Patience on the Path

This week we covered lots of new material! I thought the messages from George Leonard’s book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment were particularly interesting. Leonard talks about how the pattern of progress leading toward mastery is not a straight line inclining upward.

Rather, it’s more like a series of plateaus connected by spurts of progress. And so, when we are learning a new skill, or starting a new venture, we must understand the necesity of long periods of hard practice without seeming to get anywhere. We must learn to “love the plateau”, so to speak.

I also had an interesting experience in one of my other illustration classes this week. We were discussing the necesity of becoming good artists, and striving for utmost perfection. Our teacher is a professional illustrator, and so he makes good points. But one thing that I thought about, and felt that I had to share with the class was that even if our work “isn’t good”, that doesn’t give us an excuse to not put ourselves out there. “We have to start somewhere,” I said.

The teacher acknowledged that, and explained that as an artist, you will always be looking back at your best work from years back (that people liked, in fact) and deciding that it was no good. So we are always climbing the path toward mastery of our disciplines, but one of the main differences between those who are successful and those who are not is not talent. It is that those who are successful have known failure, and yet diligently continue to practice and put their work and talents (however meager) out there for people to see.