04/21/2022
“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than the mastery of oneself”. Leonardo Da Vinci.
I recently got introduced to a new book called Mastery by Robert Greene, a book that I feel lit up a part of my brain as an entrepreneur. Discussing the ability of a person to understand themselves and taking that as a path to master the craft that they are planning to center their lives around.
While reading the book, I felt that it was weaving a pattern with Leonardo Da Vinci’s quote that I started this post with. I believe that what Da Vinci wanted to say here -together with the book- was that the mastery of ourselves is the most critical form of mastery before embarking on any valuable or life changing journey. At the end of the day, we have to first understand ourselves before understanding why we seek our specific goals. The way I look at it is that we should analyze ourselves like we analyze businesses, with a practical mind and a large set of data. The book instills this idea through the philosophy of understanding our reality and connecting to it as a way of knowing where we stand from it.
What advantages do we have? What are the matters that we need to work on? More importantly, what are the disadvantageous characteristics to our business endeavors? The book also emphasizes on the important ability of a professional person to be able to be able to work on themselves and learn different sets of skills, which can be later connected in their line of work, to result in the person being able to assimilate themselves into a demanding industry.
In front of a world that is full of addictive distractions, and background noise; the book can be a lantern that will not only help us find a path to our goals, but maybe formulate that path ourselves. I see the book as a great opportunity to guide us whether as entrepreneurs, professionals or even freelancers to withhold a strong position in this era that we were born into.
