The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.” —Goethe

In order to rise from the darkness that seeks to envelop the human soul, we must continually strive to shine light into the far off corners where fear lies.

To push beyond what you think and feel is possible is a practice that Bruce Lee cultivated with tenacious animal ferocity.

From his early upbringing and his training of the martial art Wing-Chun to the millions he made as a star of classic kung-fu movies.  Is there a man who so clearly modeled overcoming adversity and constantly exceeding his level, both in his mind and body?

You know the answer.

Seriously if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life.  It’ll spread into  your work, your morality, into your entire being.

If you are born into this world, remember you are blessed with the blood, sweat and toil of your ancestors.  No matter how hard it is, your ancestors came from much worse and gave birth to you in flesh and bone.

In his book, Mastery, Robert Greene mentions how pampered we in the west are, sitting behind our computers, our cars and then our TVs.  We are lulled into a sense of prosperity that our machines have given us.

There is no need to work the earth to plant seeds and reap the harvest to feed ourselves.  There is no need to go to battle and fight enemies who howl at our doorsteps.  Our digital worlds help us disconnect from nature’s chisel that once worked our bodies and minds.

We choose career paths or tasks that are easy and offer minimal resistance. We unconsciously set before ourselves certain limits and we do not wish to explore beyond them… We then shrink to the size of our small aspirations.

The motivation to do something greater is present within us all.

But you can’t buy it.  You can’t go to the store, pay with your credit card for three easy payments of $19.99.  It doesn’t come in a pre-packaged, shiny box.

You can only plant the seeds and then nurture it.

Nurture it with books, with living and dead mentors, with focused directed action.  Feed it with ideas, with experiences, with action that brings failure.

Truly this is the only way to live, because we do not “find ourselves”, we make ourselves.  Finding implies a place, an object, something static that has no movement, motion or flux.

And that something is by its nature dead.

Self-Image vs. Self-Actualization

An image is easy to project.

You buy the latest car, you live in a McMansion, you get a trophy wife and run a successful business.

ON the surface you are the envy of your crowd and your on-lookers.  They defer to you in conversation, they look up in awe, they seek to emulate you.

Yet you know the whole thing is for show, shits and giggles, you’re no more Napoleon than a court jester, a clown.

You’re up to your eyeballs in debt, your business is hemorrhaging money like Fannie & Freddie Mae.  Your wife has no love for you, if she ever loved you in the first place, or was she simply attracted to shiny car and the blind ambition.

You know you built your empire on a crumbling foundation.  What’s more is that you’re so deep in trying to project this illusion, that you’re afraid you can’t get out, you’re dependent on it for survival.

The image creates dependency — If you disown yourself to play an image [concept of yourself], you will become the target, you will become dependent.

The only way to actualize is to question your concept of yourself.  To find out your true motivation.

Most likely you’ve built a persona based on the opinions of others, popular opinions and images that shine on the surface and are shortcuts to true knowledge of yourself.

The difference between self-image and self-actualization lies in the former having no starting point, but simply being a void, projecting itself with images or symbols that stand in for the real thing.

Instead of using that energy to actualize your full potential, you build a facade.

Self-Actualization through Mastery

In essence mastery is a process of knowing yourself:

Discovering your calling, your inner force that guides you towards using your strengths and weakness’ to accomplish what you were meant to do.

As Robert Greene states;

The force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers, to the daily anxieties that wear away at you. This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique.

I will not attempt to discover this calling for you.  It can be delirious to tell someone else how they should spend their life.

Yet, the one principle that holds is growth.  You cannot predict the future and what each day will bring, so when you focus on everyday as a chance to learn and expand your horizons, you grab life by the horns.

Your goals may be many or just one.  They may be a specific target or a larger vision for your life.

Just remember that life a process of constant maturing into something new.  That is the true art of mastery.

You can master an instrument, a business, an environment, but you cannot master growth.  That process keeps opening up to new discoveries, in some form it is the only constant in the universe.

Growth and change are the only sure things in the universe.