Or, perhaps your upbringing was dominated by dour individuals who taught you that the route to mastery is long and bleak and lonely. This Cormac McCarthy outlook can create residual beliefs that any attempts by us normal folk to summit are doomed. And foolishly earnest. Are any of these platitudes familiar?

• Work to live, don’t live to work.

• Work hard and stay humble.

• No one likes his job. (And the corollary – If you don’t hate it, it’s not work.)

• You can’t support a family doing that!

• You have to suffer for your art.

The truth

Mastery is a mountain that anyone with curiosity can climb. Did that statement surprise you? Let me detail it. Mastery is a peak human experience that becomes possible when accomplishment is challenged by curiosity, resulting in the drive for innovation. As psychologist Dorothy Dinnerstein represented it, mastery is the particularly human pleasure of tackling an enterprise all the way to novelty. Another way to put it is this: Mastery is the orthogonal synergy of conformity and audacity.

Conformity: Mastery requires a high degree of conformity because compliance allows us to “behave” ourselves long enough to learn from all who have gone before. We show up, we shut up and we absorb the material presented to us. We are too hungry for knowledge about our subject to waste time re-inventing any wheel or to feel embarrassed about being back in kindergarten. We just want to learn.

We learn in two ways – by understanding the material and by doing. In order to understand the material, we collect data – much data – about how the academy of our particular field has figured out how to do “X” well. This can range from a technical training program in support of a career as an electrician to years of college for a Ph.D. Then, in order to be accomplished, we have to use the data we collect…not just absorb it. It has to run through our fingers thousands of times in dozens of ways until our hands know exactly how each tiny piece of the whole feels. This means the aspiring electrician gets beaucoup hands-on experience with wiring a house and the Ph.D. student gets plenty of time in the field, the library or the lab. Learning and applying well-accepted procedures allow us to become fluent in the complex language of the craft – a language common to the people in our work community. Our ability to speak it is a necessary step toward access to our creative peers. And it’s heady indeed to swim in the synergistic pool of fellow masters.

The wax-on regimen of an apprenticeship, the strengthening of two-a-day football practices and the endless drilling of a figure-drawing class are all examples of the rigor of conformity. We tolerate the rigor because our future memory suggests it will absolutely be worth it. We see what true mastery looks like in the nimbleness of our mentors and our subsequent diffidence allows us to put aside any unearned vanity that our natural giftedness might otherwise activate. We realize and appreciate that short cuts too often lead to poor habits that undermine greatness. And, despite many frustrations inherent in the learning process, we derive much comfort from the sense that the relentless hunger of our gifts is being fed as we move through our training program. When presented with a challenging apprenticeship, if we’re in the right place with enough of the right stuff, there will be a little voice inside us that shouts out “Bring it on!”

Conformity ushers us to the land of accomplishment – as a welder, an architect or a priest – up an ascending learning curve that leads steadily toward elite levels of performance. For most of us non-Mozart types, however, there are factors that interfere with the sweep of the natural learning curve. For one thing, many, many gifts underlie each domain of mastery and very, very few of us have all of them. Each knack needed for our chosen field that we are missing will cause us to “arrest” awhile as we grind out the extra practice necessary to learn the skills for which we lack an inborn aptitude. Prodigies don’t have to waste a moment’s time because they have all the gifts they need to tackle a steep learning curve, but most of us hit at least one plateau on our way toward the heights. Another roadblock to accomplishment is created when the prerequisite positive mental health that also underlies domain mastery has been tampered with. To the extent our self-esteem, healthy narcissism or appropriate entitlement has been damaged by the way we were raised, we will again be vulnerable to the plateau phenomenon, for we will have to divert some or much of our time and energy to shoring up our psyche. Mastery also requires luck. Few of us receive the early start, finest training, environmental support and parental focus that Wayne Gretzky did as he moved quickly to achieve elite levels of performance in the hockey rink. Had this stellar athlete been born in the tropics or to a family who preferred literary pursuits to athletics, the jersey numbered 99 might still be available. Finally, tangential gifts compete for our time and attention. It can be very difficult to both identify a passion and maintain your focus when hobbies push for more than just weekend time or if you are a polymath with gifts that underlie more than one métier.

As is so often the case, my old buddy Nietzsche captured the essence of why we need to remain steadfast with respect to conformity leading to accomplishment:

What is essential “in heaven and on earth” seems to be, to say it once more,
that there should be obedience over a long period of time and in a single direction:
given that, something always develops, and has developed, for whose sake it is
worthwhile to live on earth; for example, virtue, art, music, dance, reason, spirituality –
something transfiguring, subtle, mad and divine.

Audacity: Even as we are patiently learning new material and gathering new skills, our curious side is simultaneously wondering: What if? What if we make just this one change? What if we eliminate that one step? What if we try this instead of that? We are eager to experiment with doing things a little (or a lot) differently. The greater our level of accomplishment, the more audacious will be our experiments because the more able we are to see patterns, to see the whole in the tiniest of parts, and to see what may currently be missing.

Audacity is enhanced by an environment where open communication is possible with the mentor(s); novel ideas are discussed and appreciated; risk-taking is seen as a natural, admirable step in professional development; risks are assessed jointly among the novice and the trainers; advice is given based on enhancing novice audacity rather than protecting the ego of the mentor; and support is offered for the trainee when mistakes are made. If the novice is premature in her desire to innovate, she is gently encouraged to be patient. If she appears hesitant to step out of conformity, her mentors will give her a little push. This is an extremely rare environment, so you may have to construct some or all of it for yourself. (I like to nose around the stories of successful people by talking with them or reading about them to support my inclination for experimentation.)

If fortune shines on us, at some point in our training, our curiosity will be just too great – we will decide to step boldly off the conventional track. We trust that we can recover and learn from missteps and we don’t fear reprisals from our mentors. We yearn to be, said philosopher Alice Koller, one of those “who bridge the chasm that lies between the safe inadequacy of what they’ve been taught and the fulfillment that they uncertainly sense will exist on the other side.”

But, often we are not fortunate. Our trainers can be unkind, easily threatened by our audacity and vengeful. And mistakes can sometimes be so costly that rebounding is difficult. If, however, we view audacity as a necessary mastery component, we will be better prepared to protect our development of it. We understand that with accomplishment comes appropriate interest in what is not yet in existence. If our mentors don’t support this view, we will seek out some who do and who can contribute to our unique training ground.

While it’s true that error is a valuable luxury, what you gain by being audacious is this: A little bit of who you are is now contained within the academy of your profession. In order to position yourself to enjoy this type of success, you may need to build up enough equity to allow you to take a risk (e.g. job seniority, financial security, a series of good performance reviews, etc.). And you may need to inoculate yourself against the rancor of those around you who may be too stunted to engage their audacity and so may be prone to try to sabotage yours. You can find protection from bitter folks like that by gathering stipulation from friends in your social network, engaging with an empathic therapist or by perhaps seeking professional contacts outside your immediate work environment. However you can, work politically to allow yourself room to be different…to carve your initials in the tree trunk of your métier. We may exist in an inherited world, but we are absolutely designed to leave our own mark.

Existential essence

I would be remiss if I were to ignore the existential concept of “essence” in an article on mastery.

Probably the only point of agreement among the testy existential philosophers is that existence precedes essence. What they mean by that is this: we exist as an entity from the moment of our birth, but what we make out of the reality of our existence – our essence – unfolds only as we design our unique life through the choices we make. A cow doesn’t have to get up every morning and decide what kind of cow she wants to be. She just gets up and starts being a cow. Humans don’t have that luxury. We have to get up and, right away, start making the choices that will come to define what type of human we are.

Because our most profound choices concern finding our place in the world of work, it could be said that we fashion our most foundational essence while in pursuit of career mastery.

But that begs the question: “Why bother?” Why all the fuss? Why not simply trust that the world will herd us along a pathway that will deliver a nice life to us? If we are able to earn a good living, why concern ourselves over how good a fit our job is?

Now we’ve bumped into the seminal question of existence: Why do something rather than doing nothing?

This is a question we each answer for ourselves whether we do so consciously or not. We all choose daily how much to push our freedom outward as we fashion our one-and-only life. I think it makes sense to do so with some philosophical oomph behind the choosing process.

Can you stop right here, take a very deep breath, and ponder that line of questioning? Do you believe, no matter your circumstances, that you are in charge of your life? Are you intentionally using your personal value system to make choices meant to prune your coefficient of adversity back a bit? When was the last time you took a risk?

You are allowed to come up with any answers to these questions. In other words, there are no wrong answers. Existentially we are all entitled to place ourselves anywhere on the continuum between doing something and doing nothing. For every aspect of our lives. It is true, however, that whatever we decide can only be a guess as there is no proof available to us with which to create certainty.

If you’re curious, here’s my thinking on the subject: we seem to be designed biochemically to seek our very particular mastery as demonstrated by the fact that flow – full engagement in expertise – is an endogenous, neurologically induced state of nirvana. Nothing exceeds the bliss of being deep in our experience of mastery. This state will come in small doses when we have mastered tasks and hobbies. And it comes in huge doses when we are occupied in an enterprise that takes almost all we have to offer. That is to say, when the majority of our gifts and traits are all in service to the undertaking before us, time will hop. What I’m referring to here is, of course, passion for our work. If we leave the discovery of our true work niche up to the vicissitudes of Fate, we run the very great risk of never experiencing flow.

In order to harvest the delightful mental health that our biochemistry is poised to offer us, we have to submit to this design. In doing so, we take our place among the bright and humble humans who have engaged passionately in this lifelong endeavor – this self-making.

To summarize, let me condense the existentialists’ argument into three sentences: Existence precedes essence. We lay the groundwork for our essence when we discover for ourselves our essential talents and traits in order to apply them in fulfilling work. When we have found and mastered our particular work, we will hit the mother-lode of deliriously good mental health known as flow.

Ironically, then, when we lose ourself in what we believe must be done with our time here on earth we are actually finding ourself.

The feel of mastery

So here we are – accomplished (thanks to our willingness to conform) and audacious (due to respect for our unruly curiosity). It’s a place of tension between the discipline to continually enrich our understanding of conventional routes to achievement (For an inspirational perspective on the ongoing value of conformity, see the New Yorker article: Personal Best: Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?) and a willingness to disrupt the status quo with daring experiments.

Nietzsche described this creative condition as “dancing in chains” and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the one who called it flow.

Because this psychological state is so vital to humans, let me stress it a bit. Flow is a heightened psychological state that occurs when our levels of accomplishment and invention match the challenges before us. Time hops, as I mentioned, as we lose ourselves in the demand for innovation. We are seduced by the truth that the greater the mastery, the greater the level of eccentricity needed to avoid boredom, therefore the higher the degree of innovation and therefore the greater the flow. We are beguiled by that chasm between what is now and what could possibly be in the near future. For more information on flow, I recommend the book written by the man who developed the concept: Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Csikszentmihalyi.

Pick the right mountain

In a dynamic if mixed metaphor, picture a line-up of superbly conditioned thoroughbreds rocking from their front to their back legs as they barely tolerate the presence of the closed starting gates that are keeping them from rushing out to start climbing the mountain of their passion. Do you feel that way? Are you impatient with what the feminist author Carolyn Heilbrun deftly described as:

…the forming of a life in the service of a talent felt,
but unrecognized and unnamed.
This condition is marked by a profound sense of vocation,
with no idea of what that vocation is,
and by a strong sense of inadequacy and deprivation.

Everyone is born with an assortment of gifts and every child is curious. Everyone, therefore, is capable of obtaining mastery. The trick is to find that métier that most completely encompasses your particular set of gifts. (This can be a smidge more complicated for polymaths.) And you have to avoid trying to scale a peak chosen for you by someone else.

The remainder of the articles in this section of the website are designed to help you find the particular mountain you are designed to climb. Once you find the mountain, the rest is easy. You go up!

*Google-Latin for “deconstruct before self-construct.”