[Malkhaz]

Here are the five master keys to make you succeed (from Mastery by George Leonard)

Instruction makes the path to mastery easier. Do not reinvent the wheel. It will take too much time and effort you could dedicate to more productive endeavors. This does not mean you have to necessarily have a teacher that you pay in everything you do. There are times when I might need help with something regarding the piano, and I will simply look for it online and find the answer in a matter of minutes as opposed to the hours it would take if I tried to figure it out by myself.

If you are looking for an instructor or are the instructor yourself (and everyone is if you ever have a child, or bring a friend to the gym, or simply have a slightly higher value than anyone around you), make sure to point out what the student is doing right at least as frequently as what he is doing wrong.

Practice and love it. The destination is two miles farther away for every mile you travel on your path. The upward spiral of success is the following: love practice, consequently get better, enjoy performing the basics even more. Repeat. Aikido beginners start looking around after performing a basic move ten times in a row. Black belts do the same move for hours.

Surrender. This requires extreme humility and a giving up of your current state to get to a superior one. No matter how much you know, if your instructor or simply a friend that is instructing you is in a place where you want to be, adopt the mindset that you do not know anything and learn as much as you can from him.

Intentionality. Leonard suggests visualizing your success. This concept is slightly fuzzy, but nonetheless psychologically extremely relevant. If you cannot even visualize yourself as the master, chances are you will not be able to be a master in real life either. Leonard quotes Jack Nicklaus, a famous golfer, and says that, “a successful shot, Nicklaus told us, was 50 percent visualization, 40 percent setup, and only 10 percent swing.”

And finally, the Edge. Playing the edge is a balancing act. It demands the awareness to know when you are pushing yourself beyond safe limits. You want to be as close as possible to the edge without falling over.

Julie Moss was leading the women’s division of the twenty-six-mile marathon on Hawaii’s Ironman Triathlon World Championship. With Only one hundred yards left between her and the finish, Moss fell to her knees. She then rose, ran a few more yards, and collapsed again, As TV cameras rolled, she lost control of her bodily functions. She got up again, ran, fell, and then started crawling. Passed by the second place runner, she crawled across the finish line, stretched out her arm, and passed out.

This event was both described as “heroic…one of the greatest moments in the history of televised sport” and “stupid—very nearly fatal.” The way you judge this does not really concern me; however, you must cultivate an extreme awareness for your edge. It is the difference between incomprehensible success and an injury and failure.

[bluekoi]

Malkhaz, Thanks for posting!

[Malkhaz]

I'm glad you enjoyed. This is one of my favorite books of all time.

[Malkhaz]

I recently made a video about my favorite idea from this book as well...

If the topic was interesting to you, you might find the video interesting as well: