The Self-Mastery Formula - Master your life

Life moves fast.

All it takes is 1 tiny, seemingly unimportant moment on 1 normal, seemingly boring day for your entire life to change.

Because of that, it can feel as if you’ve got 0 control over your life.

And sure, to some degree, you don’t.

There’s always going to be uncontrollable factors influencing outcomes.

But the outcomes affected by the things you can’t control aren’t the major levers that dictate your life.

The major levers that dictate your life are controlled by you.

Your mind - dictates your perception of life

Your actions - dictate the results you get in every area of life

Your craft - dictates how you’ve committed to making an impact on the world

If you want to control your outcomes in life, you have to take responsibility and control of these 3 areas.

But to gain enough control over these 3 areas to influence your life you have to master them.

Or, in other words, you have to master yourself.

And mastery is a crucial part of being a human being.

Not only so that you can gain enough control over your life so that you can master your life and live a life you love full of fulfillment and meaning, but because it’s what you’ve always done.

Mastery is nothing but the pursuit of progress in the name of excellence.

Since you were a child, you’ve aimed for mastery in at least 1 thing.

From walking, to talking, to reading, to writing, to a sport, to playing the guitar or whatever else.

It’s ingrained in your DNA to pursue progress.

And because of that, it’s a crucial part of feeling fulfilled.

When you’re not chasing mastery of something, you feel as if you’re living out of sync.

You have nothing to strive for endless progress in, you have nothing that you can commit yourself to chasing excellence in and you feel that something is missing.

Because it is.

Without the pursuit of mastery (and especially mastery of self), you lack a commitment to progress.

And if you don’t have progress, you can’t get results.

If you can’t get results, you can’t achieve your goals.

If you can’t achieve your goals, you eventually stop setting them.

You stop creating both direction and clarity for what you want to achieve and where you want to go, so you end up feeling lost but you also stop shouldering the responsibility of rising to the standards necessary for you to reach the level that is required to achieve your goals - you stop progressing.

It’s a constant cycle.

Mastery incites direction, responsibility, progress, and meaning.

Without it, you’re living out of sync and life spirals uncontrollably around you.

If you in any way have the desire to live a life you love, however that looks for you, you have to master your life.

And to master your life, you first have to master yourself.

Mastery 

The more worthwhile something is to achieve, the more difficult the mountain is to climb.

So with mastery being arguably one of the most worthwhile achievements, it’s going to be damn hard to accomplish.

That’s why most people never get anywhere close to it.

But yet, the process is relatively simple.

If you want to achieve mastery of anything, there are 4 real steps you have to follow;

Innate Curiosity

If you want to master anything, it has to be something you’re innately curious about and interested in.

Yes, there’s an argument for not pursuing your passion and all the rest, but I’m not saying you have to pursue your passion.

I’m saying that if you’re not interested in the thing you’re trying to master, if it doesn’t grab you, you won’t be able to master it.

Every single person who has ever mastered anything has been entirely obsessed with that thing.

It grabbed them, and instead of fighting back like most people, they leaned into it and followed it.

They let it grab them.

And they dived deep.

Remember, mastery will be one of the hardest and longest pursuits of your life - so why would you try to master something you hate?

You’ll hate the journey - and if you hate the journey, you’ll hate your life (because that’s all your life is, it’s the journey)

And so, you’ll not be able to master it - you won’t be willing or able to commit yourself in the way you need to.

If you want to master something, it needs to grab you.

Daily Practice 

Remember, mastery is the pursuit of progress in the name of excellence.

To create progress in any field, you need to advance toward your goals.

To advance toward your goals, you have to rise that bit closer to the level of your goals.

That requires an excess of energy which can only be gotten by you putting out energy into the world by creating value in the form of the work.

You have to practice.

And it needs to be daily.

Mastery is impossible to achieve without both momentum and compounding.

And if you don’t do the damn work every single day, you don’t get that tiny bit better every single day and so you don’t build momentum or experience compounding.

If you want to achieve mastery, do the damn work every single day and aim to do 1 thing, 1% better.

Knowledge Acquisition

A lot of mastery comes down to expanding your skill set in that particular area so you can get better results and make more progress.

But expanding your skillset can be split into 2 facets.

The first is daily practice.

The second is expanding your knowledge base so you can take more informed action when you’re doing the work.

The more knowledge you have in whatever you’re trying to master, the better the actions you’ll take, the more progress you’ll make, the better results you’ll get, and when doing that, you’ll learn more knowledge and the cycle continues.

So undoubtedly, the best way to learn is through experience and taking action.

But you should also be dedicating time to expanding your knowledge base through courses, books, mentors, podcasts, or whatever else.

Without this, you’re limiting the quality of your actions, slowing down your journey.

If you want to master anything, you need to acquire knowledge (whilst having daily practice as your number 1 priority.)

The Long Game

You’re not going to master anything in a month, 6 months, or 2 years.

Mastery is a long-term game (hence why most people don’t play it and only a few people reap the rewards).

But if you’re able to to commit to chasing mastery for the rest of your life - yes, the rest of your life - you’ll live a life, few people get to live.

It might take you 1 year to get to the point of living that life, it might take 5 years or it might take 20.

But if you never play the game, you never get the prize.

The way I like to frame this to myself is “what else would I be doing?”

The time is going to pass anyway.

10 years will pass, so why not commit myself to building something great and chasing progress in the pursuit of excellence over that time?

Because the time will pass and the only thing that’s dictating the life I’ll be living once that time has passed is me and the actions that I commit to.

If you want to achieve mastery, play the long game.

Self-Mastery

Those 4 rules are rules that apply to mastering anything.

Absolutely anything.

Without them, mastery is impossible.

But to achieve Self-Mastery so you can master your life, you have to specifically master 3 areas.

Your mind, your actions, and your craft.

Let’s start with your mind.

Mental Mastery

Mastering your mind is step 1.

Without this, everything else you do will be skewed by your lack of mental mastery.

Because your mind dictates your actions, and your actions dictate your damn life.

Most of mental mastery comes down to removing limiting beliefs and building beliefs that push you forward.

This isn’t an easy process, but it is simple.

First, understand what a belief or mindset is.

It’s simply a way that you view the world, or an aspect of it, that was formed through repeated experience.

Every single belief you have was formed because something happened repeatedly that showed you this is how the world is.

With that, removing limiting beliefs involves 2 steps;

1. Identifying the belief

There’s no easy way to do this other than introspection around opportunities you always shy away from and the way you talk to yourself about certain situations.

2. Creating evidence that the belief isn’t true

This has 2 facets - you can either find evidence in other people’s lives that proves your mindset is wrong (eg. If money is scarce how come there are millions of Rolex’s sold each year), or you can go out and create evidence in your own life.

Either way, regardless of which you do, each time you find or create a bit of evidence, write it down in a notes document.

Over time, you’re consciously repeating evidence your mindset isn’t true and you will subconsciously start to realise it, removing that limitation from your life.

Some beliefs and mindsets will be harder to remove and will require a longer time frame as well as stronger evidence, but this process will still work - so long as you consciously do it, creating evidence daily and repeating it for the long term.

Mastery of Action 

Your actions dictate your results.

If you’re not taking the right actions, you can’t get the results you want.

So you need to master your actions so you can do the damn work that you know you need to do, whether you feel like it or not.

There are many ways to do this, but my favourite (and most simple) way is to do 1 thing, every single day that you don’t want to do.

Whether that’s working out, going on a walk, doing the work, taking an ice bath.

Just commit to doing 1 thing every single day that you don’t want to do.

I’d recommend starting small and building over time.

As you build, you build your level self-mastery and your ability to transfer this self-mastery into every area of your life.

This is super simple, but super effective and is step 1 to mastering your actions.

Mastery of Craft

Mastery of craft is simple.

We’ve actually already covered it.

The 4 rules of mastery are exactly how you master your craft.

You follow your curiosities, you practice daily, you acquire knowledge and you play the long game.

That’s literally it.

Again, it’s simple.

But the hard part is sticking to it, doing it, and repeating it for years.

Which is why mastering your mind and actions is so important.

Because without them, you’re screwed.

Without mastery of yourself, you can’t do the work and you can’t view the world in an advantageous way.

Life will fly past you uncontrollably and you will be at the mercy of the world.

But with self-mastery, you master your perceptions of the world and the results you produce.

With self-mastery, you master your life.

If you’re interested in achieving Self-Mastery so you can master your life, I go into the exact steps and processes needed in my course MasteryOS.

Join 400+ students by clicking here

PS: I’m in the process of upgrading the curriculum of MasteryOS, this will be released in June and with it, the price will be increasing. There is no better time to join than right now.

- Ross