10,000 hours.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master something.
However most of us have something that we’ve done for about that long, and yet, we can’t
really call ourselves masters at it.
Think about your job.
With a 40 hour work week you hit that 10,000 hour mark in 5 years and that’s assuming
that you never work any overtime.
And while the vast majority of us are obviously pretty good at our jobs after 5 years we can’t
honestly call ourselves the Mozart, Albert Einstein, or Leonardo Da Vinci of our fields.
But why is that?
What is it that those masters of the past had that we don’t have?
And is there a way that we can get it?
Hey everyone, Daniel here from Next Level Life and today we are going to begin to figure
out the answers to those questions.
And I say “begin to figure out” because what with exams and my other job I just don’t
have the time to do a full review of this book all in one video.
So instead I’m going to take this review one section at a time.
So this will be the first in a 7 video series on Robert Greene’s book Mastery.
Let’s get started.
The first step on the road to mastery is to discover your calling or to find your life’s
task.
Now that sounds good, but in practice it’s not easy to actually do.
So how do you find your calling?
Many masters throughout history have been asked this question and while they have all
given different answers, there is one common idea lurking behind all of them.
Napoleon Bonaparte followed his “star” which he always felt ascended whenever he
made the right move, Socrates had a voice in his head that spoke to him in the negative,
telling him what not to do, and Einstein also had an inner voice that shaped the direction
of his speculations.
And that’s the common thread between the masters, they all had some sort of inner voice
or compelling force that they let guide their decision making.
And that’s what we need to do as well.
We’re all born unique and we all have something to give the world.
This uniqueness is marked in our DNA and has been on display since childhood through the
various things that we were naturally inclined to be good at.
Whether that’s math, art, athletics, or something else entirely we all had something
in childhood that we were naturally inclined toward and these inner forces drew us to certain
experiences and pushed us away from others.
Unfortunately many of us don’t feel this inner force very often anymore because it’s
been weakened by another force - social pressures to conform.
These counter forces can be very powerful, because humans are naturally very social.
We want to fit in and often make sacrifices in order to fit in.
And if these counter forces become strong enough you can completely lose contact with
what makes you unique as you slowly model your decisions and goals based around what
others think you should do or what they want you to do.
We see this happen a lot more than we’d like to admit, for example take Michael, a
kid that spends his childhood practicing to become a musician, and even though he is very
talented he is constantly reminded by his parents that the odds of making it as a musician
are a million to one and surely it would be much smarter to go to medical school and become
a doctor.
Now that sounds reasonable enough, so he goes to school and becomes a doctor, but over the
years his interest in the career slowly goes away, he fails to keep up with the advancements
in the medical field and his work suffers for it as does his patient’s health.
And as much as we may want to, it’s hard to truly blame Michael for what’s happened
to his career.
He didn’t want to be a doctor, he wanted to be a musician, but he succumbed to social
pressures too much and as a result ended up in a career that he probably won’t have
for much longer.
And what’s worse is that he has no plan of what to do if he loses his job.
He doesn’t know what he wants.
He’ll probably end up taking whatever job his friends tell him about once he’s unemployed
and the whole cycle starts over again.
We want to avoid this fate at all costs.
The good news is that wherever you are in life, whether you have lost contact with that
inner voice or not, as long as you’re still sucking wind you have time to right the ship.
And that brings us back to the original question: How do you find your calling?
Well there are three steps.
The First is to connect, or reconnect with that inner voice - those inclinations that
make you unique.
Second, if you haven’t already, expand your concept of work itself.
Many of us make a separation in our lives between work and life outside work.
Too often we see work as a way to make money so we can enjoy life outside work.
Which is really depressing when you consider how much of our lives are spent at work.
And third, see your career as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.
As you progress in the career that you picked in step two, you will find some areas of the
field that naturally attract you and others that repel you.
This is when you adjust your course, possibly even move into a related field.
Of course all this hangs on our ability to find and follow that inner voice so here are
a couple strategies you can try if you’re struggling to find it.
The first is to return to your roots.
For many of the masters throughout history their calling expressed itself most vividly
in their childhood.
When Einstein was five he got a compass as a present and was instantly transfixed by
the needle wondering how it could change direction as he moved the compass around.
Martha Graham was often frustrated by her inability to make others understand her in
a deep way.
Words always seemed so inadequate.
But once she saw a dance performance for the first time, she became fascinated.
The dancer’s ability to express emotions through movements was so much more effective
to her than words.
Shortly after that experience she started dance lessons and would go on to revolutionize
modern dance.
So think back to your childhood what fascinated you, regardless of what other’s thought
or said?
Another strategy is to avoid the false path.
This is also sometimes called the rebellion strategy for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.
We sometimes find ourselves attracted to a certain career path for the wrong reasons
like money, fame or attention.
Those seeking attention in their careers are often trying to fill an emptiness inside of
them, but because the field they chose didn’t correspond with their natural inclinations
any public attention that they receive early on generally don’t last very long.
Just look at what happened to our doctor friend, Michael earlier in the video.
Those who choose a career specifically for the money are often acting out of anxiety
or the desire to please their parents, which also rarely ends well.
So this strategy is two-fold, first you must realize as early as possible that you’ve
chosen the career for the wrong reasons.
And if you did choose your career for the wrong reasons, then you want to actively rebel
against whatever forces led you to that decision.
Use that energy to establish your own identity, find your purpose and get back on the right
path.
So in summary we all possess an inner voice that wants to guide us to finding our calling.
For most, this voice was strongest during childhood, but over the course of years social
pressures have weakened it, perhaps to the point that you find it hard to believe that
it’s even there.
But it is, and as long as you’re still breathing, reconnecting with that voice is possible.
And if you want to achieve mastery, it is something you must do.
It is the first and most crucial step on the path to mastery.
But that’ll do it for part 1, join me for part 2 where we’ll talk about how to find
the ideal apprenticeship.
Thanks for watching and have a great day.