MASTERY

● Mastery entails a powerful inclination towards a particular subject. Practice harder

and move faster than others through a process with an immense desire to learn.
Masters often have deep connections to a field of study (pp. 111).

● Must love the subject. Borders on religious (pp.31).

● Follow path indendent of parents and what they want (pp.38).

● Scoff at the need for attention and approval (pp.38).
● Return to origins and find the perfect niche, avoid the false path and let go of the
past (pp.40).
● Do not hold onto past ways of doing things (pp.40).
● Do not look for new skills and experience, look for new ways to apply them
(pp.40).
● Concentrate on becoming proficient at simply + intermediate skills (pp.45).
● “One can have no smaller or greater Mastery than Mastery of oneself” -Da Vinci
(pp.54).
Apprentice Phase I
Any positive attention you receive is deceptive...

● Deep Observation (Passive Mode)

● Skill Aquisition (Practice Mode)
● Experimentation (Active Mode) (pp.56)
● As an apprentice look outward and understand your environment (pp.58).
● Rather than avoid tedium you must accept it and embrace it (pp.60).
● Make it like an exercise ou can get pleasure from this pain (pp.60).
● Do not get stuck in the learning phase + change the knowledge base and evolve
(pp.63).
● “The future belongs to those who learn new skills and combine them in creative
ways (pp.64).
● Value learning over money (pp.65).
● Keep expanding your horizons (pp.68).
● Revert to a feeling of inferiority (pp.71).
 What separates normal people from Masters? Masters have trust and faith.
Buried in their minds is the sense of overcoming frustration. They trudge on well
past the point at which others slow down or mentally quit (pp.77).

● Frustration is a sign of progress! Insecurities will turn into their opposites

when you become a Master. Trust the natural learning process (pp.78).
● Come up with inventive ways to practice problem/solving (pp.79).
● To attain Mastery, adopt resistance practice. Go in the opposite way of
natural tendecies. Resist the temptation to be nice to yourself! Recognize
weakness! Make youself uncomfortable! Resist the lure of easing up on
focus (pp.81).
● Resist the temptation to be nice to yourself. Be your own worst critic.
● Timidity will destroy you!!! Also, don’t be blindly bold and fail past the
point of learning (pp.84).
● Move towards resistance and pain (pp.84).
● Apprentice yourself in failure (pp.84).
● Combine the how and what (Understand the how/what/why of
computer programming)
● Advance through trial and error.

Absorb the Masters power. You can use more than one mentor. Books can
serve as temporary mentors.

Transfigure their ideas:

- Absorb the ideas of the master but also make them your own (pp.116).

“If he listened too closely to teachers and other performers and picked up their ideas or
styles, he would lose his sense of identity in the process” (pp.118).

“In this way he could learn and yet incubate a creative spirit that would help set him
apart from everyone else once he left Guererro.

To learn from our mentors, we must openly and completely receptive to their ideas.
But, if we take this too far we become marked by their influence that we have no
internal space to incubate and develop our own voice (pp. 118-119).
Slowly make distance between mentors. Altering their styles to fit our own (pp.119).

Poor is the apprentice who does not surpass the master” - Leonardo Da Vinci (pp.119).

SELF-MASTERY (EDISON PATH)

Sometimes you have no choice but to do without the benefits of having a mentor in your
life. In this case there is no one around you to fill that role and you are left to your own
devices. In such a case you must make a virtue of necessity. The Alva Edison path.

Through books, experiments and practical experience at various jobs. Give yourself a
rigorious education. Have a relentless desire to learn through whatever crosses your
path.

Have self-discipline! Develop a habit of overcoming a lack of organized education by

sheer determination and persistance. Work harder than anyone else. You are an outsider
and your mind may not be indoctrinated by any school of thought. You bring a fresh
perspective. Turn your lack of formal education into an advantage.

You must develop extreme self-reliance. Become your own teacher and mentor. Push
yourself to learn from every possible source. Read more books than those who have a
formal education. Develop this life-long habit. As much as possible try to apply your
knowledge in some form of experiment or practice.

You can find your second-degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as
role models. Read and reflect on their experiences and gain some guidance. Try to make
their ideas come to life. Internalizing their voice. Maintian pristine vision, completely
distilled throuh your own experiences. (pp. 123).

See People As They Are : Social Intelligence

The greatest obstacle to our pursuit of amstery comes from the emotional drain we
experience in dealing with resistance and manipulations of the people around us
(pp.125).