The Significance Of Staying Humble On Your Path To Mastery

We are all on a path to mastery, whether professional or personal. We work on mastering our crafts by pouring hours of effort into our work. As part of this process, we also work towards social recognition, whether it’s a promotion, winning awards, or getting that pay raise.

If we don’t ground ourselves in our path, we can easily get lost in our accomplishments and lose sight of what matters. In my latest article, I talk about the importance of staying humble on our paths to mastery.

The Attitude To Mastery

I have been on a path to spiritual mastery in the last few months. I am spending time on courses and taking out time each day to practice formal meditation. There is no graduation for meditation, but I wanted to get a place where I could comfortably handle life’s ups and downs.

I had gotten to a point where I felt pretty good about myself for making progress on my journey. Until one day, an incident at home woke me up, making me readjust my attitude about the whole thing.

Some time ago, my almost teenager and I were arguing about something. I believe I was trying to advise him about some situation at school. As the conversation progressed, his voice went up, and I told him he needed to work on his emotions and lower his voice. One thing led to another, and I ended up sharing that I am always working on myself through meditation.

The thing is, kids have a way of calling things as they see them. He responded with something like, so what? You may meditate, but you get into arguments too, and end up staying way mad than you need to.

It was his way of saying that you may meditate, but you are just as human as any of us. It doesn’t make you any better than the rest of us.

Practice Makes Humble Not Perfect

When you are beginning to meditate, you put in a lot of effort. It takes a lot of discipline to create a formal meditation practice and meditate multiple times daily.

If we are not careful, like when we accomplish any milestones, we may develop a sense of pride. We are proud of how far we have come.

But in contrast to other things, in meditation, if our progress makes us more proud than humble, it defeats its purpose.

Author Jay Shetty says that competition among monks came in the form of renunciation. For instance, a monk may compare if he ate less than other monks, if he meditated longer than other monks, etc.

Jay says that if a monk’s last thought is, ‘Look at me, I have outlasted them all,’ then what is the point of meditation?

This strongly resonated with me and the situation in which I found myself.

Not About Achievements

In his book Meditation and Mindfulness, Andy Puddicombe, founder of headspace, writes that meditation is not about achievement and results. Instead, it is about learning to be aware, to rest in the space of natural awareness with a genuine sense of ease.

Even though meditation isn’t about achievement, my untrained mind felt a sense of accomplishment or pride and that I was somehow getting better at dealing with situations than others. But thinking that alone defeats the purpose of all the effort that I put in.

This logic of achievements giving a sense of pride applies not just to meditation but to anything we are working on mastering. The book Think Like A monk talk about detaching from our achievements instead of letting them go to our heads.

Instead, we should find gratitude for our teachers and what we have been given. To remind ourselves of who we are and why we are doing the work that brings us success.

Staying Rooted In Our Purpose

Every time we are rewarded for our hard work, can we stay rooted in our cause? If our mission is to inspire people through the work we are doing, whether it is in business or spirituality, is our behavior reflecting it?

How many times have we not met a leader we admired for all they have accomplished only to be discouraged by their lack of humility or the distance they have created between them and people who are just now beginning their journeys?

On our path to serving the world with each of our talents, accolades are just the bells and whistles, not the whole essence of our work. Every now and then, we need someone to remind us of this so we can’t stay rooted in our purpose and march on with humility.