Mastery
by George Leonard summary
Drawing on Zen philosophy and his expertise in the martial art of aikido, bestselling author George Leonard shows how the process of mastery can help us attain a higher level of excellence and a deeper sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in our daily lives.
Whether you're seeking to improve your career or your intimate relationships, increase self-esteem or create harmony within yourself, this inspiring prescriptive guide will help you master anything you choose and achieve success in all areas of your life. In Mastery, you'll discover:
- The 5 Essential Keys to Mastery
- Tools for Mastery
- How to Master Your Athletic Potential
- The 3 Personality Types That Are Obstacles to Mastery
- How to Avoid Pitfalls Along the Path
Key Takeaways from the book
- 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.
- To be a learner, you've got to be willing to be a fool.
- For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.
- Intentionality fuels the master's journey. Every master is a master of vision.
- Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.
- Indecision leads to inaction, which leads to low energy, depression, despair.
- The best way to describe your total creative capacity is to say that for all practical purposes it is infinite.
- Excessive use of external motivation can slow and even stop your journey to mastery.
- 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.
- Prizes and medals. Excessive use of external motivation can slow and even stop your journey to mastery.
- 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.
- 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.
- For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.
- On mastery in relationships: 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.
- Every time we spend money, we make an indication about what we value.
- The anti-mastery mentality is focused on quick fixes. Heart surgery rather than diet and exercise. Lottery tickets rather than retirement savings.
- In the long run, the war against mastery, the path to patient, dedicated effort without attachment to immediate results, is a war that can’t be won.
- The five keys to mastery: Instruction, Practice, Surrender, Intentionality, and The Edge.
- On learning: For mastering most skills, there’s nothing better than being in the hands of a master teacher.
- On finding a good teacher. To see the teacher clearly, look at his students.
- One benefit of learning slowly: it forces you to look deeply at the process and you discover incremental steps that you might otherwise gloss over if progress came easily.
- Regardless of your genetic potential, you have to work just as hard to fulfill it. Potential is just opportunity.
- The best teachers are the ones who have discovered how to involve each student actively in the process of learning.
- Rewards will always come to someone who commits to the practice, but the rewards are not the goal. The practice is the goal.
- Masters love the practice and because they love it, they get better. And the better they get, the more they enjoy the practice. It’s an upward spiral.
- Mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.
- There are no experts. There are only learners.
- Every master visualizes their success.
- Almost without exception, those who are masters are dedicated to the fundamentals of their calling. At the same time, they are the ones most likely to challenge their previous limits.
- Ancient Eastern wisdom: “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
- To learn is to change. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.
- A human being is the kind of machine that wears out from lack of use. There are limits, but for the most part we gain energy by using energy.
- Maintain physical fitness. It contributes enormous energy to our lives.
- Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive.
- To move in one direction, you must forgo all others. To pursue one goal is to forsake a very large number of other possible goals.