Mastery

In addition to Seth Godin, one of my favorite writers has to be Dan Pink. You could spend days looking at Dan's website--just the list of blogs is a treasure in and of itself!

Dan makes the point in his new book, Drive, that we inherently drive toward autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and that when we are doing that, we thrive. (Other authors have made the same point, including Malcolm Gladwell and Geoff Colvin.) In other words, we are satisfied by the attempt, not by the external rewards that we get from these things. Turns out that the old saying about the journey, not the destination, appears to be true.

True mastery may be impossible, which may also be why it is so enticing. Ben Hogan, who spent hours every day on the practice range working on every golf shot that he could imagine, said that in a typical round, there were only two or three shots that came off perfectly. Michael Jordan said that the only reason that he succeeded was that he had failed so many times.

May we push ourselves to fail, and learn mastery in the process.

Jeff