In her new book, Breakthrough Coaching, Marcia Reynolds writes, "There is not a path to mastery but a path of mastery."
While many believe that mastering a skill is a process with an endpoint, she reminds us that mastery is an ongoing journey, particularly in coaching.
The belief that there is an endpoint in mastery can become a trap hindering our growth and evolution. We may experience the frustration of never getting there until it gets so painful that we give up. Or we may convince ourselves that we have reached the end of the journey, and in doing so, we stop growing while our mastery fades away or become obsolete.
I can't help but think about the Dichotomy Paradox crafted by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno. It's a thought experiment in which Zeno says that if we want to go from A to B, we must first cover half the distance. Then, you need to cover half of the remaining distance, half of that again, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. It's an infinite series of halving distances, implying you must complete infinitely many tasks before reaching your destination, which seems impossible in finite time.
I feel it's the same with mastery. We keep getting closer and closer, yet we are never there. Acknowledging that makes every step of the journey of mastery magical and fulfilling.
We are in effect, always, close; always close to the ultimate secret: that we are more real in our simple wish to find a way than any destination we could reach: the step between not understanding that and understanding that, is as close as we get to happiness. — from Close by David Whyte (source)