It is rare we master a skill or subject quickly. Brian and Michael Tracy in their book on Unlimited Sales Success quotes T. Harv Eker, saying “Every master was once a disaster.” There are three things we learn from this text.

We must start

Regardless of skill level you must start. If you do not start, there is no hope of mastery. I tell a story in a previous post about my first days of teaching. They were a disaster (click here to read about it). In a nutshell, I was in front of about 100 7th grade students who were laughing at, pointing at, and mocking me. I was a disaster. I told myself that would never happen again so I had to work for many years to improve my craft. The development took time but I would not have had time to develop if I did not at least start out. We must begin.

We must continue

I’ve quit many things in my life. It is fine to quit certain things. If you are working a job and the employer mistreats you or does not pay you on time then quit. But, most things difficult things we do in life requires endurance of mind and body. We can’t quit. Mastery takes endurance; it is not formed over night. Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Tipping Point it takes 10,000 hours working on a craft to develop mastery. Continue to work on the task because we all can master a craft with time, consistent effort, and doing the right things. Don’t quit — continue.

Mastery is possible

It is possible for all of us to master a skill or knowledge. The formula is simple. Pick something you love to do or think about, start doing and/or thinking about it, and continue for a time putting good steady work in. This puts hope in our hearts helping us to know our abilities and knowledge are not fixed, as Carol Dweck calls it in her transformative book Mindset : The New Psychology of Success. If the desire, will, and effort are present, we can grow ourselves into mastery.

We pass through fire in order to enter mastery’s doors. Before mastery, we must first start and continue the work. The effort of Craft refinement will take us to our destination — mastery which is possible for us all.

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