Author Derek Sivers said that pursuing mastery is how to live. He believes that mastery can help filter out noise and lead to deep happiness. I love this quote of his:
“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.”
Almost two years ago I immersed myself in taking online art courses in drawing, composition and colour. My teacher is an artist I admire, and he taught me so much in those classes and I grew as an artist. I sincerely thank Ian Roberts for being my art mentor and guide.
He explained how to master anything in 5 steps. I don’t have any bucket list goals in mind. No grand plans, just smaller things I want to work on, so I wondered if these steps might apply to me.
Mastery of any skill seems illusive. When someone masters a skill they make it look like it was effortless. We never know how long it took them to get to that point. They appear to have always been able to do it.
Knowing how hard I worked to improve my painting skills I realize I first had to build up a solid foundation.
Ian pointed out two myths about mastery. First myth, you must be passionate about it and second myth, you must spend 10,000 hours to master it.
His take on needing to be passionate was that when he first started to paint, it came from a small voice inside suggesting it was possible. You can accept your internal hints about it being possible, and then it takes follow through and action to make it happen. Your job is to start doing your task and keep doing it. If you are encouraged by your progress, you will find it easy to continue.
Needing 10,000 hours to master something sounds discouraging, doesn’t it? Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers used the research of Dr. Andrews Ericson’s study of violin students to make this claim. But Dr. Ericson said Gladwell had mis-represented the research and it is not the number of hours that matter. The students were all gifted musicians and all wanted to become concert violinists, which is a very small and extremely competitive field.
We all probably want to master something and keep improving but not on such a grand scale. We want to build our skills, see some progress and have something to show for our creative output.
The 5 steps to mastery are:
- Do deliberate practice and know “how” to practice. Focus particularly on the part you are weakest at and having the most problems.
- Know “what” to practice. Learn the principles and not just the techniques. Approach your task in a series of logical or sequential steps. It needs to make sense and be clear to you.’ It is hard to do something meaningful if you don’t know the meaning of the something that you are doing’.
- Your practice should be challenging. The best way to learn is to struggle. Strive to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. You will see how to extract, simplify and eliminate and where to put the emphasis. That struggle will embed neural pathways in the brain and make them permanent.
- Be involved in and enjoy the process of Mastery but not necessarily for a final result. Love the process because we never really arrive. When we get there, we realize there is no end to the journey and there is still so much more to learn.
- Manage the Dance of Avoidance. Nothing kills creativity quicker than letting your resistance block you from even getting started. Learn to ignore our fear of creative expression.
A hypnosis program may help you become more centered and focused in your desire to master your goals, whatever they are.