Last year, my previous co-founder read a book and told me that this book describes me. She told me that I need to read the book, so I did. This is my takeaways from the book.

Note: This is my takeaways, not a summary. This means, it’s not a one-to-one comparison to the book. I have rephrased the contents and added some related concepts/knowledges. My goal here is to help other learners in understanding the informations provided in the book. Please read the original source if you’d like to read the actual passage or terms used by the author. Feel free to send me feedback on the takeaways.

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Overview

Life is a pursuit to mastery. A pursuit of mastery is not about the goal or destination, but a process, a journey. The best move towards mastery is by practicing diligently: “practice for the sake of the practice itself”.

Practicing for the sake of the practice itself is what the Japanese call “Do”, The Path. It is the path which you travel upon towards mastery. Such path never ends:

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

— Yamaoka Tesshu, a great swordmaster.

The archetypes

There are four archetypes when pursuing mastery:

• The Dabbler—loves to learn something new, but once the novelty is gone, feels there is nothing left to learn and will move from one thing to another.
• The Obsessive—puts maximum effort into learning and upon reaching a plateau, will put even more effort and get burned out.
• The Hacker—finds the quickest way simply to be good enough and has no intention of delving deeper into the practice.
• The Master—loves the practice and patience with the plateau.

Be aware that we have all the archetypes in ourselves. They are different depending on our relationship with the subject.

The keys to mastery

The 5 keys to mastery are as follows: (1) Instruction, (2) Practice, (3) Surrender, (4) Intentionality, (5) The Edge.

Instruction

Instructions help provide directions, but you need to be careful on who you get it from. A credible source of instruction can lead you far; but otherwise can be harmful. Instructions can prevent you from reinventing the wheel; but may also give you the same blindspot that a self-taught person may explore.

A good instructor should be patient. Their students can be slow in some parts and gifted with others. To help the student develop the love of doing the practice and patience in the plateau, the instructor must be able to be empathetic, being equal in reinforcing positive progress and correcting mistakes.

Good learning materials are those that encourage active participation from the student. When the student is eager to learn, they will absorb the material better (see intentionality). Great instructors will make materials that encourage such active participation.

A good student must be respectful and open minded. A Zen monk Sunryu Suzuki said that “when you learn too easily, you are tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate the marrow of a practice.” The key is to work diligently despite your talent.

Practice

Practice is not something you do but something you have. It is not a task, but part of your life. The masters don’t devote themselves to their skill just to get better at it. It is the love of the practice that will lead one to get better. The more they enjoy the work, the better they get.

There is a saying that I personally love that relates to this: “_Those who know will lose to those who understand, those who understand will lose to those who embody.”_

Larry Bird, a Celtic basketball player, is one example of the practice. He practices every night because he loves it.

Surrender

The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to the teachings, the practice, the demands from your student, and even to surrender an owned proficiency to relearn it and reach a higher level.

Intentionality

Intentionality means you put mental thoughts, intention, when doing a certain practice. A strongly intentioned practice has more impacts than 10 practices without intent. When you practice intentionally, you start to notice every little thing which helps you do deeper learning. Noticing is a way to discern, and discerning is a sign of mastery.

Visioning what you’d like to accomplish also helps your body move towards the goal as well as boost your motivation to achieve it.

There’s a study about viseo-motor behavior rehearsal (VMBR) that shows how mental image helps in reaching mastery. The study invites 32 students to learn karate and divide them into 4 groups: (1) does deep muscle relaxation only, (2) does imaging karate moves only, (3) does both (VMBR), (4) does nothing. The third group excels.

(Flirting with) the Edge

The book called this key only as “The Edge”; I changed it to “Flirting with the edge” to make it easier to understand what it means.

Those who seek mastery enjoys staying in as well as pushing the boundaries of the practice itself. They practice to the fullest and challenge the limits previously known, taking risks to gain higher performance. This is what helps the master move inch-by-inch away from the plateau.

Julie Moss was in the first place during the 1982 Ironman. The second place is 20 minutes behind her. Just before the finish line, her body decided that it can no longer do it, she fell to the ground. She gets herself up but keeps falling, again, and again. But she persisted and crawled to the finish line. The BBC says it’s “heroic”, but the orthopedic surgeon says it’s “stupid—nearly fatal”.

How to…

Keep your resolution

After having a resolution, it’s normal for you to end up going back to how it was. This is just a normal way of how the body naturally regulates (homeostasis); it returns to the least effortful state.

This is how you can combat it:

• Be aware that there is a natural tendency to go back to how it was (homeostasis). Not only the push comes from yourself, but also from your surroundings like friends and family. It’s not out of bad intention, it’s just because it’s the most familiar state, the default one.
• Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Sometimes, the changes that you try to make are just too much. Pushing yourself is good, but too much of it can have detrimental effects. You need to understand when to take a step back if you took two steps ahead.
• Develop a support system. Doing it together makes it easier. We are a social creature after all, so the feeling of a part of a group helps negate the homeostasis effect.
• Follow a regular practice. Making it regular will shift your default behavior, making it easier to keep your resolution.
• Dedicated to lifelong learning. Keep in mind that it’s a process, you may get setbacks, but that does not mean it’s ended.

Get the energy

We are actually balls of energy, that we regulate ourselves decide the amount of energy that we can spend towards our practice.

• Maintain physical fitness. Helps you maintain the energy level. The less your body is used, the lower energy it has. Exercise also conditions your ability in facing high stress situations.
• Be upfront and truthful. We spend a lot of energy being inefficient by skirting our way around to avoid conflict.
• Acknowledge the negative. It is normal to have negative thoughts. When this happens, you need to acknowledge it rather than suppress it. Suppressing negative thoughts consumes a lot of energy.
• Be positive. Positive thoughts make you feel good and produce energy. Not to mention visioning a positive outcome itself is the key towards mastery.
• Set your priorities, commit, and take action. We are living in an age where we have multiple options available to us. By setting priorities, we allocate most of our energy on what matters most rather than spreading it around. The stronger our commitment to the priority, the more likely we are to take action and energy to do it.
• Make a habit out of your practice. When the practice becomes a habit, it requires less energy to do since it requires less cognitive effort. Since energy can move from high to low from time to time, making a practice a habit allows you to operate even on the lower side of the energy.

The last two points remind me of BJ Fogg’s Behaviour Model which describes a threshold of how likely you do something based on how large is the motivation and how much effort needed to do the task:

• The higher the motivation (set priority, visioning positive outcome), the more likely you are to do the practice.
• The lower the effort (make habit, maintain physical fitness, minimum negative thoughts), the likelier you are to do the practice.

Mel Robbins in her book The 5 second rule also affirms that taking action is very important. When you lack the energy or motivation to do something (procrastinate), do the task for 5 seconds (take action), and you’ll see that you gain the energy to do the practice.

Stay in the path

There are a lot of pitfalls along the path:

• conflicting or inconducive way of life,
• poor instruction,
• laziness,
• obsessive goal orientation,
• over- or lack of competitiveness,
• seeking prizes, medals, or vanities,
• drugs or shortcuts,
• dead seriousness,
• injuries or burn out,
• inconsistency, and
• perfectionism.

You can solve them by doing so:

• Be realistic. Life is full of things to do, obligations, pleasures, relationships. Don’t be overly obsessive with the path, negotiate it with your life, make priority, and get support from others.
• Be consistent. The same place, the same time, the same rhythm, will carry you through the practice. Consistency helps build a sense of familiarity which will help you focus on the task at hand—this is what we call “in the flow”.
• Be modest. Be ambitious but don’t be obsessed with the goal. Remember that it is a journey and not the end that matters. Even when you’ve reached the peak, keep on climbing.
• Lighten up. Taking it too seriously will give you tunnel vision. Failures and set backs will be very stressful when you’re overly serious. A sense of humor will help you see the bigger picture and improve your resiliency. The same goes to perfectionism, remember that it’s not the result that matters, but the process.
• Be aware of yourself. Resting and healing is part of the process. A fresh and good physical and mental stage will help you to progress far more than a burned out and injured one.
• Get good instruction. Surrender to your teacher and stick with it. Be critical, don’t just follow the momentum. Remember that not all teachers and teachings are good, but don’t judge too quickly.
• Seek rivals and measure yourself. A good competition goes a long way to boost your motivation. It helps you understand where you are, what you’re already good at and what you lack. But beware of being overcompetitive, winning is not everything. You need to enjoy the process and winning as well as losing is part of the journey.
• Do. Laziness will knock you off the path. Be courageous and take action.
• Be patient. Don’t take shortcuts to progress quickly, “slow and steady wins the race”.

• Motivate internally. External motivation such as prizes, medals, vanity, and good images, can boost up your performance—but not in the long run. Once it’s no longer available, you will lose the motivation to do the practice. Internal motivation can always be renewed and its availability is within your control.

  “The champions stop not at a given speed but when they set a record.”

  — Henry W. Ryder, Harry J Carr, Paul Herget in June 1976 Scientific American.

View life’s mundane routines

A huge part of our lives is composed of routine tasks that seem insignificant, such as washing clothes, cleaning houses, and commuting to work. If we’re thinking of living in a goal oriented way in which accomplishing the goal is only what matters, the other practices are going to only insignificant “in-betweens”. Looking at our daily lives, does that mean that the majority of our lives are insignificant?

There is another way of thinking about those “insignificant” activities: by making them part of the practice. Zen practitioners are judged by how well they sweep the yard as well as how well they meditated. This way, nothing in life is “in-between”.

We can be intentional, deliberate in doing our routines and orient them towards our practices. For example: cleaning the house can be part of a meditative process; commuting can be used as the time to read or and visioning our practice.

You can also make each routine as a practice towards mastery in itself. For example, when driving you can put your mind fully present to the activity, think of how you turn on the car and get yourself seated, how you drive, which lane to take, anticipating how other cars move, seeking improvements to make your commute easier and more pleasant.

Both the above can be applied to mundane tasks like cleaning the house, driving a car, to even your relationship.

My daily affairs are quite ordinary;
but I’m in total harmony with them.
I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything;
nowhere an obstacle or conflict.
Who cares about wealth and honor?
Even the poorest thing shines.
My miraculous power and spiritual activity:
drawing water and carrying wood.

— P’ang, a layman (and a Zen master)

Exercise mind and body

This section aligns with Chapter 14: Packing for the Journey which contains a detailed instruction on the activities you can do. I will not repeat the instructions here, but just the general understanding.

You can condition your mind and body through Leonard Energy Training (LET). It uses the body as a metaphor to deal with problems in daily life whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional. Since there is a connection between the physical and mental state, you can center your mental state by proxy of your body.

• Balancing and centering. First you need to know where your center is. Once you’re centered, notice the change of your outlook to your surroundings.
  — The exercise of this involves breathing and relaxing and loosening tight areas on the body to a neutral position.
• Returning to the center. Sometimes, life can put you in a disoriented situation. That is why you need to know how to recenter yourself.
  — The exercise of this involves deliberately disorienting the body (such as by spinning), identifying non-centered areas of the body, and correcting it to the centered position.
• Generating energy from unexpected blows. Life sometimes gives you lemon, and you can use that lemon as a source of energy instead of being the victim of it.
  — The exercise involves disruption to the body by a practice partner, noticing the energy shift, and using the excess energy to another form of activity.
• Generating energy from your center. The Japanese called it ki, Chinese ch’i, and pneuma in Greek. This energy comes from your breathing and visualization of the power from your center of gravity. Notice that this energy is within you and all around you. You can tap it by visualizing it coming from your center, growing alongside your breathing and traveling outwards.
  — The exercise involves two different approaches from sitting down to standing up while being resisted by a practice partner: (1) by focusing on the resistance and force against it using muscle power and (2) by focusing on breathing at the center of gravity and using it to stand up.
• Power comes from relaxation. Relaxation is essential for the full expression of power. Being tense and rigid actually diminishes your capability to exert power. An earthquake-proof building is the one that can flex along the shockwave, a rigid one will easily crumble.
  — The exercise of this involves two acts to resist bending of arms by a practice partner: (1) by tightening the arm muscle to gain strength and (2) by relaxing the arm and thinking of it as a single unified part of a beam.

Be willing to be a fool.

Learning can only take place when you allow yourself to fail, to make space for something that will make you look stupid because of your lack of skill.

Think of the occurrences where you stop your learning because somebody else thinks you cannot do it. When your family, friends, school, society did not allow you to be playful, free, and foolish in the learning process.

This is the reason why kids often learn faster than adults. They are not worried about looking incompetent. Abraham Maslow discovered this childlike quality in people who excel at learning and called it “second naivete”.

Take this example from the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano, who upon his death, wished to be buried in his white belt. A true master thinking of himself as a beginner, eager for knowledge, willing to play the fool.