Finishing Mastery

Just finished the book Mastery and wow! What a book.

This book combined with Be Obsessed or Be Average, should be enough for anyone pursuing anything with the goal of becoming a Master in that area, so long as they have some foundational personal development knowledge.

It's crazy how this book broke down almost every single aspect and strategy for attaining Mastery (there are A LOT) and delved into the why behind it all.

The only difference between someone like me and a Master is that they decided to follow their inclinations and go all in.

At the same time, constantly drilling the idea into my head that the only differences between someone like me and the most famous and well respected Masters are that they decided to:

• Completely follow their natural inclinations.
• Put in the sort of effort that can only be put in when you are 💯 percent behind whatever it is that you intend to do.

I like how Robert Greene - the author - talks about following those inclinations in an almost supernatural way. As if those inclinations - the voice of that "true self" is something that can't be logically explained but just felt. And followed.

The voice of that "true self" can't explained. It can just be felt. And followed.

When you follow it, you feel this great sense of achievement, excitement and relief. While trying to suppress this voice only leads to depression and feelings of not living up to what you know you can be - more scientifically known as "cognitive dissonance".

When you listen to and follow your true self, you feel this beautiful mix of achievement, excitement and relief - but if you don't, you feel cognitive dissonance.

One Master who's example stood out to me quite starkly was that of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe - who talked about this inner daemon - or what Dexter (the serial killer, not the child scientist) would refer to as his "dark passenger". This inner daemon/passenger/voice that has to be controlled and channelled or else it would turn destructive.

I can relate to that quite strongly as that is exactly how I feel a lot of the time and it's a feeling that has always been very hard to shake off. Guess it's just another one of those things that I can go on about for hours.