"Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives."
"Practice is the path of mastery."
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Source: George Leonard (2009). “The Silent Pulse”, p.31, Gibbs Smith
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"The real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive."
"How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself."
"It's easy to get on the path of mastery. The real challenge lies in staying on it."
"The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes."
"How to begin the journey? You need only to take the first step. When? There is always now."