Learn, Share, Grow – Become a Master of your Craft

Below is a lesson from medium.com on the 5 steps to becoming a master of your craft, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

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https://medium.com/the-mission/5-steps-to-become-a-master-of-your-craft-wisdom-from-robert-greene-438b7e2a1706

5 Steps to Become a Master of Your Craft: Wisdom from Robert Greene

By Nat Eliason

“We imagine that creativity and brilliance just appear out of nowhere, the fruit of natural talent, or perhaps of a good mood, or an alignment of the stars. It would be an immense help to clear up the mystery — to name this feeling of power, to examine its roots, to define the kind of intelligence that leads to it, and to understand how it can be manufactured and maintained. Let us call this sensation mastery — the feeling that we have a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves.” ― Robert Greene, Mastery

We all have the capacity to master any skill. But many of us succumb to pitfalls such as boredom, impatience, uncertainty, and fear which cripple our learning and halt progress towards mastery. Worse, articles on the internet pervert the meaning of “expert” with seductive content on life hacks that make us believe we can become experts in a short amount of time by doing little. But we all know life hacks can only get you so far.
Thankfully, Robert Greene wrote an entire book called “Mastery”, which provides a framework for becoming the best at your craft; incorporating deep analysis and anecdotes from history’s best practitioners.

Continue Reading Here.

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Key Learnings:

• The first step to becoming a master is to rediscover the primal instinct that first sparked your curiosity.
• Greene’s strategies for finding your calling:
  • Return to your origins: What were you obsessed with when you were young?
  • Occupy the perfect niche: Find a field where your skills can flourish.
  • Avoid the false path: Do not be seduced to a field for wealth, popularity, or pressure from family and friends. Be honest about your interests, and have the courage to pursue them.
  • Let go of the past: Your past decisions do not reflect who you are and should not weigh you down. If something feels wrong, quit.
    Find your way back: You’ll encounter many hardships throughout your journey. If you decide to quit, you can always return.
• Once you have chosen a path, the next step should be to collect as many “recipes” as possible. Recipes can be instructions from classes, blogs, books, forums, or any guide that has you developing early skills. This should apply to ONE skill.
• You must experiment with these recipes. Get creative. Test different recipe combinations, apply new constraints, do anything to add layers of complexity as a challenge. You will make a lot of mistakes, and the only way to advance will be to embrace failure and push through.
• Greene’s Strategies for finding the perfect Mentor:
  • Choose a mentor according to your needs and inclination
  • Gaze deep into the mentor’s mirror
  • Transfigure their ideas
  • Create a back and forth dynamic
• Greene’s Creative Strategies:
  • Cultivate Negative Capability
  • Allow for Serendipity
  • Alternate the Mind Through “the Current”
  • Alter Your Perspective
  • Revert to Primal Intelligence
• Greene’s Keys to Mastery:
  • Internalize the Details
  • Submit to the Other
  • Synthesize all forms of knowledge