Don’t Give Up Your “Unrepeatable Uniqueness.”
I’ll bet you’ve heard this before:
- No two snowflakes are ever the same. You are a snowflake.
- You are a unique, unrepeatable collection of DNA.
- You have a genetic makeup that has never happened before and won’t be repeated again.
It’s true. You are “unrepeatably unique.”
So what? Am I supposed to do something with that esoteric insight?
Hang with me – I think I can make this less esoteric.
For a big chunk of my life, I have been fascinated by this thing called Mastery. For some time, I harbored a resentment that I wasn’t especially gifted, a prodigy, a genius, or born of genius parents, or raised in the right neighborhood (rural S.E. Wyoming is not known for its production of world changers).
I faced a path to mastery blocked by my DNA and heritage – at least, in my mind. I carried that psychological ball-and-chain around for a long time.
That ignorance began to dissolve when I read a book entitled “Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-term Fulfillment” by George Leonard. In it, Leonard defines mastery this way:
“It resists definition yet can be instantly recognized. It comes in many varieties, yet follows certain unchanging laws. It brings rich rewards, yet is not really a goal or a destination but rather a process, a journey. We call this journey mastery, and tend to assume that it requires a special ticket available only to those born with exceptional abilities. But, mastery isn’t reserved for the supertalented or even for those who are fortunate enough to have gotten an early start. It’s available to anyone who is willing to get on the path and stay on it – regardless of age, sex, or previous experience.”
If this is all true, why do we see so few true masters? What was it about Mozart, or Tiger Woods, or Einstein, or Leonardo de Vinci, or Tommy Emmanuel (my acoustic guitar master/hero), or Seth Godin (marketing guru) that took them to the master category?
There’s no magic to any and all of their mastery achievement. None of these people are or were prodigies.
Prodigies almost never become masters. They fizzle out.
What these masters did was to (1) honor their uniqueness and deepest internal drivers and (2) hop onto a path that they never abandoned, regardless of the twists and turns.
Leonard offers up an explanation of why the path to mastery is so rare:
“The trouble is that we have few, if any, maps to guide us on the journey or even to show us how to find the path. The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We’re constantly bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success, and fast, temporary relief, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.”
In his view, this anti-mastery mentality not only prevents us from developing our potential skills but threatens our health, education, career, relationships, and perhaps “our national economic viability.”
So there I had an answer – I had been conspired against by the very culture I existed in. Who knew?
A “Third Age Master?” Resurrect your inner genius.
In my continued pursuit of an understanding of the nuances of mastery, I dived into a book that’s been gathering dust for a couple of years on my crowded bookshelf: Robert Greene’s “Mastery.” It’s a 300+ page, dense, small-font project with guaranteed nap-generating qualities if you aren’t an off-kilter reader like yours truly. It takes Leonard’s writing to the next level.
Greene pretty well clears up any mystery about mastery using a plethora of real-life examples, ranging from Mozart to Einstein to Buckminster Fuller to John Coltrane.
Honestly, the book started out feeding my frustration at being severely short of having mastered anything other than sitting and thinking about mastery.
But, Greene jolted me out of my drift toward a mid-page nap with the statement that “intensity of effort lies at the heart of mastery” and that:
“-at the core of this intensity of effort is in fact a quality that is genetic and inborn – not talent or brilliance, which is something that must be developed, but rather a deep and powerful inclination toward a particular subject.
This inclination is a reflection of a person’s uniqueness. This uniqueness is not something merely poetic or philosophical – it is a scientific fact that genetically, every one of us is unique, our exact genetic makeup has never happened before and will never be repeated. This uniqueness is revealed to us through the preferences we innately feel for particular activities or subjects of study.”
I bolded the word “inclination” because, as I read on, it occurred to me that it’s the word that best describes what nearly all of us fail to honor in our lives.
How did yours truly, a wandering-generality from rural Wyoming who relished time alone to think, who liked to read and write, and who most enjoyed his three semesters as a journalism major in college end up selling wood-fiber ceiling tile to lumberyards in St. Louis?
It turns out that this anomaly isn’t all that hard to sort out. Like most, my “uniqueness” and my “inclinations” bowed before the cultural expectations of the “big P’s” in my life: parents, peers, professors, politicians, pundits, paycheck.
You recall the not-so-subtle message, don’t you?
Don’t stand out.
Stay in the middle of that bell curve.
Do as you’re told.
Keep your head down and enjoy a “getta” life: getta degree, getta job, getta spouse; getta house, 2.5 kids, fenced yard, 2 SUVs, and golden retriever; getta title, 401K, gold watch, and retirement cake.
Somewhere along that sorry path, inclinations got buried deeper and deeper into the depths of our accumulated, culturally-influenced neural connections.
Then, we bump up against that artificial finish line called 65, roll a stone and permanent seal over the tomb containing our withering inclinations, and call it retirement.
So, you’re tired and can’t wait for retirement because you bought the Koolaid that retirement is the relief you need from a life and “job” that, on a good day, injects an unhealthy dose of cortisol (hint: stress hormone) and has nothing to do with those inclinations you tormented your parents with at age 9 or 10.
So you bag it – or start planning to bag it – and wander into unchartered territory with a timeline that could be longer than the one spent in your “career.” Chances are good you may jump in armed with nothing resembling a roadmap.
Escape is the operative word. Not relaunch or take-off. Been there, done that, through with it.
And the accumulated skills and experience begin their retreat deep into secluded sections of the brain. The highly developed neural connections you formed over 10, 20, 30 years begin to shed their myelin and shrink, helped along with enchantment with the voice-activated remote, Netflix, and an average of 49 hours/week of TV watching.
You’ve just denied yourself the chance to become a “third age master.”
Our youngers, our off-kilter society need you to honor your “inclinations.” Yes, those inclinations are likely barnacled or crusted over by meeting cultural expectations, accumulating, conforming, fitting in. But, they ain’t dead yet. In fact, they are like the flowers that suddenly blanket Death Valley once a decade when perfect conditions develop. 
Your “third age” could be that Death Valley flower experience. Conditions could be perfect for massaging those inclinations back to life. And making-a-ruckus in the world, or in somebody’s life.
Don’t waste your 10,000 hours!
It’s generally accepted that true masters have invested 10,000 hours in pursuing their inclinations. Tiger and Amadeus felt and acknowledged their inclinations at age 4 and were pushed into and nurtured along their journey to mastery by their fathers. They had their 10,000 hours as teenagers.
How many of 10,000 hours might you have that can be supplemented and channeled into bringing your inclinations to life?
You were anything but a slug through those career years. You accumulated skills and experiences that are worth a lot. Just think what might happen if you took those acquired skills, experiences, accumulated wisdom and turn it all loose on your “inclinations” with an eye toward making things better for you, the world, and the people in it.
Somehow that just seems to have a better ring to it than just escaping.
Just a thought-crushing article Gary to think of myself as a “master”. I remember returning back to my generic university in Southern California to complete my teacher certification well what else could I do with two liberal arts degrees? This was back in early 2000s as I finished my teacher certification I looked at a teaching career as insurance a “Plan B” in case the economy went south I thought in the 2000s at least somewhere there will be a demand for teachers. For added insurance I took computer courses that enabled me to add on my teacher credential “Computer Concepts and Applications” so I figured maybe in the worst case I will be called to teach computer classes although as a hobby I did follow technology topics. One day I met with my teacher advisor and he said the chances of my securing a high school teaching position in social studies were bleak could be ten years or more and he recommended starting at the middle school for student maturity reasons I dreaded that grade level. I figured high school was as close I could get to being with adults. After advice from a friend I returned for a practical Master’s of Arts in Education Technology I figured having a third college degree will for sure make me “lay-off” proof so I left a safe tenured k-12 teaching job and took a position as a computer applications instructor at New Horizons Computer Learning Center. I was happy to be out of public union teaching and into a field where I enjoyed talking, teaching and helping people with technology issues. You can say by my personality “DNA” is aligned with teaching by sharing and helping others with technology topics even better if I can make a decent living. So after 20 years of teaching k-12 students and adults technology classes from web design to programming I believe my “mastery” is that of expert educator. Since many students have passed through my computer classes I know there are graduates of my classes out there who I hope will fondly remember their “master” instructor patiently teaching them technology skills to succeed in the global economy. A million thank yous Gary for a thought-jarring article to open my eyes to hone my craft as a “master educator”.
INCLINATION ? I like it. Inclination is a better notion than “dream” or “aptitude”. Inclination doesn’t require a ‘gift’ or capability. It involves much more, an interest and curiosity. It’s an internal thing.
Thank you for this added perspective.
pat
You are a very bright person!
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