Episode Transcript

What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome back to the show guys.

Well, everybody, I want to talk about mastery. And I want to talk about the art of mastering a skill. And there’s really a process to it and a cycle to it. And here is why I think this is important. I think it’s important about mastery to really understand where you’re at. Because if you know where you’re at, you can always get where you’re going. The worst part about being lost is when you don’t know where you are, you don’t have any direction, and you don’t know how to get where you need to go. And that is just life in general.

And so with mastery, it really comes down to four phases in the first phase is What I really call discovery is where you are actually discovering that one, you are completely unaware that you are unskilled at whatever you’re trying to do. And so you go through this process of discovery and be like, Oh, I would like to do that. And then you start being conscious of, oh, I don’t have any skill in this. So the discovery process is going from unskilled and unconscious to conscious and unskilled, so you’re aware that you’d have no skill level and whatever you’re about to do. And then you begin working on the skill level, you put in the time, you put in the effort to learn, get educated all these things, right. And so then you move on to the third stage, which is conscious and skilled, because you get to the point where you are super skilled at What you do, and you know it. And you’re good at What you do, whether it’s sales, whether it’s programming, whether it’s contracting, negotiations, whatever it is, and you’re aware that you’re good.

And then the fourth stage is where that mastery really occurs, you become unconsciously skilled or unconsciously good. In other words, you don’t even have to think about just muscle memory. So if you want to know What unconsciously skilled looks like, pick up a pen and write out the alphabet, you never once have to think about the piece of paper, and all the pad. And all the outlines the arrows that used to have to draw letters, you don’t think about any of that you’re just like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, right? Same thing with numbers and writing, like so just writing, that’s What unconsciously skilled feels like, you don’t have to think about it.

You don’t have to think about opening a door anymore, right? Like when you’re little you got to figure out how doors work, you got to figure how not to shut your fingers in the door. But you don’t think about that, grab the doorknob, cool turn open. That’s What mastery feels like. And so when you’ve really changed, when excuse me change, when you’ve really achieved mastery in an area or skill level. You don’t even think about it, it just happens naturally. It’s a part of you naturally, it’s in your muscle memory, it’s in your body language.

Now, Here’s the thing about mastery, and why think mastery is very important, especially in certain skill sets. And in certain areas. When you don’t have to think about how you’re going to do the thing. You’re free to think about What is occurring in the moment while you’re doing the thing. Does that make sense? So if you don’t have to think about having a conversation about just listening to people, if you have really mastered a lot of soft skills, and you’re great at negotiations and sales, you’re not thinking about What to say, you can actually stop and genuinely listen to What the other side is saying. You can genuinely listen to What they’re saying. You can genuinely stop and pause and think about What they’re talking about. And connect with him at that moment. Because you have mastery in the game. And you have mastery in that skill set. And you don’t have to stop and think, Okay, well, they said this, should I say that and all this and all that stuff gets in the way of whatever you’re doing.

So when you’re even programming Well, this is What we’re supposed to do. So What What should we do here and you’re thinking about that versus actually thinking about in receiving information in the moment of whatever you’re doing. So when you’re writing, for instance, going back to that example, for you have mastery and writing, when you’re writing, you’re not thinking about how do I make the letters How do I make the B, What should my swoop here look like? What is this a straight line or not? You’re not thinking about any of that. Instead, you’re thinking about the content of the message that you’re writing.

And so mastery, the importance of mastery is it frees you to think it frees you to process it frees you to listen. And it frees you to connect with whatever you’re doing in that moment. And I think a lot of times we miss the importance of that. So we don’t put in the work. We don’t put in the effort because we think the skill is What is important. And it’s not actually the skill. It’s you having the freedom to think process and perform other cognitive functions in that moment, rather than thinking about the skill.

And so anyways guys, that’s the journey of mastery. And no matter What you’re doing, you you go through this process every time and is going from unconscious unskilled to conscious and unskilled and then it’s going from conscious and skilled and then unconsciously skilled so muscle memory.

Anyways guys, I’ll catch you later. Peace