Hi Sophie,
This step is about ‘mastering the wrong things’ – the how and why of self-reliance.
He starts right out with the principle that we MUST be self-reliant. Interesting.
I have always wanted to be self-reliant, but I never thought of it as something that we MUST do in order to have success in every area, but in the context of all of these steps, which are about taking responsibility for our decisions and the paths we take, I think I have a much clearer grasp on this… as in ‘if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me‘… self-reliance.
I never looked at it that way before. I do see that there can be negatives to trying to do everything ourselves, and that there’s some truth both to delegating and to doing things ourselves, but in this context it seems that even delegating well would be a form of self-reliance in that we’d be taking the responsibility of making sure something is being handled properly that we might not have the time or expertise to handle.
There’s a principle here in that in any industry, any sport or art, the true things that pass the test of time are things we have MASTERED.
So true – anything we haven’t mastered would fall by the wayside, anything we continue to do over time we would become masters at… that would apply to every area, and to both good things and bad things.
I see a principle in ‘even more important than self-reliance is MASTERY’.
There’s another principle in a quote he gives from Will Durant, that what makes us humans is that we’ve managed to master our environment in some form. Interesting, I never looked at it this way. He gives the examples of mastering medicine, mastering germs (I’m not necessarily sure we’ve mastered germs), vehicles, airplanes, etc… the progress humans have made to ‘master’ the challenges in the environment that arise.
I see another interesting principle in ‘in order to have self-reliance, we must either be a master, or we must delegate to masters.’ I can totally see this, I’ve just never considered this before. In looking at how do we achieve mastery, I see a principle here as well – The first thing to do in order to figure out how to do something, is to figure out how NOT to do something. Whaaat?
To figure out the path of mastery, first figure out what NOT to do, which is to NOT master the wrong thing. Hmmm…
I definitely never thought about this before, but as I look at it, I think there all kinds of ‘wrong’ things that I’ve mastered. He notes that by the time we’re adults, we’ve all built mastery at something… as I’m looking at it, I’m seeing that I have pretty much mastered positive thinking – I’ve put a positive spin on anything and everything for so long that I don’t even see that I’m doing it any more. I thought it was such a great thing to be upbeat – that it was the ‘right’ way to be, never realizing until I started doing this work that it’s a mechanism for convincing myself that I’m superior when life indicates that I might be (gasp) ordinary… ugh…
I’m rolling my eyes as I write this. I can also see how it perpetuates the ‘hasty and eager’ that I have… those seem to follow right after hyping myself up to be positive… I never saw that before.
If I look at where else I see this, there are definitely plenty of people out there who have mastered insecurity, arrogance, being judgmental, black and white thinking (I’ve mastered those as well)… we all have these ‘mechanisms’ that we have mastered to cover our original incidents, but they’re definitely harder to see than the things he’s talking about, such as particular skills or an art or music or something, but they are definitely examples of mastering the wrong thing.
What follows here is also a good principle for every area of life – ‘the first rule of life mastery is to master the right thing’. And another one in ‘be very clear in understanding the problem’. Also something I haven’t looked at in this way… he mentions an Allan Nation quote, that ‘in order to try to solve something or become good at something, we must understand WHY it is the way it is now’. That’s a great principle to keep in mind for every area of life.
He refers to health experiments that don’t have good results, or plastic surgery, where it becomes obvious quickly that someone pursued the wrong thing, but what stands out to me is how much these steps have spotlighted why my life is the way it is, which boils down to responsibility.
Looking at each of these steps shows a new way to take responsibility, to take the reins so to speak, and at the same time shows how I haven’t, and how that resulted in my life being the way it is. Which is pretty motivational in terms of wanting to take that power back and learn how to drive my life.
But doing this would also highlight the steps a person would need to take to get good at something, or clarify what needs to be changed in order to solve something. So interesting to look at it this way.
He tells a story about a bunch of engineers who were in a plane crash, who got machetes and cut their way through the jungle, without climbing a tree to see whether or not they were going in the right direction, which it turned out they weren’t.
This brought to light something I’ve seen a LOT but never gave much thought to – these guys got completely obsessed with hacking a path with the machetes, so much so that it didn’t occur to them to first see which way to go, nor did they want to change their path once they found out. It sounds unbelievable, but in life this does happen all the time.
It reminds me of one time when I was a kid, my grandfather taught me how to take apart my bike tire and patch a hole in the innertube. The very next day my friend had a flat tire, and I got all excited (hasty and eager) and got out my tire patch kit, took apart her tire, looked and looked for the hole, got my patch and glue ready, and about 1/2 hour later when she was dying of boredom my mom came out and asked me if we tried just pumping it up… it turned out it didn’t need patched.
I would have been out there till dark looking for that hole before I conceded that maybe I just needed to pump it up. Not a big deal, but the same basic thing.
But on a larger scale, when I took over my ex’s business, I essentially did the same thing. I tried to fix it without truly understanding the fundamental problems, and three years later a venture capitalist, an older businessman who was trying to help me, and my father all told me that sometimes the toughest thing to do with a business is admit when it’s time to quit… I wouldn’t hear of it, I was so sure I could bash through it.
But had I understood what the fundamental issues were, I’d have known going in that it was too far upside-down to save, that nobody in their right mind would put money in to what I’d taken over.
That one cost me years, cost me my good credit standing, my house, all of the jewelry I sold to make mortgage payments, it cost me a LOT.
One big thing I gained from it was a relationship with my dad that I didn’t have at all before, as he came out to help me and coach me with it once I was ‘in it’ and it was too late to get out.
Interestingly, now he took over a business a couple of years ago, and took some serious hits with Covid and the economy, and I’m finding now that I’m telling him the same thing, and he won’t hear it.
It’s definitely much harder to see this when you’re ‘in it’, so easy to see when you’re looking at it from the sidelines. I have known several people who chose ‘opportunistically’, for the steady job or the good pay, and then looked back on their lives with regrets… even in these cases, it seems like we don’t see the quiet desperation when we’re ‘in it’ – we see it when we’re looking back over the decisions we’ve made, or sadly on our death beds.
I’ve known so many people who get out of an awful marriage, who say they didn’t realize how bad it was or how much they’d settled for until they were out of it, looking back at it.
So interesting to consider this from this point of view… the stubbornness we have to stay on the wrong path.
He gives another quote that is also a principle, that ‘mastering the wrong thing is a tragedy’. Also one in that we need to be someone who can take a step back, and figure out the philosophy of life.
He gives an interesting quote from Friedrich Nietzsche – ‘most people are obstinate about the path, once it’s taken… few people about the destination’. SO TRUE… looking at these examples I was just thinking about, why don’t we tend to look at the end game in these cases? Positive thinking maybe, so sure that we can fix it.
I have a good friend who was married for over 30 years, threw herself into raising her kids and then after they moved out, left her husband, moved to a new state and started a new life.
When I asked her what made her do that, she said ‘I woke up one morning and looked over at him, and suddenly realized that I didn’t want to be 80 years old still waking up with someone I don’t love’.
I admired her for that… she took the hard look at the end game, and took responsibility for her own life, and made the tough decisions.
Now she lives a life she loves… but that’s not the typical story as I look at different situations.
When I was younger, probably my 20’s, I had my own method of looking at difficult situations that popped up or tough decisions I had to make. I called it the ‘porch swing philosophy’.
I imagined myself sitting on my porch swing at 90-something looking back at my life, and if I thought that the thing I was dealing with would look insignificant at that point, I decided not to stress about it.
In a way I was looking at the destination there, however I somehow lost that when it came time to make the bigger decisions like who I married or what career paths I took… I doubt I would have chosen differently though, because I thought I was making good decisions on my own then – couldn’t see that I was just following whatever opportunities appeared in front of me.
There’s a good principle here, in ‘don’t be stubborn about the PATH’, like the guys with machetes. Their goal was hacking away at the jungle, not getting somewhere where they could get help. I went down a rabbit hole there but that is interesting to look at.
He also takes another look at the misweighting bias… the principle again is ‘don’t be stubborn about the path, be stubborn about the end goal’.
That was a good step, he talks about that misweighting bias a few steps back, about prioritizing… putting first things first. Focusing on the destination instead of the path.
I have known vegetarians that were so adamant about being vegetarians that they didn’t even notice when they became pale and sickly.
There’s a principle here, that when our egos kick in, we tend to keep defending our position, even when other people can see we’re not getting the results.
I never considered this before, but as I look at it, this is common. There’s another principle here that we have to be FLEXIBLE, in the experiments and the means with which we’re trying to get somewhere, in business or in any area of life.
Also one in ‘don’t be obstinate with an experiment that’s not working’.
He makes a good point that if it took Edison 1000 tries to get to the light bulb, why shouldn’t it take us quite a few tries to get to our goal? In any area? So true, that brings to light how silly it is to drop something after one or two tries if it’s something worthwhile.
He also gives a good quote from Freud, also a principle – you have to know your constitution, and you have to experiment with those things that make you happy. Whether it be art, social, science, substances, religion, EACH have their strengths and weaknesses. Very true.
You would think this would just be natural, that we would naturally experiment with the things that make us happy.
Why isn’t that natural? I think maybe because of that opportunistic thing… once something ‘pops up’ that offers a steady income, or security, or whatever it is, I guess exploring what makes us happy goes out the window.
Wow – this brings to light how dis-empowering that is, how much we give up our power and our responsibility to drive our lives… just in these every day decisions that everybody makes.
I also think it’s a great principle to keep in mind, that there is no one thing that works for everybody, because there are a lot of ‘philosophies’ out there that indicate that if everybody on the planet did just one thing, they would be happy, or healthy, or whatever it is, which doesn’t make sense at all.
I also think it’s a principle that as we’re striving for these goals, we are going to need some help.
It’s a good thing to keep in mind for any area of life, be it a therapist, a priest, a mentor, trainer, whatever it is… .
There’s a principle here, to avoid what he calls ‘blue shadow numb-nuts’, meaning, when we get help, we need to get help from another master.
To get help from an expert, or someone with the right experience. I could also say there’s a principle here in ‘you get what you pay for’, I find that in this kind of area there’s a reason why the more expensive person is more expensive.
As we bring in other teachers, masters, coaches, therapists, whatever, we have the responsibility to make sure they’ve got some years of experience, or if they don’t, we need to recognize that and take their advice somewhat with a grain of salt, or test it out first.
I liked the Yiddish quote here that ‘The young doctor fattens the graveyard’… that is a good principle to keep in mind… to bring people in with some expertise.
Just like that old saying ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’, I can see that some people continually get advice from people they’ve gotten bad advice from.
I remember doing some accounting work for a company that was seriously in trouble, and I saw a notice that they were in the 20-day period of a foreclosure.
When I asked them about it, they told me they had a good business attorney who told them it was nothing to worry about, they would get more notices. I knew from my own experience with my own business that he was gravely mistaken, but I wasn’t an attorney, so of course they didn’t believe me.
I had to get two other attorneys on the phone with them to convince them, which I did, and it saved their building, but afterwards they kept that first attorney.
That business didn’t end up succeeding, and they got a LOT more horrible advice from that attorney for months before they finally fired him.
I always thought that was so unbelievable, but in looking at this I can see that happens more often than I thought it did. The principle here is ‘don’t regret experiments that don’t work out, but don’t be the fool, where you give another chance to something that didn’t work’… that’s a great one, I never thought that through before.
There’s a great overall principle that ‘we must learn to master the right thing, with the balance of doing it ourselves AND bringing in experienced people to help us, of course in every area of life…
I can see that this is what self-reliance is.
I also think it’s a good principle to consider that statistically it’s better to cut your losses early, and move on.
I always heard in business that your first loss is your best loss.
I saw that ring true many times over the years in manufacturing. He talks about this successful young guy who has a philosophy of ‘hire fast and fire fast’, because it’s easier to cut your losses early, before someone gets momentum, or does some damage, or quits another job, etc.
This is another good principle – to have some patience and understanding, but don’t let experiments run too long.
Also a principle in ‘only masters are remembered’, meaning we don’t have to become famous, but we can all make our mark in one specific area.
Looking at the funeral principle from previous steps, he notes the people with the huge funerals, flags at half staff, etc… were all MASTERS.
I can see this, but I never considered that I might be able to BE a master. I’ve had the mindset that other people are masters, not me – why would that be when I’ve spent so much time with the underlying belief that I’m superior or better than everyone else?
It seems it should be the opposite, except that the superior was to cover up the original belief, that I don’t measure up, so I might as well not try. Ugh… the very thing that made me float like a beach ball through life.
I like this Peter Thiel quote – start small and monopolize. What a great principle, and a great way to look at it. Build a monopoly, or a very small focused thing that you’re good at.
Also a principle that ‘if you think a market is too big, it probably is’.
I have made grandiose plans in so many different areas over the course of my life, I don’t remember ever focusing on just one… the only thing I remember passionately diving into was writing plays for my 5th grade English class, and Volleyball.
I think shortly after that I became a beach ball in the waves. The principle here is ‘don’t try to be great at a bunch of things or ideas, pick one small area that you can master.’
He mentions again here the Law of 5% – in the world of 8 billion, on a scale of 1-100, we can’t be an 80 or an 85, we have to get to 95 or 100, and we can’t do that in a bunch of different areas.
This reminds me of whenever I go to a bigger city, like New York or San Francisco, where there are literally hundreds if not thousands of little ‘mom and pop’ restaurants, most of them some kind of ethnic food, all of which have been in that city pretty much since that city started, for generations.
I’ve always looked at that and wondered how on earth each and every one of them could make it in that sea of restaurants, and yet any one of those that you go into has the best thing you ever tasted in whatever their type of food or specialty is… they must be the top 5% of their thing in that area, masters of it, standing the test of time.
I guess I never looked at that before. I see a principle in ‘dominate one space, and create mastery there’. And also one in that as we focus in and narrow down the area, focus on the 3-foot world around us, focus on the next hand-hold, like the navy seal in one of the last steps, to create mastery. His instructor was a master, and helped to bring him mastery.
Where I’ve been a master in the wrong thing? The things I see that I’ve mastered are things that seem to inhibit living my life powerfully, the things that enabled me to give up my responsibility.
I’m not sure that I’ve mastered anything – I’ve learned many different sports, had many different jobs, did several different positions within manufacturing, the only thing I might say I mastered was purchasing – I did get good at finding what’s impossible to find, locking in beneficial supply deals, learning the markets, negotiating prices and terms… but I’m not sure about a master – I would just say I’m good at that.
Where have I trusted someone who didn’t warrant my trust? I have trusted a few people who turned out to be con artists, where it cost me money in most cases.
But in looking at where will I make a mark in the world, where can I get to the top 5%? Wow – I never considered it a possibility for me to become a ‘MASTER’, especially in my 50’s. But in looking at this step, in choosing one area that brings me happiness, and focusing in on it, and keeping my eyes on the ‘3 feet’ around me or the very next step, it does make me consider that maybe I could… I need to give this more thought.
This step brought a whole new light to looking at what the possibilities might be, some real tangible steps that I could see feasibly could get me to a place like mastery, a place I never considered I could get to before.