Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment

by George Leonard

the worm of ambition was eating stealthily away at the center of my belly.

“A lot of people go for things only because a teacher told them they should, or their parents,” said Olympic gymnast Peter Vidmar. “People who get into something for the money, the fame, or the medal can’t be effective.

Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.

What doesn’t work, despite a certain macho attitude to the contrary, is scorn, excoriation, humiliation—anything that destroys the student’s confidence and self-esteem.

The best teacher generally strives to point out what the student is doing right at least as frequently as what she or he is doing wrong, which is just what UCLA coach John Wooden, perhaps the greatest basketball mentor of all time, managed to do all through his long, winning career.

Most of the athletes we interviewed stressed hard work and experience over raw talent.

If you’re too far removed, there’s no chance for the surrender that’s part of the master’s journey (see Chapter Seven); if you come too close, you lose all perspective and become a disciple rather than a student.

Do not think that This is all there is. More and more Wonderful teachings exist— The sword is unfathomable.

A practice (as a noun) can be anything you practice on a regular basis as an integral part of your life—not in order to gain something else, but for its own sake.

Actually, the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.

Lies and secrets are poison in organizations—people’s energy is devoted to deceiving and hiding and remembering who it is you don’t want to tell what to. When people start telling the truth, you see almost immediate reductions in mistakes and increases in productivity.”