Book Summary 26 — Mastery
1.Discover your Calling — Look Inwards
At your birth a seed is planted — your uniqueness. Find and grow it. Don’t succumb to other pressures in life — ie social proof.
- What’s the pattern of your character?
- Is your current path going there?
- Slowly go there, not necessarily in a straight line but towards it
Strategies to find the Life’s Task
Obstacles
- Voices of Others
- Fighting over limited resources
- Choosing false paths
- Getting stuck in the paths
- Losing your way
Strategies
- Return to your origins
it’s a feeling of what you loved as a kid - Occupy perfect niche
- Avoid false path
follow the right path independent of others and money, etc - Let go of the past
you are not committed to the company or work, but to your life’s task - Find your way back
even if you find fake happiness you will be empty inside
2. Submit to Reality: The Ideal Apprenticeship
The goal of an apprenticeship isn’t money, position, diploma — it’s the transformation of your mind and character. Do not choose apprenticeships which are easy and comfortable.
- Deep Observation — Passive Mode
- Skills Acquisition — Practice Mode
- Experimentation — Active Mode
3. Absorb the Master’s Power: The Mentor Dynamic
Most efficient way of learning — knowledge and experience
Once internalised the knowledge — surpass master and pass it on
- requires humility — we don’t know best, soak up knowledge, don’t critisize
- adapt their knowledge to your circumstances
- create back and forth relationship so you both learn
4. See People as they are: Social Intelligence
Move past your usual self-absorption
Read others, see what motivates them
- don’t get emotional (take step back), take yourself out of the eqauation
- understand people — immerse your mind in their world
Seven Deadly Realities
- Envy
don’t boast, reveal own insecurities, don’t make people feel stupid - Conformism
group setting — organisational mindset sets in - Rigidity
we prefer what is familiar - Self-obsessiveness
we always first think about ourselves, appeal to other people’s self-interest first - Laziness
always want quickest/easiest path - Flightiness
we are mostly governed by our emotions, yet we try to show that its all rational - Passive Aggression
fear of direct confrontation, call them up on it, ignore it or come up with something equally indirect
Strategies to Acquire Social Intelligence
- Speak through work
— demonstrate that you’re thinking about the group, involve others - Craft the appropriate persona
— Play the role of the person who would best achieve the task, look at yourself from the outside, how would others describe you? - See yourself as others see you
— we rarely hear the truth about ourselves, and we quickly justify our own actions — detach yourself and think about yourself - Suffer fools gladly
— enemies harden your resolution and improve your work with their critique, keep a steady eye on your goals
5. Awaken the Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active
Adopt a child’s mind — we know see the world through filters and opinions, quickly getting defensive if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked
Requirement: High level of knowledge & openness and flexibility to use knowledge in new ways
- Choose proper creative task
— obsessive element - Loosen up the mind
— avoid confirmation bias, don’t judge, relax, carry notebook, consider weird options - Create optimal conditions for Breakthrough
— let go if you’re stuck, take a break, set deadlines - Avoid Emotional Pitfalls — complacency, boredom and grandiosity
Strategies
- Authentic Voice
- love learning, be yourself, don’t look for shortcuts, do what excites you - Fact of Great Yield
- find the small irregularities instead of thinking about large solution - Mechanical Intelligence
- you must test and use yourself, understand every single part of it and ‘Why?’ - Natural Powers
- give yourself time to wander, wide knowledge of field, never settle, accept slowness - Open Field
- create something new, find a new space without people - High End
- constantly remind yourself of your purpose/mission - Evolutionary Hijack
- adapt your idea, take advantage of new possibilities - Dimensional Thinking
- work with what you love - Alchemical Creativity and Unconscious
- don’t categorise, something can be good and bad, intellectual and sensual
6. Fuse the Intuitive with the Rational: Mastery
Knowledge — know your stuff
Reflect — think about what you know and don’t know
Take up hobbies to engage/train brain
Strategies
- Connect to your environment — Primal Powers
- understand others - Play to your strength — Supreme Focus
- follow what you love - Transform yourself through practice — Fingertip feel
- make the skill become automatic - Internalise the details — Life Force
- feel the changes of what’s happening, and be able to make them part of yourself - Widen your vision — Global Perspective
- you will be able to think beyond the current situation, remind yourself of your overall purpose - Submit to the other — Inside-Out Perspective
- don’t project yourself onto others, try to consider what they think - Synthesise all forms of knowledge — Universal Man/Woman
- consider all the knowledge and include it