Today, we continue our Dadly Daily Declaration series with readings from The Passion Paradox by authors Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. So far, Stulberg and Madness have discussed the pitfalls of passion and the sole focus of pursing your passion. Today’s reading focuses on developing a mastery mindset.
Here are a few gems from today’s reading:
- Mastery is a mind-set and also a path. It leads to continual improvement and development. It values acute (in the moment) and chronic (over a lifetime) engagement but devalues most of the transient stuff in between (point-in-time successes or failures).
- Individuals who are on the path of mastery not only accomplish great things, but do so in a healthy and sustainable manner. They exude a Zen-like aura, are resistant to burnout, and produce work that is of a special kind of quality—a quality that is born out of love. And yet perhaps their greatest accomplishment is an even more cherished one: continual growth and development, a fulfilling life.
- This mind-set and all its benefits are available to anyone who is willing to put in the work necessary to adopt it.
- Individuals on the path of mastery are driven from within. Their primary motivation isn’t external measures of success or fear, and it’s certainly not satisfying others or conforming to a certain peer group or social norms. Rather, their motivation originates from an internal desire to improve and engage in an activity for its own sake.
- The mastery mind-set acknowledges that external motivators—be it Olympic medals, book sales, art commissions, or venture capital funding—will influence your motivation. At the same time, however, the mastery mind-set ensures that the influence of such external motivators takes a backseat. This doesn’t happen unthinkingly. It requires deliberate choices and actions to keep such external motivators from staking too great a claim in your psyche and inconspicuously turning your passion into passio. Perhaps the simplest and most effective of these actions is showing up and doing the work, every damn day.
- Doing the work has a special way of putting both success and failure in their respective places. After a massive achievement or a devastating failure, getting back to work serves as an embodied reminder that external results aren’t why you are in this. You are in this because you love what you do. Because you are pursuing mastery—a commitment to your craft and ongoing progression in it. You aren’t so much striving for specific goals as you are being present in an ongoing practice.
- A powerful way to maintain drive from within lies in your psyche; in particular, internalizing the mastery mind-set as a core value. Core values are guiding principles that help dictate your behaviors. They serve as unwavering guides, influencing how you think, feel, and act. Core values are not just beliefs you pay lip service to but those that you truly strive to embody. Research shows that reflecting on your core values helps to ensure that you live in accordance with them.
- Drive from within does not occur on its own. Without rapidly coming back to your work and committing to mastery as a core value, external motivators are likely to creep into and eventually dominate your psyche. Do not let this happen.
- Motivational patterns are finicky and start early in life. If you work with children in any manner, do encourage them to follow their interests and support their natural talents. Do not exert too much pressure or emphasize external rewards (for achievement) or punishment (for failure). Your actions will either promote or suppress the mastery mind-set. Far too many parents, teachers, and coaches teach children to measure their value based on external signals or results. This is counterproductive. In the words of Timothy Gallwey, author of the classic book The Inner Game of Tennis, “Children who have been taught to measure themselves in this way often become adults driven by a compulsion to succeed which overshadows all else. The tragedy of this belief is not that they will fail to find the success they seek, but that they will not discover the love or even the self-respect they were led to believe will come with it.”
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
Big wins and tough losses share at least one thing in common: It is admittedly hard to get back to work after them. Force yourself to overcome this resistance.
Enjoy the success or grieve the defeat, but within twenty-four hours, return to your craft, get back to work.
