Can You Follow A Step-By-Step Guide To Mastery?

There is a belief that masquerades as truth and the belief is this:

To master a skill, all you have to do is a step by step guide.

An extension of the belief is that someone else already has this guide and can simply sell it / hand it over / teach it to you.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Why, you ask?

Well … there is no denying that each of us is unique — in physiology, in psychology, in the abilities that come effortlessly to us as well as in what we find challenging.

Mastering a skill must account for our unique starting points.

If we all start from different points, how can our paths be the same?

Yet — a step-by-step guide — the same path — is supposed to get all of us to the same endpoint?

The truth is that every individual is a unique cocktail of strengths, weaknesses, experiences, and inclinations.

To suggest that the same path could lead all of us to the same destination is to deny the very essence of our individuality. It's a bit like expecting a lion and a gazelle to follow the same set of instructions for survival. Absurd, right?

But here’s something even more important.

Mastery is not a destination at all.

You reach no final point where you’ve “completed” mastery.

It is not something you achieve and then move on to something else. Mastery is a never-ending process of learning and refinement.

This is why the idea of a step-by-step guide is flawed.

How can there be a finite list of steps for something that is never truly “finished”?

Mastery cannot be a product of conformity.

It is the result of understanding your unique nature, embracing your quirks, and using them as the foundation for growth.

The great masters—no matter the discipline—did not reach greatness by following someone else’s script. They wrote their own.

The step-by-step guide approach is seductive because it offers certainty in an uncertain world.

But this certainty is a mirage.

It ignores the nuances, the deviations, and the personal struggles that shape our growth.

It reminds me of this story about Mozart.

One man came to Mozart and asked him how to write a symphony.

Mozart replied, “You are too young to write a symphony.”

The man said, “You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years of age, and I am 21.”

Mozart said, “Yes, but I didn’t run around asking people how to do it.”

So there cannot be a prescribed guide for mastery.

It’s not found by following someone else’s path.

Mastery must be attained by forging your own.

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