Interface Blogs

As I have been studying and preparing myself for upcoming course delivery, I have been pondering the idea of mastery. Delivering the courses I teach and the constant refinement of techniques and procedures is a practice of the 'art' of mastery. All of my students, whether they know it or not are engaged in the 'art' of mastery by simply attending a course.

We are engaged with mastery early on in life when we learn how to walk, brush our teeth or tie our shoes. I assert that we rarely bring mastery into our lives consciously, or do so in some areas (brilliant career) and not others (failed relationships). It seems when mastery is applied conciously, we have our hands on the steering wheel of our destiny and right or wrong, can apply direction towards the outcome. When mastery is not conciously applied it's a bit more like attempting to steer with the rearview mirror of destiny and being puzzled when it doesn't work.

Mastery seems to be 'the development of a being in the proficiency of a discipline through discovery and practice'. Mastery is not necessarily a thing attained so much as it is expanding growth and development in an a specific area.

It is not reasonable to consider that we practice something before we discover it, so we must start with discovery.

Discovery may be defined as 'the act of unconcealing what is out of view'.  How do we 'discover' something which is out of view? Someone may tell us something ("you need a breath mint"), we may examine clues and find something ("the small, dark scat on my kitchen floor led me to the mouse nest under the sink") or we may stumble upon something accidentally while looking for something else altogether ("while looking for a snack in the refrigerator, I found my missing cat").

 Once we have discovered something, we need to decide if we will act on it. If our intent is to become proficient in an area, we need to practice and measure our results along the way.

Practice may be defined as 'performing or working at repeatedly so as to become proficient'.  Practice alone will not necessarily bring about proficiency and it is an essential ingredient. We also need measurements or milestones to give us some sense of progress in the attainment of mastery in a given area. Sports uses statistics constantly as a measure of a player's worth and proficiency; without measurements there would be no score and no point to any game played.

So, what's the point of all this?:  To begin having the conversation about mastery out loud. To invite you and encourage you to be a stand for your own excellence and proficiency. To invite you to explore what's possible.