If there is any sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long-term, essentially goalless process of mastery. (Location 90)
PART ONE THE MASTER’S JOURNEY
Introduction
Our current society works in many ways to lead us astray, but the path of mastery is always there, waiting for us. (Location 126)
Chapter 1 What Is Mastery?
It resists definition yet can be instantly recognized. It comes in many varieties, yet follows certain unchanging laws. It brings rich rewards, yet is not really a goal or a destination but rather a process, a journey. We call this journey mastery, (Location 129)
The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We’re continually bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success, and fast, temporary relief, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction. (Location 134)
The evidence is clear: all of us who are born without serious genetic defects are born geniuses. (Location 199)
What we call intelligence comes in many varieties. Howard Gardner of Harvard University and the Boston University School of Medicine has identified seven of them: linguistic, musical, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, and two types of personal intelligences that might be described as intrapersonal and interpersonal. (Location 204)
The Mastery Curve
There’s really no way around it. Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it. (Location 226)
Learning generally occurs in stages. A stage ends when the habitual system has been programmed to the new task, and the cognitive and effort systems have withdrawn. This means you can perform the task without making a special effort to think of its separate parts. At this point, there’s an apparent spurt of learning. But this learning has been going on all along. (Location 246)
How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. Rather than being frustrated while on the plateau, you learn to appreciate and enjoy it just as much as you do the upward surges. (Location 249)
Chapter 2 Meet the Dabbler, the Obsessive, and the Hacker
The Dabbler
The Dabbler approaches each new sport, career opportunity, or relationship with enormous enthusiasm. He or she loves the rituals involved in getting started, the spiffy equipment, the lingo, the shine of newness. (Location 259)
When he makes his first spurt of progress in a new sport, for example, the Dabbler is overjoyed. He demonstrates his form to family, friends, and people he meets on the street. He can’t wait for the next lesson. (Location 261)
The falloff from his first peak comes as a shock. The plateau that follows is unacceptable if not incomprehensible. His enthusiasm quickly wanes. He starts missing lessons. His mind fills up with rationalizations. This really isn’t the right sport for him. It’s too competitive, noncompetitive, aggressive, non-aggressive, boring, dangerous, whatever. He tells everyone that it just doesn’t fulfill his unique needs. Starting another sport gives the Dabbler a chance to replay the scenario of starting up. Maybe he’ll make it to the second plateau this time, maybe not. Then it’s on to something else. (Location 262)
The Dabbler might think of himself as an adventurer, a connoisseur of novelty, but he’s probably closer to being what Carl Jung calls the puer aeternus, the eternal kid. Though partners change, he or she stays just the same. (Location 273)
The Obsessive
The Obsessive is a bottom-line type of person, not one to settle for second best. He or she knows results are what count, and it doesn’t matter how you get them, just so you get them fast. In fact, he wants to get the stroke just right during the very first lesson. He stays after class talking to the instructor. He asks what books and tapes he can buy to help him make progress faster. (Location 276)
The Obsessive starts out by making robust progress. His first spurt is just what he expected. But when he inevitably regresses and finds himself on a plateau, he simply won’t accept it. He redoubles his effort. He pushes himself mercilessly. He refuses to accept his boss’s and colleagues’ counsel of moderation. He works all night at the office, he’s tempted to take shortcuts for the sake of quick results. (Location 280)
Somehow, in whatever he is doing, the Obsessive manages for a while to keep making brief spurts of upward progress, followed by sharp declines—a jagged ride toward a sure fall. When the fall occurs, the Obsessive is likely to get hurt. And so are friends, colleagues, stockholders, and lovers. (Location 290)
The Hacker
The Hacker has a different attitude. After sort of getting the hang of a thing, he or she is willing to stay on the plateau indefinitely. He doesn’t mind skipping stages essential to the development of mastery if he can just go out and hack around with fellow hackers. He’s the physician or teacher who doesn’t bother going to professional meetings, the tennis player who develops a solid forehand and figures he can make do with a ragged backhand. At work, he does only enough to get by, leaves on time or early, takes every break, talks instead of doing his job, and wonders why he doesn’t get promoted. (Location 293)
The Hacker looks at marriage or living together not as an opportunity for learning and development, but as a comfortable refuge from the uncertainties of the outside world. He or she is willing to settle for static monogamy, an arrangement in which both partners have clearly defined and unchanging roles, and in which marriage is primarily an economic and domestic institution. This traditional arrangement sometimes works well enough, but in today’s world two partners are rarely willing to live indefinitely on an unchanging plateau. When your tennis partner starts improving his or her game and you don’t, the game eventually breaks up. The same thing applies to relationships. (Location 298)
The categories are obviously not quite this neat. You can be a Dabbler in love and a master in art. You can be on the path of mastery on your job and a Hacker on the golf course—or vice versa. Even in the same field, you can be sometimes on the path of mastery, sometimes an Obsessive, and so on. But the basic patterns tend to prevail, both reflecting and shaping your performance, your character, your destiny. (Location 303)
Chapter 3 America’s War Against Mastery
Our hyped-up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all-out war on mastery. (Location 316)
And the sitcoms and soaps, the crime shows, and MTV all run on the same hyped-up schedule: (1) If you make smart-assed one-liners for a half hour, everything will work out fine in time for the closing commercials. (2) People are quite nasty, don’t work hard, and get rich quickly. (3) No problem is so serious that it can’t be resolved in the wink of an eye as soon as the gleaming barrel of a handgun appears. (4) The weirdest fantasy you can think of can be realized instantly and without effort. (Location 334)
In all of this, the specific content isn’t nearly as destructive to mastery as is the rhythm. One epiphany follows another. One fantasy is crowded out by the next. Climax is piled upon climax. There’s no plateau. (Location 338)
The Path of Endless Climax
Who would be willing to warn in their commercial messages that every attempt to achieve an endless series of climactic moments, whether drug-powered or not, ends like this? (Location 346)
If you could impute some type of central intelligence to all of these commercial messages, you would have to conclude that the nation is bent on self-destruction. In any case, you might suspect that the disproportionate incidence of drug abuse in the United States, especially of drugs that give you a quick high, springs not so much from immoral or criminal impulses as from a perfectly understandable impulse to replicate the most visible, most compelling American vision of the good life—an endless series of climactic moments. (Location 359)
The quick-fix, antimastery mentality touches almost everything in our lives. (Location 370)
Look at modern medicine and pharmacology. “Fast, temporary relief” is the battle cry. Symptoms receive immediate attention; underlying causes remain in the shadows. (Location 371)
But today’s hero can become tomorrow’s pariah. Already there are signs of a massive and growing disillusionment with our instant billionaires, and also with crash diets, miracle drugs both legal and illegal, lotteries, sweepstakes, and all the flash and clutter that accrues from the worship of quick, effortless success and fulfillment. (Location 386)
A War That Can’t Be Won
Our dedication to growth at all costs puts us on a collision course with the environment. Our dedication to the illusion of endless climaxes puts us on a collision course with the human psyche. (Location 401)
In the long run, the war against mastery, the path of patient, dedicated effort without attachment to immediate results, is a war that can’t be won. (Location 410)
Chapter 4 Loving the Plateau
Early in life, we are urged to study hard, so that we’ll get good grades. We are told to get good grades so that we’ll graduate from high school and get into college. We are told to graduate from high school and get into college so that we’ll get a good job. We are told to get a good job so that we can buy a house and a car. Again and again we are told to do one thing only so that we can get something else. We spend our lives stretched on an iron rack of contingencies. (Location 414)
Contingencies, no question about it, are important. The achievement of goals is important. But the real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive. We are taught in countless ways to value the product, the prize, the climactic moment. But even after we’ve just caught the winning pass in the Superbowl, there’s always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If our life is a good one, a life of mastery, most of it will be spent on the plateau. If not, a large part of it may well be spent in restless, distracted, ultimately self-destructive attempts to escape the plateau. (Location 417)
The Joy of Regular Practice
And despite our society’s urgent and effective war against mastery, there are still millions of people who, while achieving great things in their work, are dedicated to the process as well as to the product—people who love the plateau. Life for these people is especially vivid and satisfying. (Location 467)
The Face of Mastery
Sports photography as we know it has been captured by the “thrill of victory/agony of defeat” school. Again and again we’re shown climactic moments (prodigious exertion, faces contorted with pain or triumph), almost to the exclusion of anything else. But it seems to me that mastery’s true face is relaxed and serene, sometimes faintly smiling. In fact, those we most admire in sports seem at times to enter another dimension. Besieged by opposing players, battered by the screams of the crowd, they make the difficult, even the supernatural, seem easy, and manage somehow to create harmony where chaos might otherwise prevail. (Location 499)
Goals and contingencies, as I’ve said, are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life. (Location 510)
PART TWO THE FIVE MASTER KEYS
Introduction
The human individual is equipped to learn and go on learning prodigiously from birth to death, and this is precisely what sets him or her apart from all other known forms of life. Man has at various times been defined as a building animal, a working animal, and a fighting animal, but all of these definitions are incomplete and finally false. Man is a learning animal, and the essence of the species is encoded in that simple term. (Location 518)
We all participate in a master’s journey in early childhood when we learn to talk or to walk. Every adult or older child around us is a teacher of language—the type of teacher who smiles at success, permits approximations, and isn’t likely to indulge in lectures (i.e., the best type). (Location 523)
Chapter 5 Key 1: Instruction
The Best of Instructors, the Worst of Instructors
The Magic of Teaching Beginners
Wendy Palmer, one of my partners, tells me that teaching beginners and slow students is not only fascinating but pleasurable. The talented student, she believes, is likely to learn so fast that small stages in the learning process are glossed over, creating an opaque surface that hides the secrets of the art from view. With the slow student, though, the teacher is forced to deal with small, incremental steps that penetrate like X rays the very essence of the art, and clearly reveal the process through which the art becomes manifest in movement. (Location 636)
Good Horse, Bad Horse
In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. ... The best horse, according to Suzuki, may be the worst horse. And the worst horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones. ... Comparing Various Modes of Instruction (Location 647)
So when you look for your instructor, in whatever skill or art, spend a moment celebrating it when you discover one who pursues maximum performance. But also make sure that he or she is paying exquisite attention to the slowest student on the mat. (Location 663)
Learning eventually involves interaction between the learner and the learning environment, and its effectiveness relates to the frequency, quality, variety, and intensity of the interaction. With tapes, there’s no real interaction at all; information flows in one direction only. (Location 666)
The typical school or college classroom, unhappily, is not a very good place to learn. “Frontal teaching,” with one instructor sitting or standing in front of twenty to thirty-five students who are sitting at fixed desks, is primarily an administrative expediency, a way of parceling out and keeping track of the flood of students in mass education. It’s sad that over the past hundred years almost every aspect of our national life—industry, transportation, communication, computation, entertainment—has changed almost beyond recognition, while our schools remain essentially the same. Take a look. There it is: one teacher giving out the same information at the same rate to a group of mostly passive students regardless of their individual abilities, cultural backgrounds, or learning styles. (Location 676)
Knowing When to Say Good-bye
If you should end up with a teacher who doesn’t seem right for you, first look inside. You might well be expecting more than any teacher can give. But teachers as well as students can be lazy, excessively goal oriented, indifferent, psychologically seductive, or just plain inept. It’s important to keep the proper psychological distance. If you’re too far removed, there’s no chance for the surrender that’s part of the master’s journey (see Chapter Seven); if you come too close, you lose all perspective and become a disciple rather than a student. (Location 691)
Chapter 6 Key 2: Practice
You practice your trumpet, your dance routine, your multiplication tables, your combat mission. To practice in this sense implies something separate from the rest of your life. You practice in order to learn a skill, in order to improve yourself, in order to get ahead, achieve goals, make money. ... For one who is on the master’s journey, however, the word is best conceived of as a noun, not as something you do, but as something you have, something you are. In this sense, the word is akin to the Chinese word tao and the Japanese word do, both of which mean, literally, road or path. Practice is the path upon which you travel, just that. (Location 706)
A practice (as a noun) can be anything you practice on a regular basis as an integral part of your life—not in order to gain something else, but for its own sake. (Location 712)
For a master, the rewards gained along the way are fine, but they are not the main reason for the journey. Ultimately, the master and the master’s path are one. And if the traveler is fortunate—that is, if the path is complex and profound enough—the destination is two miles farther away for every mile he or she travels. (Location 716)
There’s another secret: The people we know as masters don’t devote themselves to their particular skill just to get better at it. The truth is, they love to practice—and because of this they do get better. And then, to complete the circle, the better they get the more they enjoy performing the basic moves over and over again. (Location 726)
To practice regularly, even when you seem to be getting nowhere, might at first seem onerous. But the day eventually comes when practicing becomes a treasured part of your life. You settle into it as if into your favorite easy chair, unaware of time and the turbulence of the world. It will still be there for you tomorrow. It will never go away. (Location 765)
Ultimately, practice is the path of mastery. If you stay on it long enough, you’ll find it to be a vivid place, with its ups and downs, its challenges and comforts, its surprises, disappointments, and unconditional joys. You’ll take your share of bumps and bruises while traveling—bruises of the ego as well as of the body, mind, and spirit—but it might well turn out to be the most reliable thing in your life. Then, too, it might eventually make you a winner in your chosen field, if that’s what you’re looking for, and then people will refer to you as a master. But that’s not really the point. What is mastery? At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path. (Location 769)
Chapter 7 Key 3: Surrender
The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your own hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency. (Location 777)
Actually, the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes. (Location 796)
Surrendering to your teacher and to the fundamentals of the art are only the beginning. There are times in almost every master’s journey when it becomes necessary to give up some hard-won competence in order to advance to the next stage. This is especially true when you’re stuck at a familiar and comfortable skill level. The parable of the cup and the quart applies here. There’s a quart of milk on the table—within your reach. But you’re holding a cup of milk in your hand and you’re afraid to let go of the cup in order to get the quart. (Location 808)
Perhaps the best you can hope for on the master’s journey—whether your art be management or marriage, badminton or ballet—is to cultivate the mind and heart of the beginning at every stage along the way. For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners. (Location 850)
Chapter 8 Key 4: Intentionality
“All I know,” said Arnold Schwarzenneger, “is that the first step is to create the vision, because when you see the vision there—the beautiful vision—that creates the ‘want power.’ For example, my wanting to be Mr. Universe came about because I saw myself so clearly, being up there on the stage and winning.” (Location 929)
Note: Vision
Intentionalty fuels the master’s journey. Every master is a master of vision. (Location 932)
Note: Vision
Chapter 9 Key 5: The Edge
PART THREE TOOLS FOR MASTERY
Chapter 10 Why Resolutions Fail–and What to Do About It
Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain, and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed—and it’s a very good thing they do. ... This condition of equilibrium, this resistance to change, is called homeostasis. It characterizes all self-regulating systems, from a bacterium to a frog to a human individual to a family to an organization to an entire culture—and it applies to psychological states and behavior as well as to physical functioning. (Location 994)
The problem is, homeostasis works to keep things as they are even if they aren’t very good. (Location 1020)
1. Be aware of the way homeostasis works.
Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing—just what you’ve wanted. Of course, it might be that you have started something that’s not right for you; only you can decide. But in any case, don’t panic and give up at the first sign of trouble. (Location 1060)
You might also expect resistance from friends and family and co-workers. (Homeostasis, as we’ve seen, applies to social systems as well as individuals.) ... Bear in mind that an entire system has to change when any part of it changes. So don’t be surprised if some of the people you love start covertly or overtly undermining your self-improvement. It’s not that they wish you harm, it’s just homeostasis at work. (Location 1063)
2. Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change.
So what should you do when you run into resistance, when the red lights flash and the alarm bells ring? Well, you don’t back off, and you don’t bull your way through. Negotiation is the ticket to successful long-term change in everything from increasing your running speed to transforming your organization. (Location 1070)
The fine art of playing the edge in this case involves a willingness to take one step back for every two forward, sometimes vice versa. It also demands a determination to keep pushing, but not without awareness. Simply turning off your awareness to the warnings deprives you of guidance and risks damaging the system. Simply pushing your way through despite the warning signals increases the possibility of backsliding. (Location 1075)
3. Develop a support system.
The best support system would involve people who have gone through or are going through a similar process, people who can tell their own stories of change and listen to yours, people who will brace you up when you start to backslide and encourage you when you don’t. (Location 1081)
4. Follow a regular practice.
People embarking on any type of change can gain stability and comfort through practicing some worthwhile activity on a more or less regular basis, not so much for the sake of achieving an external goal as simply for its own sake. (Location 1091)
Practice is a habit, and any regular practice provides a sort of underlying homeostasis, a stable base during the instability of change. (Location 1096)
5. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
To learn is to change. Education, whether it involves books, body, or behavior, is a process that changes the learner. (Location 1098)
The lifelong learner is essentially one who has learned to deal with homeostasis, simply because he or she is doing it all the time. (Location 1100)
Chapter 11 Getting Energy for Mastery
A human being is the kind of machine that wears out from lack of use. There are limits, of course, and we do need healthful rest and relaxation, but for the most part we gain energy by using energy. (Location 1111)
We learn in high school physics that kinetic energy is measured in terms of motion. The same thing is true of human energy: it comes into existence through use. (Location 1114)
In school the child gets even worse news: learning is dull. There’s only one right answer to every question, and you’d better learn that answer by sitting still and listening passively, not doing anything. The conventional classroom setup, with twenty to thirty-five kids forced to do the same thing at the same time, makes individual initiative and exploration nearly impossible. (Location 1127)
Note: School
1. Maintain physical fitness.
2. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive.
Optimism gets regularly trashed by intellectuals as well as by self-proclaimed “tough-minded” journalists and commentators, but numerous studies show that people with a positive outlook on life suffer far less sickness than those who see the world in negative terms. They also have more energy. (Location 1155)
Is it possible to be too positive? Only if you deny the existence of negative factors, of situations in your life and in the world at large that need correcting. ... Even serious blows in life can give you extra energy by knocking you off dead center, shaking you out of your lethargy—but not if you deny the blows are real. (Location 1163)
3. Try telling the truth.
Truth-telling works best when it involves revealing your own feelings, not when used to insult others and to get your own way. All in all, it has a lot going for it—risk, challenge, excitement, and the release of all of that energy. (Location 1180)
4. Honor but don’t indulge your own dark side.
God knows how much energy we have locked up in the submerged part of our personality, in what Carl Jung calls the shadow. (Location 1183)
5. Set your priorities.
Before you can use your potential energy, you have to decide what you’re going to do with it. And in making any choice, you face a monstrous fact: to move in one direction, you must forgo all others. To choose one goal is to forsake a very large number of other possible goals. (Location 1199)
How can any one option, any one goal, match up to the possibilities contained in all others? This troubling equation applies to everything from lifetime goals to what you’re going to do in the next ten minutes. Should you clean out that messy closet or start reading that new book or write that letter? An affluent, consumer-oriented way of life multiplies the choices that face you. Television makes it even more complicated. By offering endless possibilities, it tempts you to choose none, to sit staring in endless wonder, to become comatose. Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair. (Location 1203)
Ultimately, liberation comes through the acceptance of limits. You can’t do everything, but you can do one thing, and then another and another. In terms of energy, it’s better to make a wrong choice than none at all. (Location 1208)
Priorities do shift, and you can change them at any time, but simply getting them down in black and white adds clarity to your life, and clarity creates energy. (Location 1211)
6. Make commitments. Take action.
The journey of mastery is ultimately goalless; you take the journey for the sake of the journey itself. But, as I’ve pointed out, there are interim goals along the way, the first of which is simply starting the journey. And there’s nothing quite so immediately energizing on any journey as the intermediate goal of a tough, firm deadline (Location 1213)
The gift of an externally imposed deadline isn’t always available. Sometimes you need to set your own. But you have to take it seriously. One way to do this is to make it public. Tell people who are important in your life. The firmer the deadline, the harder it is to break, and the more energy it confers. Above all else, move and keep moving. Don’t go off half cocked. Take time for wise planning, but don’t take forever. (Location 1220)
7. Get on the path of mastery and stay on it.
Over the long haul, there’s nothing like the path of mastery to lead you to an energetic life. A regular practice not only elicits energy but tames it. Without the firm underpinnings of a practice, deadlines can produce violent swings between frantic activity and collapse. On the master’s journey, you can learn to put things in perspective, to keep the flow of energy going during low moments as well as high. You also learn that you can’t hoard energy; you can’t build it up by not using it. Adequate rest is, of course, a part of the master’s journey, but, unaccompanied by positive action, rest may only depress you. (Location 1225)
Chapter 12 Pitfalls Along the Path
It’s easy to get on the path of mastery. The real challenge lies in staying on it. The most dedicated traveler will find pitfalls as well as rewards along the way. You probably can’t avoid them all, but it helps to know they’re there. Here are thirteen you might run into on your journey. (Location 1236)
1. Conflicting way of life.
The path of mastery doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It wends its way through a landscape of other obligations, pleasures, relationships. The traveler whose main path of mastery coincides with career and livelihood is fortunate; others must find space and time outside regular working hours for a preferred practice that brings mastery but not a living wage. The trick here is to be realistic: will you actually be able to balance job and path? (Location 1239)
“Never marry a person,” psychologist Nathaniel Brandon tells his clients, “who is not a friend of your excitement.” (Location 1245)
2. Obsessive goal orientation.
It’s fine to have ambitious goals, but the best way of reaching them is to cultivate modest expectations at every step along the way. When you’re climbing a mountain, in other words, be aware that the peak is ahead, but don’t keep looking up at it. Keep your eyes on the path. And when you reach the top of the mountain, as the Zen saying goes, keep on climbing. (Location 1249)
3. Poor instruction.
To repeat a couple of points: surrender to your teacher, but only as a teacher, not as a guru. Don’t bounce from one teacher to another, but don’t stick with a situation that’s not working, just out of inertia. And remember: the ultimate responsibility for your getting good instruction lies not with your teacher but with you. (Location 1253)
4. Lack of competitiveness.
Competition provides spice in life as well as in sports; it’s only when the spice becomes the entire diet that the player gets sick. (Location 1256)
5. Overcompetitiveness.
6. Laziness.
The bad news is that laziness will knock you off the path. The good news is that the path is the best possible cure for laziness. (Location 1269)
7. Injuries.
People get hurt because of obsessive goal orientation, because they get ahead of themselves, because they lose consciousness of what’s going on in their own bodies, in the here and now. The best way of achieving a goal is to be fully present. Surpassing previous limits involves negotiating with your body, not ignoring or overriding its messages. Negotiation involves awareness. Avoiding serious injury is less a matter of being cautious than of being conscious. All of this is also true to some extent of mental and emotional as well as physical injuries. (Location 1272)
8. Drugs.
At first, it might seem to work, but regular use leads inevitably to disaster. If you’re on drugs, you’re not on the path. (Location 1278)
9. Prizes and medals.
Excessive use of external motivation can slow and even stop your journey to mastery. (Location 1280)
Perhaps we’ll never know how far the path can go, how much a human being can truly achieve, until we realize that the ultimate reward is not a gold medal but the path itself. (Location 1288)
10. Vanity.
It’s possible that one of the reasons you got on the path of mastery was to look good. But to learn something new of any significance, you have to be willing to look foolish. Even after years of practice, you still take pratfalls. (Location 1289)
11. Dead seriousness.
Without laughter, the rough and rocky places on the path might be too painful to bear. Humor not only lightens your load, it also broadens your perspective. To be deadly serious is to suffer tunnel vision. To be able to laugh at yourself clears the vision. When choosing fellow voyagers, beware of grimness, self-importance, and the solemn eye. (Location 1294)
12. Inconsistency.
Consistency of practice is the mark of the master. (Location 1297)
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who has studied a state of happy concentration called “flow,” points out that some surgeons wash their hands and put on their gowns in precisely the same way before each operation, thus stripping their minds of outside concerns and focusing their attention fully on the task at hand. (Location 1299)
13. Perfectionism.
We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. (Location 1311)
Chapter 13 Mastering the Commonplace
Life is filled with opportunities for practicing the inexorable, unhurried rhythm of mastery, which focuses on process rather than product, yet which, paradoxically, often ends up creating more and better products in a shorter time than does the hurried, excessively goal-oriented rhythm that has become standard in our society. Making this rhythm habitual takes practice. (Location 1367)
The person who can vacuum an entire house without once losing his or her composure, staying balanced, centered, and focused on the process rather than pressing impatiently for completion, is a person who knows something about mastery. (Location 1376)
Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. (Location 1411)
Chapter 14 Packing for the Journey
Take a look at these items as you put them in your traveling bag and refer back to them at any time during your trip. (Location 1420)
The Five Master Keys
Key 1: Instruction Key 2: Practice Key 3: Surrender Key 4: Intentionality Key 5: The Edge (Location 1422)
Dealing with Change and Homeostasis
Be aware of the way homeostasis works. Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Develop a support system. Follow a regular practice. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning. (Location 1429)
Getting Energy for Mastery
Maintain physical fitness. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive. Try telling the truth. Honor but don’t indulge your own dark side. Set your priorities. Make commitments. Take action. Get on the path of mastery and stay on it. (Location 1437)
Pitfalls Along the Path
Conflicting way of life Obsessive goal orientation Poor instruction Lack of competitiveness Overcompetitiveness Laziness Injuries Drugs Prizes and medals Vanity Dead seriousness Inconsistency Perfectionism (Location 1447)
Balancing and centering.
To be balanced means that the weight of your body is distributed evenly, right and left, forward and back, all the way from the head to the toes. To be centered means that bodily awareness is concentrated in the center of the abdomen rather than, say, the head or shoulders, and that movement is initiated from this center. The important point to bear in mind here is that to be psychologically balanced and centered depends to a great extent on being physically balanced and centered. (Location 1468)
During a moment of crisis, for example, just touching yourself lightly at the physical center (a point in the abdomen an inch or two below the navel) can significantly alter your attitude and your ability to deal with whatever situation you face. (Location 1473)
You’ll need someone to read these instructions while one or more people go through the full balancing and centering procedure. Read slowly and clearly, pausing for a while wherever there are ellipses. (Location 1478)
Note: Balancing and centering exercise
the body can be considered a metaphor for everything else. Your relationships, your work, your chores, your entire life can be centered and balanced. (Location 1523)
Returning to center.
There will be moments on the path, no matter how skillful and well-balanced you might be, when you’ll be knocked off center. But don’t despair; you can practice for this eventuality. ... Here are two ways to practice regaining your center. (Location 1524)
1. Stand with eyes closed; balance and center yourself. Then, with knees bent, lean over from the waist. Let your arms hang down toward the floor. When you’ve become accustomed to this position, straighten up rather suddenly and immediately open your eyes. Fully experience your sense of disorientation; don’t struggle forcibly to regain your composure. Rather than that, touch your center with one hand and settle down into a balanced and centered state. Be aware of what happens during the process. Does the condition of being centered and balanced seem somehow deeper and more powerful after having been momentarily lost? (Location 1527)
2. Go through your balancing and centering procedure while standing with eyes open. Leaving the eyes open, spin several times to the left, then to the right—just enough to become slightly dizzy. Don’t overdo it. Then stop spinning, touch your center, and return to the balanced and centered state with increased awareness of the soles of your feet. Again, be aware of what goes on during the process of regaining center. (Location 1531)
Remember the feeling of these two exercises when you’re knocked off center either physically or psychologically. (Location 1535)
Gaining energy from unexpected blows.
An introduction to ki.
Relaxing for power.
Power, in any case, is closely allied with relaxation. Just as a tense muscle loses in strength, so a rigid, tense, and overbearing attitude eventually fails. (Location 1581)
If we take the body as a metaphor for everything else in our lives, the implications are even more significant. Just think what kind of world it would be if we all realized that we could be powerful in everything we do without being tense and rigid. (Location 1604)
Epilogue The Master and the Fool
Psychologist Abraham Maslow discovered a childlike quality (he called it a “second naivete”) in people who have met an unusually high degree of their potential. Ashleigh Montagu used the term neot-any (from neonate, meaning newborn) to describe geniuses such as Mozart and Einstein. (Location 1682)