Why You Need To Chase Mastery
Ever since I was a kid I was chasing mastery without even knowing it.
My first passion was magic.
I wanted to be a magician so badly after my uncle did some magic tricks for me and my friends at one of my birthday parties.
I would practice in front of the mirror for hours every single day after school.
Just me working on my slight of hand and all the angles.
I even pretended my reflection was the person I was performing for.
Then I found breakdancing when I was 10.
It opened a whole new perspective for me on self-expression.
It was creative, technical, and performance based (just like magic).
There was always another move to learn, or another way to do a move that I’d never seen anyone else do.
It kept me hooked.
Then a couple years later I found my greatest love…
Basketball.
It consumed me.
And when I say consumed me… I mean I was absolutely obsessed.
I woke up at 5 AM before school to practice.
I slept with my ball.
I trained at lunch between classes, after school…
Pretty much anytime I wasn’t eating or in class,
I was practicing.
This has been a trend my whole life.
After basketball it was rapping…
Then 3.5 years ago, I found online entrepreneurship and never looked back.
Here’s why I’m telling you all this…
I never actually mastered any of them.
I got to above average in all of them… (but never great) … then moved on to the next thing.
Now as I’m older…
I’m committed to mastering what I’m doing now.
And that’s online business.
Here’s a quote on mastery from my favorite author Robert Greene:
“Mastery — The feeling that we have a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves”
(If you haven’t read his book Mastery I highly recommend it).
Here’s why I’m committed to mastery now and why I believe you need to be too…
Mastery is the ultimate pursuit of self-expression, your genuine interests, and reaching your potential.
Let me explain…
Nobody can tell you what to pursue mastery in.
It’s what you’re called to do.
What you feel genuinely exciting.
What makes you feel alive.
The people who never feel fully happy, or fulfilled, are the people who never chase excellence in what they’re meant to do.
Robert Greene calls it your ‘life’s task’.
I know what you might be thinking:
“I don’t have time for mastery”
But here’s the thing…
It doesn’t require more time.
It requires less distractions.
Most people already spend hours a day doom scrolling, watching Netflix, whatever it is.
We’re trained to be busy and stimulated with nonsense all the time.
But all that time can be directed towards building you and your domain of mastery.
It’s not just for geniuses.
Look at any master in any domain…
Athletes, authors, entrepreneurs…
Sure some of them had more natural talent than others, but they all have 1 thing in common:
Years of boring, unseen, consistent work.
It was the consistency and pursuit that got them there, not their IQ or innate talent.
I thought when I was 30 I was too old to start chasing mastery in something new like online business.
I was wondering if I could be a beginner again and actually make it.
But I knew deep down in 5 years I’d be happy I started.
(And it’s been 3.5 years now and it’s already changed my life completely)
I’d rather age with skill than with regret.
Here’s one of the hardest parts to accept about mastery though…
It takes obsession.
If you’re worried about sacrifice, being uncomfortable, or pushing yourself harder than you ever have…
You’ll never reach it.
But on the other side of all that…
Is meaning.
Is passion.
Especially if you’re pursuing mastery in your life’s task.
Which I get for many is hard to even know what it is.
It’s also scary to wonder if you’ll pick the wrong thing and fail.
But I found mine through action (not thinking)
I like to think of all those passions I fell in love with growing up as the training wheels for me to end up here.
They all had similarities.
And all those similarities blended perfectly into what I’m doing now.
Before I keep going I want to be clear on something.
By no means am I saying you have to grind the rest of your life to become a master in your field.
Yes you have to work hard.
But we all want to be happy.
And happiness does not come from comfort and pleasure.
It comes from meaning and growth.
Both are what you get on the journey to mastery.
Both are what you experience from working towards something prolific and becoming someone you respect.
Here’s something I noticed a lot as I’ve gotten older…
Most people want 1 of 2 lives:
An easy one
A meaningful one
They’re both hard but in different ways.
An easy life is just that… easy… but only for now.
It gets harder as you go.
You never build anything you’re proud of, you stop caring about your health, you start to feel regrets… the list goes on.
It’s essentially easy now → hard later.
But a meaningful life is the exact opposite.
It’s hard now.
(Like the things I mentioned before about sacrifice, discomfort, etc)
But it gets easier later.
You feel true contentment. Fulfillment.
Peace knowing you didn’t settle for mediocrity.
So understand the race isn’t over.
It doesn’t matter if you feel behind because you’re comparing yourself to someone ahead of you.
Most people nowadays don’t even consider this.
They don’t ask themselves if they want mastery in anything.
So if you’ve read this far…
It means you’re different.
It means you’re built for mastery.
