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This is a guest post from greenman2001.
For people who are sedentary and overeat, learning to eat properly and exercise are new skills. Diet books and the media don’t usually describe exercise and eating in this way: they’re often described as “lifestyle changes,” as though one could simply substitute one set of behaviors for another in a seamless transition that merely requires willpower and resolution.
The problem with learning a new skill is that there is often a long period of learning until one reaches mastery. While one learns, it is easy to become discouraged and give up. When we read that most people “fall off their diets,” what is actually happening is that, in the process of learning the new skill of eating less, one becomes hungry and discouraged and gives up the process of learning.
George Leonard’s 1991 masterpiece, Mastery takes on this issue directly. I came to Leonard through his writing on Aikido (he’s a black belt), but the source of this book was his writing for Esquire magazine about athletes.
Back in the late-1980s, Leonard wrote a series of articles about athletic achievement for Esquire called “Ultimate Fitness.” In 1987, he extended the scope of that article beyond athletics to discuss the process of mastery in sports and in life. Mastery, as he defined it, is “the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.”
Leonard’s argument is very simple: to achieve mastery, you must practice a new skill patiently, diligently, and consistently. It doesn’t take an aptitude, genius, natural ability, or luck: it simply requires practice.
American culture is particularly opposed to the process of mastery. Our consumer culture teaches us from a young age that satisfaction can be achieved through purchase. Our advertising culture shows us only the end-product of work — the new car, the baked cake, the toned body — but never the work itself. And nothing in our culture reinforces the process of perseverance in the face of failure, which is the essence of mastery: practice despite failure, discouragement, the loss of motivation, the absence of reward.
We are not taught in our culture, as Leonard puts it, to enjoy “the long stretch of diligent effort with no seeming progress.” He describes some familiar qualities of those who set out to learn a new skill and then give up. He calls them The Dabbler, The Obsessive, and The Hacker.
Leonard points out that learning a new skill requires change — change in your routine, your habits, stepping outside your zone of comfort, adjusting the environment in which you function to accommodate the new activity — and that there is a tendency against change, a tendency toward homeostasis.
Homeostasis serves an important evolutionary purpose, which is to minimize the risk associated with moving away from practices that serve your particular ends. Homeostasis is recognizable in positive ways — not divorcing your spouse, not eating the unfamiliar plant, not risking your savings on the pyramid scheme. In this sense, the failure of the New Year’s resolution to eat less and exercise more is part of the natural order of things. It’s not something to be discouraged about, but something to expect and plan for, to incorporate into the process of practice.
Leonard identifies five components of mastery:
- Instruction
- Practice
- Intentionality
- Surrender
- Pushing the edge of one’s ability
He has many practical suggestions for maintaining the energy of one’s effort through setbacks and the discouragement of slow (or no) progress. He talks about common pitfalls and how to avoid them. But his main message is about loving one’s practice: patient, diligent, consistent practice, practice without any expectation of reward. (Although reward inevitably follows practice.)
This is profoundly important book, not just for achieving weight loss but for undertaking any new skill in one’s life. It’s written in gentle but powerful language, and provides many practical tools and a way of thinking about discouragement and failure in inspiring ways, as necessary signposts on the path to success.
This is a book that will change your life.
Say no more! Greenman has inspired me to pick a copy of this book. I intend to read it soon and to review it at Get Rich Slowly.
Mac
7 responses so far ↓
1 State the obvious much? // Mar 20, 2008 at 9:43 am
What an unecessarily long way of saying people give up on changing their fitness because changing basic habits is hard. Shocking, insightful news that is. Next you’ll be trying to convince me the sky’s blue.
2 Lauren Muney, wellness + facilitation coach // Mar 20, 2008 at 10:19 am
This is a great book. I have this book and others by George Leonard (and I know his business partner). I wrote about the concept of diligence (even in the face of thinking you are not making progress) in an article on my website: http://www.physicalmind.com/plateaus.htm
I as well came to this book due to pursuing some writings of aikido: although it is a martial art, its base is on learning about oneself for [self-] evolution.
3 Mark // Mar 20, 2008 at 10:53 am
Good write up! I had heard of him but never ordered his book. I just clicked on the link and added it to my cart at Amazon.
I have always been goal oriented and persistent in working towards the goals I set but my guess is I will learn some new things by reading the book. It never hurts to “sharpen the saw”.
4 Kris B // Mar 20, 2008 at 11:42 am
Great review and *not* overly obvious; habit and skill are not the same thing. We often associate fitness only with habit. JD’s focus on learning correct form, etc. shows just how much skill is involved as well. Additionally, we easily label habits as “good” or “bad.” We don’t do that when we talk/think about “skills.”
Btw, the sky isn’t blue where I am. It’s decidedly gray today
5 Healthy Amelia // Mar 20, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I also agree that this concept is far from obvious. This is an incredible post that really got me thinking. It is not necessarily self evident that I need to let go of the outcome of my effort in order to see success. Our culture IS totally obsessed with goals and reaching them, when the real progress is made in the day to day practice of healthy skills. I just wrote a longer reaction to this over on my site. Thanks again for making me think, greenman2001!
6 brad // Mar 20, 2008 at 1:15 pm
It is similar to the process I went through (and am still going through, 30 years later) in learning to play traditional Irish music. It’s a lifelong process, because even when you get beyond the “instruction” phase the other steps can occupy you for the rest of your life. There’s a famous quote from Pablo Cassals, the cellist, who at age 93 was still practicing 5 or 6 hours a day. When asked why, since he was so obviously a “master,” he replied, “because I feel like I’m making progress.” So I think “mastery” is an ever-receding goal, none of us ever truly becomes a master because there is always something more to learn, some skill to develop further.
7 greenman2001 // Mar 20, 2008 at 6:56 pm
It’s certainly obvious that changing basic habits is hard, but that’s not George Leonard’s point. His point is that mastering a new skill ISN’T particularly difficult. It’s not as difficult as you think or as difficult as it appears. It just requires that you KEEP PRACTICING no matter what. The main obstacle isn’t so much the effort going forward as it is fending off the forces that try to knock you off course, whether it’s the voice inside your head, the voice inside your genes, or the larger voice of the culture.
Leonard’s own story is that he and his friend set out to learn aikido together (Leonard at the age of 50). Both were passionate about it. They attended practice once a week. But gradually his friend started missing practices, allowing excuses of various sorts to knock him off course. In five years, Leonard became a black belt — an extraordinary-seeming achievement, particularly for someone his age — while his friend finally gave up entirely. Leonard’s point is that if you simply show up to practice once a week, be present and diligent in your practice, in five years you’ll become a blackbelt in Aikido.
The question for all of us really is: what do we want to master? The next question is: what obstacles knock us off the path of diligent practice? We need to direct our efforts and our resources at removing those obstacles. Leonard talks at great length about the nature of those obstacles and suggests ways of defeating them. He’s very good at re-orienting your thinking away from your own excuses.
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