The Six P`s of Mastery

When you speak of mastery, many cliché sayings instantly percolate to the top of your mind like “Life's a journey, not the destination” or the famous Confucius saying of “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Leaving you scratching your head and asking, what does all this esoteric mumbo jumbo mean? I believe that Mastery involves Six P`s: practice, patience, persistence, priorities, passion, and peacefulness.

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Practice - Anthony Robbins says, "Repetition is the mother of skill". For years, my instructors taught me how to perform forms correctly but it was not until I committed to perform one form a 1000 times that I truly started to express the deeper aspects of the form. Elsom Eldridge and Mark Eldridge in their landmark book “The Obvious Expert” suggests that spending one hour a day learning about a specific topic will make you an expert in a year. Achieving Black Belt or any other goal is impossible without practice.

Patience - It`s so easy to get a short term view of ourselves and be overly critical and frustrated about our level of improvement. Patience is essential, to trust that every day, we improve so slightly (imperceptibly). Over time, they snowball into something impressive. Daily meditation helps to start to develop this quality.

Persistence - In every endeavor, I have hit obstacles or walls. Without persistence, we would stop at each obstacle without achieving anything worthwhile. For my Ultimate Black Belt Test, I was required to perform 52,000 pushups and sit-ups in a year. Achieving 52,000 pushups and sit-ups in a year is impossible without persistence. Some days, I did not make the 150 daily goal, only to recommit the following day to pump out 150 plus making up the extras. Persistence means taking the large yearly goals and breaking it down into weekly and daily goals and holding yourself accountable by track your progress.

Priorities - Let`s face it. It`s easy to let other priorities eat away the day. So many times, I catch myself thinking, "I do not have the time" but really the fact is that I have not made it a priority in my life. Constantly, reviewing your goals and monitoring your progress is essential to keeping your priorities straight.

Passion - No passion, poor results. Instead of agonizing about the results, start to enjoying the ride. Without passion, playing all out at level 10 would be impossible. Truly loving what you do means the difference between going through the motions and accomplishing something divine.

Peacefulness - Remaining open to new experiences and maintaining that beginner`s mind comes through peacefulness. Through a peaceful mind, we develop a compassion for others. As a martial artist, developing a capacity to help others makes our existence meaningful and fulfilling.

Well, there you have it folks. The 6 P’s of Mastery in a nutshell.

Sensei Tim Rosanelli
Maximum Impact Karate
www.maximpactkarate.com