mastery-keys.md

mastery-keys.md

The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfilment

• Mastery: the process with which what was once difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable with practice.
• Focusing on quick results is always counter productive to mastery

Introduction:

• Touching your forehead is easy now, but it was very complicated when you were young. Here, the progress was not a straight line: brief bursts of progress seperated with periods of getting nowhere. You took a masters journey in the process.
• You can take the same journey to master anything in life.

What is mastery?

• We world is an adverserial place to achieve mastery because we're continously bombarded with promises of instant success. This always takes us in the opposite direction of mastery.
• For getting it mastery, it's better to have a clean slate rather than having to unlearn bad habits you previously picked up.
• Tennis: journey to mastery-
  • teacher shows you how to swing the racker
  • gives you the racket and asks you to judge if you're hitting the ball early or late.
  • keeps correcting your posture, you need to think to follow those rules and thinking gets in the way of graceful sponteneous movement.
  • you start to become impatient, and you're not even getting good exercise.
  • you want results, but you don't see any.
  • after 5 weeks of boring practice, a light goes on. all of a sudden, you're able to follow the suggestions without thinking. your attention is more free now and you can focus on specific things (eg. hitting the ball) rahter than everything.
  • but now, you're going to have to do hard practice: hitting the ball while moving. you feel like you're losing what you just gained.
  • you stay at that level for a while without making progress.
  • teacher:
    • it'll take a while before you get better, you shouldn't play with the goal of winnning just yet as it stifles progress
    • what you need is controlled circumstances in which you hit 1000s of balls: forehand, backhand, footwork, etc. and it happens in stages. you can do placement unless you're good at forehand and footwork."
    • at the start of each stage, you'll have to think, which means that you'll have a momentary dip in performance.
• But we're all geniuses as we're born, we're able to learn really complicated things when we're young.
• Each of us have enough in-born talent to acheive the state of mastery in any area.
• In the masters jouney, you get stuck in long plateus with no apparent progress. You need to continue practice when you're on these plateus and seem to be going no where.
• You can become a master only by enjoying the process itself: practicing for the sake of practice, and not as a means to an end.

Types of journeys:

• 3 types: dabbler, obsessive and hacker
• dabbler:
  • chases things with enthusiasm, and shows off the things that he learns.
  • gets surprised by plateaus / dips. enthusiasm wanes. makes excuses and quits, start a new activity to go through the same process again.
• obsessive:
  • wants to be the best, cares only about getting the results fast. ready to spend additional time for it. asks extra questions after the class on how he can learn more.
  • makes robust progress. when progress stops, he doubles his effort. rejects suggestions of moderation.
  • but he learns that he isn't able to learn progress, gets hurt and gives up.
• hacker:
  • he doesn't want to be a master, just good enough to have fun.
  • and wonders why he isn't making progress.

America's war against mastery

• Our society demands high level of consumer spending from us. They want us to spend money selling us exotic things.
• We go to place after place, vacation after vacation, always looking forward for the next one.
• This is counter productive to the environment (we ignore long term consequences of what we're doing) and the human psyche (we are in an endless loop of chasing for experiences).

Loving the plateau

• We spend our lives on contingencies, "I'm going to be happy once this happens". We need to focus more on life, the way we're living it rather than how it will be in an imagined future.
• Making peace with a pleatuea, and saying "it's fine, I have more time to practice, learn and think now" can be quite helpful.
• Steady goalless practice is the way to get good in martial arts. Not setting the SMART goals.
• For the people who enjoy the plateau, is for whom life is the most peaceful.
• Love of your work, willingness to stay with it even in the absence of extrinsic reward, is the real deal. If you find it, hold it tightly.
• Mastery's true face is not continously putting a tight face and striving with full effort. It's more of doing things in an effortless, serene way.

The 5 master keys:

• The human are learning animals. There are 5 keys that lead to mastery in humans.

Mode 1: instruction

• You cannot become a master by being self-taught, you will just end up reinventing the wheel.
• You understand what can't be done, and won't waste time exploring infertile areas of study.
• There are several ways to get instructions: masters, videos, books, classroom, friends, etc.
• Finding teachers can be the key factor. Choose carefully.
  • Pick instructors who give good attention to the slowest student on the mat.
  • The most talented people have trouble staying on the path to mastery. The ones who are willing to learn are the ones who stay.
  • When you learn too easily, you don't work harder to understand the intricacies of something. It's better to be a slow learner.
• Comparing various modes of instruction
  • audio + video tapes only have limited effectiveness. you need two way interaction, feedback on what you're doing.
  • typical college classroom is not a good way to learn. the content needs to be self-paced based on the student's learning speed.
  • teachers can intentionally make mistakes to keep the students active.

Mode 2: Practice

• Don't see practice as something you do, but something you have / are. Practice is the path upon which you travel.
• Master's practice, is a goalless journey. Focus on learning, even the most basic of things. There's always something more to deconstruct.
• The master of any game, is a master of practice. Just focus on practice till the end of time, without focusing on the result.

Mode 3: Surrender

• Surrendering to your master / demands of your discipline is a key to mastery.
• Give up your ego. And just follow your master, unless there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• It's okay to continously repeat what you already know. Satisfation lies in mindful repetition of variation on familiar themes.
• When learning MMA, try things out before questioning the master. You might be an expert in a different art, but don't let that cloud your judgement when you're learning a new skill.
  • Be humble, and listen and learn from everyone.

Mode 4: Intentionality

• Visualization is quite helpful for success. When you're practice is already perfect, it's the mind that makes the key difference. Here's where visualization helps.
• VMBR: viseo-motor behavior reharsal is quite helpful to learn new skills. It involves relaxation + visualization during off time.
• Sometimes, practicing in a different frame of reference (eg. seeing yourself as watery animal that has to cling to things) can unlock incredible performance that hasn't been seen before. Seeing a clear mental picture, can actually produce supernatural performance.

Mode 5: The Edge

• Push yourself to your limits, to explore new possibilities. But you need to do it safely because you can injure yourself in any physical activity.

Tools to mastery:

Why resolutions fail:

• We commit, tell friends and start doing well. But then we back slide. It's because we all resist change.
• The body doesn't differentiate between good and bad change, it resists all kinds of change.
• Given this reality about the human psyche, how can we make lasting change?
  • Be aware of the resistance. Note that it's a good thing. Sometimes the resistance comes externally too, through other people because it's the law of nature to keep things as they are.
  • Negotiate with your resistance to change. Be aware of that resistance, and hold back accordingly (renegotiate with yourself / others and get back on track)
  • Develop a support system. Work with people who are going through similar change, exchange ideas. Or let people close to you know what you're doing, and tell them how they can support you.
  • Follow regular practice. Helps you a stable base from which you can resist the homeostasis.
  • Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning.

Getting energy for mastery:

• We wear out when we're not doing much. Using our brain, can sometimes be a source of energy.
• Why do we rather spend time on TV, making ourselves more lazy rather than doing busy work?
• Adults tend to put a pause on the kids learning process by keeping a TV in front of them.
• Children don't have time to explore in the classroom either.
• But there's that one guy who seems to possess super human energy. How can you get there? by following these principles:
  • maintain physical fitness
  • acknowledge the negative, accentuate the positive
  • try telling the truth
  • honor but don't indulge your dark side
  • set your priorities
  • make commitments, take action
  • get on the path of mastery and stay on it (helps you stay off other addictions too)

Pitfalls along the path:

• being aligned with other commitment in life
• obsessive goal orientation.
• poor instruction
• lack of competitiveness: it adds spice in life. it gives motivation. work on winning and losing competitions graceful
• overcompetitiveness
• laziness
• injuries: be fully present and mindful to avoid these, don't override any of these messages
• drugs
• prizes and medals
• vanity: prioritizing fame
• dead seriousness, without laughter
• inconsistency
• perfectionism

Mastering the commonplace:

• There are chores we can't avoid in life. The in-between moments of what we really want to do (eg. cooking, doing dishes). Most of life is actually spend in these in-between moments.
• Make this as part of the practice of mastery. By being fully mindful, and thinking about how you can do it better. Eg. driving, dishes, taking kids to school, etc.
• Don't hurry when doing these in-between moments. Someone who can vaccum the entire house without getting frustrated has attained a key skill in the process of mastery
• Relationships
  • instruction: seek out to get the best suggestions, infromation to improve them
  • practice: set time aside every week to share full mindful time
  • surrender: yeild on somethings that are close to your heart to make progresss. lose your ego.
  • intentionality
  • the edge

Packing for the journey:

• Leonard Energy Training (LET)
  • Balancing and centering.
• SKIPPING

The master and the fool

• Be ready to be a fool, not thinking of your reputation when you're learning.
• Allow yourself to make mistakes, and give yourself rewards for all the small progress you make.