.
4. Honor, but don't indulge your dark side.
There are times when expressing your anger is
the right thing to do. There will also be times when
you can put that fervid energy to good use. For
instance, you can channel that energy in
accomplishing a project that you are working on.
5. Set your priorities.
With the endless possibilities that society offers
today, it is not surprising that some become
riddled with indecisions of all sorts. The problem
with indecision is that it often leads to inaction,
which may result in low energy, depression, and
despair. Thus, you need to set priorities and focus
your energy on one goal at a time. Priorities may
change, but by making a conscious effort to clarify
your goal, you won't get lost ever again.
6. Make commitments and take action.
The master's journey is ultimately goalless.
However, there are interim goals along the way
that you should take care of. For instance, when
you have something important to do, then you
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should do it posthaste. More importantly, make
sure that you keep on moving and that you have
spent enough time planning your moves.

7. Get on the path of mastery and stay on it.

There's nothing like embarking on the path of
mastery to lead you to an energetic life. When you
take the path of mastery, you will learn to put things
in perspective. You will also learn to keep the flow of
energy going. Remember, people whose energies
are flowing freely don't need to take drugs or go to
extremes just to feel alive.

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