“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.” George Leonard
If you’ve been going at this for a little while, or even if you’re just starting out, you will probably end up meeting a plateau. You’ll be thinking after all this hard climbing, you’ve been pumping yourself up and your legs are the size of tree trunks, and you’re sweating it out. You reach the top thinking that you’re going to catch a lucky prize, but you get there and alas, all you can see are plains. Flat plains as far as the eye can see.
It happens to all of us, happens to the best of us. All the greatest athletes in the world understand this, they understand that at some point you reach some sort of barrier, but it is the act of pushing through that barrier is when greatness is achieved.
Greatness, genius, mastery, being at one or whatever it is you want to call it is all the same thing and the path to getting there is the same. Luckily for us, the path and the process has been laid out by great men and women before us, and the greatest mention of this is in the words Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
So what happens when you reach the plateau? Well you’re going to have to keep walking and pushing through. The path to mastery is having respect of the process and about having patience. When you have a clear defined vision of where you want to be then everything slowly falls into place. You have to keep chipping away at the process and respect the small 1 % increases.
Your vision is like your long term goal, your ultimate. What are you doing today that is stopping you from getting where you want? Let’s say you start doing something and you get really good at it, then all of sudden you don’t progress and you get sucked into instant gratification and you look for ways to escape.
Having that vision will help you in refining your practice, because when you reach a plateau then your constant practice and respect of that practice and that process will get you through to the next plateau. You see mastery and growth doesn’t move in smooth straight line, it is staggered almost like a set of stairs. If you can imagine being on a staircase, your vision and long term goal is the imaginary top of the stairs.
“All I know, 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 stage and winning.” – Arnold Schwarznegger
This is why I always talk about having a list of wants, having that vision. That in and of itself is therapeutic and you will learn a lot about yourself, so what are you waiting for 🙂
“I know some people say ‘Keep your eyes on the prize,’ but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you’re going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.” – Russell Simmons (Founder of Def Jam)
The Shining Man 