Setbacks are inevitable on the road to Mastery
In the book DRIVE by Daniel H. Pink he talks about the three Laws of Mastery, we will touch upon them but I strongly recommend that you read the book.
I believe I should first tell a definition of mastery before getting into this blog. Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters. It is important to note that mastery is also an Asymptote. Meaning you can approach it, get close and maybe even touch it but you will never reach it. So why even bother trying to reach for something you can never get ? Because the joy is in the pursuit more than the realization.
I believe that being a trainer really matter. I believe we have the power to change lives and help people. This is why most people get into any business, those who do it for money or other extrinsic reasons will never be happy.
To often I hear the term Master Trainer and I want to vomit. What the heck does that mean? True mastery of any subject is knowing that you will never know everything. Society and school have taught us to learn for credentials and then we are done learning. It seems once people get an A in a class or get a PHD, they stop learning and feel that they have mastered it. They seek performance based goals rather then learning goals. We need to change our mindsets, we must shift to learning for the sake of learning. Trainers go to conferences to collect CEU's and forget that they are there to learn rather then just keep their credentials.
Look at your mindset and think of this statement from the book DRIVE : "Begin with one mindset, and mastery is impossible. Begin with the other, and it can be inevitable.".
Another law of mastery is that it's painful. Not in physical sense of pain but in the sense that there will be setbacks on the road to mastery, just like anything else in life. When things come easy we tend to not appreciate them. It requires hard work and determination. It takes what the military calls "grit" - "perseverance and passion for long term goals". There is so much information in the world of health that we may feel we are doing something right and then learn later on that we were way off. This is no reason to quit. We must learn from these situations and get better because of them. I feel Julius Erving describes this best, " Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.".
As a society there needs to be a shift in the way we think. There needs to be less of a focus on how much we make and more of a focus on how much of a difference we can make. If you love what do you will never work a day in your life. I love learning and practicing my mastery of my professions. I know I will never learn everything but I am having fun with the journey of trying. I want my life to be one long autotelic experience, meaning the goal is self-fulfilling; the activity is it's own reward. I will leave you with two sentences from the book that have changed my mindset and hopefully you can get something out of them.
" The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes."
-FLO
In the book DRIVE by Daniel H. Pink he talks about the three Laws of Mastery, we will touch upon them but I strongly recommend that you read the book.
I believe I should first tell a definition of mastery before getting into this blog. Mastery is the desire to get better and better at something that matters. It is important to note that mastery is also an Asymptote. Meaning you can approach it, get close and maybe even touch it but you will never reach it. So why even bother trying to reach for something you can never get ? Because the joy is in the pursuit more than the realization.
I believe that being a trainer really matter. I believe we have the power to change lives and help people. This is why most people get into any business, those who do it for money or other extrinsic reasons will never be happy.
To often I hear the term Master Trainer and I want to vomit. What the heck does that mean? True mastery of any subject is knowing that you will never know everything. Society and school have taught us to learn for credentials and then we are done learning. It seems once people get an A in a class or get a PHD, they stop learning and feel that they have mastered it. They seek performance based goals rather then learning goals. We need to change our mindsets, we must shift to learning for the sake of learning. Trainers go to conferences to collect CEU's and forget that they are there to learn rather then just keep their credentials.
Look at your mindset and think of this statement from the book DRIVE : "Begin with one mindset, and mastery is impossible. Begin with the other, and it can be inevitable.".
Another law of mastery is that it's painful. Not in physical sense of pain but in the sense that there will be setbacks on the road to mastery, just like anything else in life. When things come easy we tend to not appreciate them. It requires hard work and determination. It takes what the military calls "grit" - "perseverance and passion for long term goals". There is so much information in the world of health that we may feel we are doing something right and then learn later on that we were way off. This is no reason to quit. We must learn from these situations and get better because of them. I feel Julius Erving describes this best, " Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.".
As a society there needs to be a shift in the way we think. There needs to be less of a focus on how much we make and more of a focus on how much of a difference we can make. If you love what do you will never work a day in your life. I love learning and practicing my mastery of my professions. I know I will never learn everything but I am having fun with the journey of trying. I want my life to be one long autotelic experience, meaning the goal is self-fulfilling; the activity is it's own reward. I will leave you with two sentences from the book that have changed my mindset and hopefully you can get something out of them.
" The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes."
-FLO
What an awesome post! I am sometimes overwhelmed at the amount of information that I want to learn, but I will continue to move forward and know that with every bit of information I learn, I am a better trainer.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is right on time Chris!! Well done and thank you, definitely needed this.
ReplyDelete