How To Be A Master - The 6 Steps To Becoming Master At Anything

If you grew up in my time and were never a freak of kungfu movies, you never had a childhood!!

When I was younger, kungfu movies were the in-thing and all our cinema halls would be jam-packed every weekend whenever a kung-fu show was on.

One interesting thing about kung-fu movies of those days, I don't know about now, they always had one story - The master, also known as teacher, would get killed and his student would then go on to avenge his death.

The lessons I learned from the kung-fu movies have sort of began to shape my life today. I learnt the 6 steps of how to be a MASTER.

1. Mission - The Principle of Purpose.

To be a master at your skill, the number one thing of your attention is this thing called "Mission" or "Purpose" or "Why".

You cannot be a master and not know what your mission is. What do I mean here ? What do I mean here

Your mission is your reason, your purpose or your why.

For centuries, the question of the meaning of life has rocked and thrown off-board countless numbers of people; the young and the old, the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor – and yet this alone remains the most important question every person on the planet must answer for themselves.

There must be some driving force that causes you to pursue a life of mastery without which you will have no reason to move from an average lifestyle.

A clearly defined mission must be your blueprint in the development of a master in you.

What is it that you want to achieve at the end of it all? What is your goal and passion? It is dangerous to live life without a mission, without a purpose.

Many people who end their lives after some frustration are people who never were passionate about anything.

Many companies display on their walls what they call a mission statement. This document defines what the company wishes and plans to achieve in the market. It reminds them about their role and existence. This is a guideline which sets their boundaries of operation. Immediately a company forgets its mission statement, the competitor takes over.

You need to clearly define your mission – what you want to become. Do not leave it to chance; and to always remind yourself about it, put it down on a piece of paper and frame it as your own mission statement, then hang it in your room so that your eyes will always look at it each time you wake up and each time you go to bed.

The definition of your mission is the number one and most important step in the pursuance of your mastery.

2. Abilities - The Principle of Gifts

Each person is endowed with abilities to help them achieve their mission. You were uniquely framed and carefully packaged, ready to come and execute your mission on this planet.

The abilities in you are what we sometimes call talents. You may have heard some people who are called multi-talented and others just talented.

Well, the truth is that every person is multi-talented; you do not only have one ability in you!! There are inert multi abilities in you but you need to try them out to prove this. Other people are called disabled – this does not mean they are deprived of any abilities;

NO ONE IS DISABLED.

If one person does not have the ability you have, it does not mean they are disabled.

Ignorance is the only disability a man can successfully have;

And this is a disability of choice.

Let's take a blind man for instance who reads brail using his fingers, and a man who can see but can't read because he's never been in a classroom to learn how to read; who should we call disabled?

It is when you accept your condition of disability that you kill the genius inside you. Do not let anyone take advantage of you because your abilities are not their abilities.

Explore those hidden abilities in you that will help you achieve your mission statement.

You are disabled only if you choose to.

3. Select - The Principle of Choice

Even if you are endowed with many abilities, not all are there to help you achieve your mission. If your goal is to become the best saxophonist, your ability to translate Chinese may not be exactly the one you want to spend your time on.

You need to carefully choose what can help you with your mission. You need to realize that all this goes back to achieving your mission, your why – what and who you want to end up.

The point to note here is that, this venture is entirely your choice – you need to select. Just because you can sing does not mean you must end up a singer, but if you choose to, then the abilities in you that can make you the best singer are what you must select.

You will not select to become everything because you cannot become everything. To become master, you must choose or select what you want to master or you'll end up Jack of all trades and master of none.

This is very critical because this is what makes people end up who they didn't intend to be. The abilities you choose to major on are what determine your destiny. You cannot choose one thing and end up another. If you are a swimmer and also a singer but you decide to always do your swimming – you will not be known as the best singer in town. So choose carefully your abilities.

4. Training - The Principle of Work

Once you have selected your abilities, you need to realize that you are not the best person that ever lived at your abilities or talents; so you need to take them to the gym. Abilities are like babies, if you want them to grow and become perfect, you need to feed them and train them.

The best public speaker was not born like that, they took that gift to some bush and spoke to the trees; they spoke to anything and everything whether heard or not. They practiced the art until one day you saw the flare in their public speaking.

But you think God somehow just blessed them with the gift and they had nothing to do with it.

Football legends don't fall from heaven, these are individuals who take their talents to the gym; even after training with their fellow team mates, they take it a little further than everybody else.

Do not be cheated, no one is born with skill – this particular thing only comes after the gym.

Haven't you ever wondered why every man does not look like John Cena? Are you telling me some men don't have muscle? Everyone has muscle but it's the muscle that goes to the gym that shows.

5. Explore - The Principle of Passion

A master is not the person who only wins using one method. If your opponent steals your formula, what becomes of you? A master explores several ways of arriving at the same point. Explore your talents and discover several ways of scoring goals.

If you kick your penalties the same way, one day the goal-keepers will discover your method and that will be the end of your goal scoring carrier.

How interesting it is to watch grand masters doing their thing. People are mesmerized by magic; they will pay you for the magic you put in your skill. Become an explorer of your own abilities and let people fight to get your auto-graph. No one will ever want your auto-graph until you become an explorer of your talents.

6. Rinse & Repeat - The Principle of Persistence

There are no two ways about it and no short-cuts to mastery – if you want to master anything, doing it over and over, is the key. You cannot make piano master by playing one song per month; its repetition that does the job.

Back to my kung-fu movies analogy, I once watched a movie where a certain young monk wanted to learn kung-fu and he went to enroll at a monastery. His teacher's first lesson was that of discipline and commitment.

The young man was eager to learn so he thought this was good enough. His initial task was to sit by a river and slap the waters repeatedly with his palms. The first day he was all good, the second day came, the third came and went. He was looking forward to a time he would start learning kung-fu; a week past and he became inpatient. One day he approached his teacher rather furiously and disappointed:

“I came here to learn kung-fu, not to sit by the river slapping water like a fool!!” his teacher watched him and said “patience my child, patience”.

Four months went by and it was time to go back on holiday to his family. By this stage he was so annoyed with the whole program he had made up his mind he was going to quit.

His family saw him coming home and they were all excited and happy to see their son and brother back obviously with some kung-fu skills to show off to them and his peers.

Sitting at the dinner table, his family decided to enquire from him what he had learnt at the monastery. Angrily, he replied

“I learnt literally nothing, am wasting my time there.”

“hmm!!, am sure there is something you have picked up to show us!!” insisted his father.

“I don't want to go back to that place!!” he replied.

“Four months is a long time, you mean you were just sitting??” his mother added.

In anger, he slapped the dinner table from which they were eating - shouting “I told you I learnt nothing!!”

To the amazement of both his family and himself, the strong dinner table they once cherished broke into pieces after his one slap. It was then that he realized that the strength he had developed to break that strong table was as a result of those repeated slaps he was giving to that river of water.

To be a master, you must overcome the boredom that comes as a result of repetition.

The six points to mastery spell out the word MASTER.