Regardless of what success means to you (financial, physical, relationship), you must work on succeeding because it is your obligation and your duty!  Success is vital to your well-being.  As a result, Anyone who minimizes the importance of success is probably confused or never took the chances.  Success provides confidence and a sense of well-being.  Without success, your goals, dreams, and even entire civilizations wouldn’t have a chance to survive.  So, how do you go about succeeding in life?

Imagine yourself as a gardener and your craft as a plant.  What does it take for a flower to bloom?

• It takes time.
• You must take action by watering the soil and removing weeds.
• You must pay attention to her actions to not over-water the plant.
• You constantly need to eliminate weeds.
• Finally, you must not get attached to the results of your labor but do your best for the plant.

We can use the same metaphor in mastering any craft.  So whether you are trying to learn how to play piano, train a new puppy or learn a new language, the following four pillars can aid you in your journey.

Four Pillars Of Success

How To Achieve Mastery in Any Endeavor

 

1) Time.

I often talk about “sustained attention” since it is the ultimate goal of yoga.  But also, the opposite of a sustained attention state is a scattered-brain state.  I am pretty good at the latter.

The conservative mind state is when we get into the flow.  The latter (scattered-brain) is when dreadful things happen.  For instance, I am embarrassed to admit that I drove through the garage door during one of my scattered-brain moments.  Not to mention overeating, falling, and losing things.

Interestingly, I just listened to Cals Newport’s interview with James Altucher.  They are two of my favorite authors.

Here, Gal explained the phenomenon of “attention residue.” If you switch your attention from one target to another, the original target will leave a residue for a very long time.  For example, write deep and quickly check your email for 30 seconds.  You see an email that you need to get into.  And then you switch attention to writing.  The lab experiments show that a 30-second check will bounce in your head for 10 to 20 minutes.  So, your cognitive capacity will be lost.  You lost a significant portion of your brain.  In other words, multi-tasking puts you in a continually reduced cognitive capacity.  So, constantly checking your phone and social media is equivalent to taking a drug that makes you dumber.

4) Take Action.

4) Non-Attachment to Results.

Mastery of the mind comes from practice and non-attachment.

Yoga Sutras 1.12

I am a result-driven individual.  So when I first heard about the concept of non-attachment, I thought it was a bunch of “new-age” rubbish.  However, it made more sense as I delved deeper into the “focus on action with non-attachment to results” concept.

For instance, I enjoy the action of writing.  SoI spend lots of time creating content, researching the subject I am writing about, and editing.  Then, of course, I love when my readers provide positive feedback and when new folks subscribe.

But, even if no one reads my work, I still love the process and do my absolute best.  But, the results of my labor are not my primary focus.

To conclude:

To achieve mastery in your craft,  spend some uninterrupted and quality time with it, take action, pay attention, and don’t worry about results.

 

 

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