What if mastery isn't a final destination, but a lifelong journey filled with continual growth and discovery? In this episode, we explore the compelling nuances of mastery through a conversation with a former client eager to deepen his understanding and reignite his passion for learning. We dissect mastery from two intriguing perspectives: as a pinnacle of skill and knowledge, and as an ongoing, ever-evolving relationship similar to a long-term marriage. This dynamic perspective will challenge your preconceived notions and inspire you to see mastery not as an endpoint, but as a perpetual process of self-improvement.
Through captivating analogies drawn from martial arts, we illustrate how obtaining a black belt represents not the end, but a new beginning in one's practice. Just as a long-term marriage reveals new dimensions over time, mastery involves continuously peeling back layers and revisiting fundamentals to uncover deeper insights. We emphasize the importance of maintaining curiosity and passion, whether in martial arts or personal relationships. Additionally, we touch on the broader educational journey, highlighting that after mastering the basics, the path forward is one of self-directed learning and ongoing personal development. Join us for an episode that will motivate you to embrace challenges and pursue growth in all facets of life.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
What if mastery isn't a final destination, but a lifelong journey filled with continual growth and discovery? In this episode, we explore the compelling nuances of mastery through a conversation with a former client eager to deepen his understanding and reignite his passion for learning. We dissect mastery from two intriguing perspectives: as a pinnacle of skill and knowledge, and as an ongoing, ever-evolving relationship similar to a long-term marriage. This dynamic perspective will challenge your preconceived notions and inspire you to see mastery not as an endpoint, but as a perpetual process of self-improvement.
Through captivating analogies drawn from martial arts, we illustrate how obtaining a black belt represents not the end, but a new beginning in one's practice. Just as a long-term marriage reveals new dimensions over time, mastery involves continuously peeling back layers and revisiting fundamentals to uncover deeper insights. We emphasize the importance of maintaining curiosity and passion, whether in martial arts or personal relationships. Additionally, we touch on the broader educational journey, highlighting that after mastering the basics, the path forward is one of self-directed learning and ongoing personal development. Join us for an episode that will motivate you to embrace challenges and pursue growth in all facets of life.
Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. So today well, I guess the day that I'm recording this I had an interesting conversation with a former client who wants to get back into coaching, and I don't know. I think at least my experience with other coaches suggests that the way that I tend to run my business is a bit anomalous, and that is, for the most part, I would say I don't know 98% of the time. When somebody finishes their first year of coaching with me, I set them free because I want them to be able to fly on their own. I want them to be able to recognize their own strength, their own wisdom, and then to also have greater clarity about the things that might be regressing or the things that might be oh, I don't know, not quite in a place of mastery place of mastery, so that, if they want to begin coaching again, that we both have a much tighter understanding of where to look in the second iteration or the second engagement. So this conversation that I had today again date of recording, recording the client was really zeroed in on this notion of gaining greater connection to his sense of the inner master and to have inner mastery and also to have mastery externally in the form of his craft. And so we ended up in this conversation around what is mastery, and as the conversation unfolded there were kind of I don't know two main ideological pathways. One is mastery as a destination and the other is mastery as a relationship or pathway. If we were to break those apart.
Speaker 1:
When we look at this notion of mastery as a thing that you can achieve, a place that you can reach, what are some of the elements that go into that? I would say one element is knowledge, right? So if we think about I don't know someone who becomes a doctor, for instance, well, they end up going through undergrad and then they end up getting into whatever medical program they want to get to, or they're doing some sort of pre-med coursework to get into medical school. There's more coursework, more learning, and a lot of that learning is academic, let's say there's actual concepts that need to be taught things that the person has never known before, vocabulary that the person has never known before. So there's an actual knowledge transfer that needs to happen. There's also a skillset that needs to be developed, whether it's tying sutures or learning how to use a stethoscope or some other medical equipment right. So there's a skill set there.
Speaker 1:
Also, I think, when we look at this notion of mastery as a place we can get to, there's an element of, in many circles, natural talent. Can you be a true master if you are not gifted for that craft? Whether you want to look at sports stars or musicians? A lot of this does come forward in crafts or professions that have a physical component to them, because oftentimes in physicality there is a greater sense of I don't know genetic gifting, if you will, this X factor of natural talent, and that in some cases, no matter how hard somebody works, if they have a counterpart who is also very naturally gifted for a certain activity and also then works hard, then that person that is both gifted and works very hard will quite likely exceed the capacity of the person who is not as predisposed genetically or through whatever other means to that particular activity. I think another element that stands out in terms of mastery when we think of it as a destination, if you will, is there's often the association with an extremely high performance bar. So I don't think anything in that is necessarily all that controversial and probably fairly self-evident. And probably fairly self-evident.
Speaker 1:
And as this conversation unfolded, we started to dig into some of the other ways. Well, in this particular case, way that mastery could be viewed, and looking at mastery more as a relationship with one's craft or one's profession. And for those of you out there who have been in a long-term relationship or a marriage, let's say, then there's something potentially useful in drawing some sort of analogous learning from that. So, instead of destination, we start to look at mastery as a path, and so one way to kind of kick that off is again look at it from the perspective of a marriage. If you are married, do you ever reach a place where you feel like you have achieved a state of mastery in terms of being a married person, being a partner to someone? Do you get to that destination? And then you're done right, like when you think of it in those terms.
Speaker 1:
I think oftentimes we recognize oh no, this is an organic and dynamic process and we don't just achieve a final destination and then we're okay, got it, checking that box, putting on the black belt, so to speak. And if we're talking about martial arts terms, no, I don't think we do that. And so when we look at mastery as in the form of kind of like a long-term relationship with something, then we begin to see other criteria or other characteristics coming forward, one of which is the evolution of understanding. Now, is that possible in the first definition or the first interpretation? Yes, I think so. What about a willingness to challenge and re-evaluate what is quote-unquote known? I think here we may not see as much of that in that first interpretation of mastery, because if we think that we're trying to get somewhere, anything that might cause us to reevaluate the route that we took to get to that place could potentially derail us.
Speaker 1:
But when we look at mastery through the lens of this ongoing dynamic, organic relationship with something, then being able to reevaluate what we know quote-unquote know is very important. Quote-unquote no is very important. Because if we start to separate a final destination from the actual pathway, if it becomes sort of an endless pursuit instead of something that is finite, then it's quite possible that we are more willing to circle back or to take unexplored avenues, instead of entrenching, in sort of a dogmatic way, on what we think we already know. And as a brief aside, there's this expression in the coaching industry how can you learn what you think you already know? And obviously, what they're trying to signify there is that oftentimes, when we think we already know something, we turn our brains off. We turn our minds off. We don't really look for new explanations for something. If you're convinced that somebody is a jerk, then when they do something that is inconvenient to you, you have a ready explanation. You don't need to dig deeper, just as one quick example.
Speaker 1:
Now, another characteristic of this kind of relationship, interpretation of mastery, is this eternal potential for growth, because, again, there's no final destination, it is the process itself. Now, can you have a high bar here? Some might say I don't know. I think it might not be quite as high as when there's a set destination that we're trying to reach, and I guess I'm inclined to agree. There's certainly a potential that one might kind of lower the standard, because if you're like, well, we're just going to be on this path forever, then why have a high standard? But I also believe that it doesn't preclude having a high bar or having a high standard and, in fact, looking at or listening to interviews of some of the greatest performers in the world, individuals who are arguably at the top of their game or the goat, if you will, the greatest of all time.
Speaker 1:
Many of these individuals, who had already, you know, gotten to that place of being at the top of their game whether it's in business or art, or music or sports or whatever that they were in love with their craft, and so they were always looking for a new way to do something. They were trying to, even if it was only 0.00000000, I don't know a lot of zeros 1% better than they were trying to do that. And herein is, I think, a meaningful difference between when we look at mastery as a destination versus mastery as a relationship with something, or the pathway instead of the destination, is how we stay in love with the craft. You know, I've had clients who were at the top of their game and it's sort of like okay, well, now what? That's what they were asking themselves, and it created some real concerns for them about well, what do I do with myself now I've been working so hard to with my clientele? It's often climbing the corporate ladder to get to that top spot. And then they got there, and then they didn't know what to do with themselves.
Speaker 1:
Now, sure you know, they understood what their job title was and their role and they understood the expectations of executing that role, understood the expectations of executing that role, but the mission, the sort of personal drive that had driven them to get to that penultimate role in the company hierarchy now, all of a sudden, a lot of that fire went out because they weren't quite sure what to do with it. And so part of the work with them was to try to reconnect the drive that they used to have the ambition right, but to then reconnect it with something else. They could still have ambition, but for what? Maybe it's no longer about climbing the ladder, maybe it's now about making a real difference in somebody's life, or a lot of somebody's lives, or making a real difference in the world. And when I say real difference, however, they defined real difference.
Speaker 1:
That's not up to me to define for them, and that's again part of the difficulty of coaching is to help people understand, really, sort through kind of the inner noise, to figure out, yeah, what is really actually important to me, what would me making a real difference in the world look like for me? It doesn't matter what it would look like for somebody else, but what would it look like for me? Like for me, which, of course, also brings with it certain challenges. Right, that you're willing to throw off the standards that you think you have to live by, whether it's because those were standards that were set upon you by your family, or marketing messaging or society, or whatever you know, your peer group or society, or whatever your peer group, but ultimately getting to a place of understanding. Huh, okay, I got there. Well, now what?
Speaker 1:
Another potential concern when we look at this, these different ways of trying to get to an understanding and a connection with mastery is what if we don't actually achieve mastery in the way that we envisioned it? What is the impact on our self-worth? What is the impact on our self-image? Are we now, all of a sudden, a failure? Whoa, that doesn't feel good, but it's interesting to me, and I actually received an email today from a board member of one of the CEOs that I'm coaching, and this board member relayed some really good news, and the reason this is sort of coming to top of mind for me is because I just had a session with the client yesterday, again in relationship to date of recording, and the client didn't mention any of this good news. And in fact, yeah, there was sort of a tangential reference to the fact that the client understood that there were some good things going on in the client's life, but this very specific good news was nowhere mentioned and it really made me wonder okay, what's going on there? Here are some good things.
Speaker 1:
Now, granted, the organization still has some pretty robust challenges and in many ways, the organization's performance is not meeting expectation, expectation, and so oftentimes, I think, when we are grappling with this path to mastery, there is so much that is connected with expectation our own, other people's and is one source correct and the other source incorrect? No, but again, here it is that we are forced to contend with perspective when is it that we are willing to accept certain expectations that we've set on ourselves? Where is it that we are willing to accept certain expectations that we've set on ourselves? Where is it that we're willing to incorporate external expectations and how those external expectations affect our connection to or our feeling of whether we are making any forward progress in mastery?
Speaker 1:
When I reflect on my learnings out of jujitsu in particular because jujitsu is a very complicated martial art. There are so many times when people tell me of all ranks by the way, this isn't just, you know, the lowly white belts, but of all ranks and this is also incredibly, incredibly relevant for myself, my own experience that I'll feel like I'm getting something, a move or a technique, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh God, I suck. You know like you're just like, oh, I thought, I thought I was making progress, and now I feel like I can't put anything together. I feel like the fundamentals are even eluding me. And what's really interesting for me is and this is true actually of many martial arts where I've talked with the quote unquote, masters of a certain martial art.
Speaker 1:
You know black belts and above, and quite frequently they talk about how, when they got their black belt, it was almost like getting a white belt again. So white belt being the first rank and black belt usually being, you know, way up there. You know, typically, if you're wearing a black belt in a martial art, it means that you are the master of that martial art. Now here's the funny thing is that quite in many martial arts they view you as the master of the fundamentals, and this is again something that I've heard from I don't even know how many black belts at this point is.
Speaker 1:
It wasn't until they got their black belt that they really started to see deeply into the art and they really had to start to take another look at the techniques that they'd been using for years and they would reevaluate what they considered known territory and they began to see fresh or new layers in something that sometimes they'd taken for granted. They just assumed, oh, there's nothing deeper here. And then all of a sudden, after years and years of applying themselves and years of sort of digging deeper into this experience, all of a sudden they recognize, oh, there's still undiscovered country here, there's still something for me to explore. Oh, there's still undiscovered country here. There's still something for me to explore.
Speaker 1:
And this is partly where I think viewing mastery much like you might view a marriage can be so helpful. How do I stay in love with this activity? How do I stay in love with the discovery? And if you think about the potential in a marriage to grow stagnant, to take the other person for granted, to shortchange or stymie your own personal growth, so that you're not showing your partner anything new either Because you're not growing, you're not learning, you're not giving yourself the opportunity to evolve personally into something new. Then, looking at that as an analogous example toward getting to a place of mastery, I think that can be so powerful in the visual that it creates. How do we keep things fresh? Likewise, how do I keep my craft fresh?
Speaker 1:
Because one of the things that can come with looking at mastery as sort of this endless pathway is a potential frustration of not actually achieving final closure. There's this feeling like you'll never fully arrive. So on one hand, there's this notion of okay, well, I don't know. Think about a marriage. Do you ever fully arrive? Because in a marriage it starts, I don't know.
Speaker 1:
For many people in their 20s, for others later, but for the most part, humans around the world are getting married relatively early in their life. They're not marrying at the end of their chronological years, they're marrying with decades left to go. So the destination of being married is achieved at the beginning, and then you have decades together and for most people they're having kids. Those kids are growing up, they're moving out right. There's all these chapters of change that keep that relationship in flux, and sometimes people are closer together and then sometimes they're distracted from one another. Sometimes they're really into this idea that we're a union and we're in it together and there is no you and there is no I and there's just us. And then there's times where it's like, no, I want me back, I want to have my stuff, I want to have my activities, I want to have my friends. And I'm just putting a little bit of a verbal flair on there just to kind of draw out the attention a little bit. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for us to want to have an I inside of the relationship or a me inside the we.
Speaker 1:
But again, the point is, where is it that these you know? When we look at it as sort of a parallel example for mastery, if you're getting married at the beginning and you're already at the destination, well then, where do you go from there? And this is this notion of looking at it more as that pathway, more as that ability or willingness to continue to explore, to continue to recognize that your partner can surprise you. No matter how much you think you know about them, they can still surprise you. I've had clients that were married for 40 years, so they got married in their 20ss. I was coaching them in their 60s, been married for over 40 years and they were still undiscovered country. There were still ways in which they could be surprised by their partner and they, in turn, could surprise you know, their husband, wife, whatever you want to call it could surprise their husband, wife, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1:
Likewise, when we look at mastery in terms of our craft, where do we find ourselves being surprised? Where is there still something to learn, something to be excited about, versus thinking that we already know everything and that there's nothing new that could challenge us, that could stimulate us, that could inspire us? Is it possible that we can have the best of both worlds? I think it is right, but a lot of it depends on our perspective. We can recognize that, when we engage in a certain craft, that there is an element of learning knowledge, like that sort of rudimentary knowledge transfer, and that there are certain skill sets that need to be developed, things that are very concrete, that are not fuzzy, not esoteric transfer, and that there are certain skill sets that need to be developed, things that are very concrete, that are not fuzzy, not esoteric. There's no, or at least very little, mindset mastery involved, but recognizing that once we get beyond sort of the initial building blocks of knowledge transfer, developing skill set, that we then enter a domain that is largely self-determined. And again, here I think there are parallels in sort of our, at least in the United States, but also true in other countries.
Speaker 1:
Formal education Also true in other countries. Formal education, if you go to sort of a primary school and then a secondary school. Oftentimes these sorts of things are run by the state and there are certain requirements that have to be met. And then, if you go on to tertiary training or education, a lot of that is very voluntary. And then even more so if you're going to start getting into real expertise, real mastery, the sort of the rarefied air that certain people breathe in their respective careers, and a lot of that is driven by their own sense of motivation. And how do we continue to keep it fresh? What are the things you would need to tap into to ensure that you can continue to be excited about the craft that you're engaged in, so hopefully you liked today? If you did, feel free to give it a thumbs up star, like whatever your app has, leave a positive review, that'd be great and ultimately share Share with people that you think would benefit or don't. It's totally up to you. Until next time, take care of each other.
