Be All That You Can Be

Do you want to be the best? Can you imagine the feeling of the crowd cheering, family and friends bragging about you, and the world taking notice of your accomplishments?

This is a theme for humanity, being the best that you can be is a fantastic idea, that everyone loves. When’s the last time you heard someone say "Give it your 50%, half-assed effort man!"

This is not an uncommon dream, and it’s not even an uncommon experience. The world has more successful people than ever before, and these people all say the same thing when asked why they do what they do.

I do it because I love it. I do it for it’s own sake. I don’t care if others are looking or not.

Even I myself have this dream. Many people have noted that I’m already more skilled than many at a wide variety of things, and receive praise for them, but I don’t compare myself to others, and all I care about is my own personal mastery of life.

What is Mastery?

Mastery is a personal thing; it’s a degree of excellence that you feel personally. When you reach a level of growth you’re comfortable with in a particular area, you feel it’s ‘mastered’, you have a ‘sense of mastery’ (at least for now).

Mastery is personal, because all that it really is, is the continual surpassing your own personal best. For some things, you’ll keep surpassing your personal best so quickly that you’ll also surpass everyone else’s as well. This transforms personal mastery into a social thing.

Mastery can become a social thing when the world wakes up and takes substantial notice of your achievement, and then they all get on the same page regarding your excellence and achievement. Whether they do this or not though, should ideally not affect your own pursuit of personal bests.

Even the humble Shaolin monks in China, who when asked, "Are you an expert martial artist?" answer sincerely: "No, I’m still learning and on the path of training for body and soul." The reality is, that they know in their hearts that they have the ability to take on a massive amount of the world in any form of martial arts ‘competition.’ They are basically ‘masters,’ and it comes from this paradoxical attitude of humbleness and deep-confidence.

People who excel at their craft… practice, they practice nearly every day, and it’s important to note that experts at anything work on foundation. Foundation, foundation, foundation.

Let’s imagine an audience watching an athlete. Now, the people who see a master athelete perform usually only see and pay attention to the power moves or the flashy displays but if you ask any real athlete, you’ll find out that every day he’s working on some form of pushups, sit-ups, and basic cardio, just like you or I would if we wanted to improve. Now, they may do it with their own style, and they may show a lot of personality in their variations, but at the core of it, they’re all stretching, warming up and then doing the basic movements. Even when they’re practicing the harder techniques, they’re often running through the basics as part of the process.

This habitual repetition of the basics can apply to anything. Take cooking, for example. If you cook, then you know how to make-up or look up a recipe online, put on your apron, prep the ingredients, add in some oil and begin cooking… voila! The basics are a big part of it. Of course, it can become more in depth from that point, but the basics are always gone through over and over (until maybe you acquire a few sous-chefs to rock things for you).

So if the basics are simple, and all the experts became experts simply by passionately pursuing them, why do people judge and hate on the difficulty of learning new things? You hear all kinds of nonsense.

Oh! It’s so hard!

 

I could never do that.

 

That must have taken years of training

Practice Is Mastery

Learning mastery is not difficult. In fact, mastery is not difficult, even though this is what most people repeat over and over. Mastery is a very, very, very, simple process, that may require some ‘difficult choices’, but it is not actually difficult.

Most experts seem to have invested "years of training", but the reality is that their core learning comes within a few months of intense passion. A lot of the other ‘years’ were really just the person adjusting their attitude and personal style, marketing themselves, and allowing themselves to feel inspired about expanding their personal craft in every way imaginable.

Before I became an expert creative-thinker, I took inspiration from everything. I spent hours speed-reading books, copying comics, drawing and writing for family, friends, and school. I collected music and movies and art and talked about it all with anyone who’d listen. I hung out with people who appreciated beauty, art, and creativity. I studied philosophy, religion, and inspiration in all walks of life. I read spiritual teacher after spiritual teacher, personal growth authors, and books about muses. I passionately pursued what I loved with my heart and soul — putting time into the basics, and appreciating others’ creative creations.

Before I became an expert conversationalist, I had millions (billions?) of conversations which I poured my heart and soul into. Many are what people would consider boring, or grunt-work. Many of them were ‘failures’, alienating people I truly desired to connect with. Many caused other parts of my life to suffer. It never phased me though, and I engaged in arguments, debates, story-telling, soul-sharing, advice-giving, empassioned listening, non-verbal chats, online, and much more. I connected with all races, ages, sexualities, religions, etc. I watched movies and tv rapt with attention at the exchanges, I watched high-brow humour and british comedy, making sure to follow well. All these things are very, very simple, especially when a lot of it were just ‘failures.’ Anyone can fail multiple times, right?

Eventually I succeeded, and eventually I ‘mastered’ it.

Note: When I call myself an expert I just mean that by the vast majority of my personal circle of contacts, most would consider me an expert. SpiritSentient is not big on comparisons to others, generally. Personally, I don’t have to think when performing the above 2 examples, they come easily and naturally.

You’re An Expert Already

You can easily apply this concept of foundations, practice and mastery, to anything you’re even remotely good at.

Are you any good at walking ? Got much practice? Do you fall often? Do you remember learning to walk? Do you remember that it was a bit scary and a new experience on your rubbery-toddler legs, but you still had a deep, passionate desire to walk, whether you fell or not? Do you remember focusing on the basics?

"If I can just stand up and stay steady, maybe soon I’ll move like Mom and Dad."

 

"Okay, if I can just take two steps, I’ll have part of it down. I’ll keep practicing those two until it’s easy and I can try for a third."

Ok, so maybe you don’t remember your thought processes when you were a child learning to walk, but the process is the same.

Everybody Wants Something

Everybody wants to be good at something, and everybody can be. You see, there is room for more than one master. Everyone is unique and adds their own personal style to things. These musicians did the same thing: The Beatles, Mozart, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Queen, Abba, Lady Gaga, and Black-Eyed Peas.

All of the above could be considered musical masters, and experts in their field. They all added their own uniqueness, style, and their own combination of gifts that go beyond the music. The Beatles focused their craft on short, poppy, catchy, danceables tunes. Mozart went with deep, transcendent, lengthy compositions. They were different masters for different parts of society in different time-periods.

By now, I’m sure you feel a deeper understanding of mastery and excellence.

We’d love for you to drop comparisons to others and focus on your personal best. You’re naturally inclined and passionate towards some things, you have a life on earth to use these passions, and add your own unique style and accents to it. The way of mastery is not hard, — don’t wait, get to doing what you love, we’re all waiting for it and we’ll appreciate it as soon as we realize it exists, so show us!

Are you good at something you want to share with others? Let us know in the comments.