Mastery
“To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle.” ~ Dalai Lama
“Human potential is the same for all. Your feeling, “I am of no value”, is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You are deceiving yourself. We all have the power of thought – so what are you lacking? If you have willpower, then you can change anything. It is usually said that you are your own master.” ~ Dalai Lama
“Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.” ~ Buddha
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” ~ Michelangelo
“When the human body is put under exceptional strain, a range of dormant genes in the DNA are expressed and extraordinary physiological proccesses are activated.” ~ Anders Ericsson
“Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance.” ~ Matthew Syed
“World-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached. Over time, through constant repetition and deep concentration, the gap will disappear, only for a new target to be created, just out of reach once again.” ~ Matthew Syed
“The practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: Progress. Every second of every minute of every hour, the goal is to extend one’s mind and body, to push oneself beyond the outer limits of one’s capacities, to engage so deeply in the task that one leaves the training session, literally, a changed person.” ~ Matthew Syed
“When most people practice, they focus on the things they can do effortlessly. Expert practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well – or even at all. Research across doains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.” ~ Ericsson
“Only through training will a person learn his own weaknesses… He who is aware of his weaknesses will remain master of himself in any situation.” ~ Gichin Funakoshi
“Figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you’ll never really satisfy yourself that you’ve made it, and accept that thats okay.” ~ Robert B. Reich
“You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression, forgetting
themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.”
~ W. H. Auden
“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” ~ Albert Einstein
”He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still” ~Lao Tzu.
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.” ~ Anthony Robbins
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.” ~ Anthony Robbins
“Real success is success with self. It’s not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.” ~ Anwar Sadat
