Mastery.

It’s a word that used to terrify me when I was somewhere in my early twenties.

Why?

Because in my mind, I saw the “Masters” as being old and grey and withered…not unlike Yoda, I suppose. And be darned if I wanted to be old and withered!

In my thirties, I began to see Mastery as a very different beast altogether. I began to see it as THE THING that I most aspired to achieve. Imagine, being so good at what you do that you’d be considered a MASTER at it!

Achieving Mastery of Your Craft is imperative if you’re to succeed in business. All the marketing in the world, all the tweets, the memes, the pomp and circumstance, cannot keep your business alive if you’re actually not at all good at what you do.

And yet for some reason, no one really talks about it!

We talk about the need to make sales calls, the importance of developing a “sales funnel,” the necessity of learning to “speak to sell,” but good Lord above, what good are all those skills if you suck at what you actually do?!?

We’ve likely all been there.

Purchased a shirt because it was all glittery and gorgeous and we just had to have it, only for it to fall apart after a few washes.

Hired that so-called Social Media Maven only to discover (after dropping thousands of dollars with her) that she really had no clue what the hell she was doing.

Bought into that coaching program that promised us 6 figures in 6 months (just like the coach herself achieved!!) only to discover that our own business wasn’t even remotely able to fit the cookie-cutter business-building model (the ONLY model that coach understood) and thus we were out tens of thousands of bucks and still no further ahead.

And in fact we’ve likely all be the “seller” of such promises at times…believing we could help that man with his cancer, remedy that woman’s skin disease, find the magic bullet that would make that product fly off the shelves and make our clients rich.

We’ve bought. We have sold. We’ve done it all.

But here’s what I am thinking about lately:

What if, instead of devoting so many hours to sales calls, we took some of that time and devoted it to getting really, really good at what we actually DO?

If we became Masters of Our Own Craft, then, because of the whole “like attracts like thing,” couldn’t it then be suggested that we would naturally end up attracting team members that were also Master of Their Craft…and CLIENTS that were Masters of theirs?!?

Hmmm…just imagine that for a moment…you’d be a Master, surrounded by Masters, teaching and guiding others who are honing their own skills and Mastering their own craft…

Can you feel that? The power of that? The freakin’ delicious decadence of that?

It most certainly takes time to develop your skills, to hone your strengths, to recognize (and then seek to augment) your less-than-perfect bits. Courage. Self-awareness. And as our beloved Gord Downie sings*, you must be “armed with will and determination, and grace, too.”

But wouldn’t it be worth it?

I’m now in my mid-forties, a little grey, only slightly withered (LOL), but I know in my heart that I have reached a stage of Mastery as a Coach, and, most specifically, as an Intuitive. I am really, really good at what I do. And what I have discovered is that my theory holds true.

My team members are Masters of Their Own Crafts.

And my clients?

Heavens.

They blow my mind with their skills.

They, too, are Masters. And I am in awe of them.

I have also discovered that Mastery itself has various stages. I simply don’t know how to stop growing and developing my skills (it isn’t in my nature to cease to evolve). But here’s the other remarkable part about that: As I continue to grow and evolve, so too, does my team, and my clients. It’s as if we somehow spur that on in one another…like some magical alchemical force is at work.

Hmmm…

(For those of you who read my blog frequently, you’ll know where I am going with this…)

It’s just one more example of the Principles of Alignment at work, isn’t it?

When we Master our own Craft, we attract others who’re doing / have done the same. And then, through the Alchemy of Alignment, we continue to energetically evolve to higher and higher levels of Mastery, together.

Delicious, isn’t it?

So, dear reader, my wish for you is that you take some time each and every day to work on the development of your own skills. Mastery is yours for the having, whether you’re old, grey, and withered, or not.

 

* lyrics from “Grace, too” by Gord Downie, performed by The Tragically Hip