What is Personal Mastery?

Throughout the last couple of decades, it became common for people to get confused between personal growth and personal mastery.

People tend to believe that since personal growth and personal mastery look familiar and sound familiar, thus they must be the same.

However, this is far from the truth as personal mastery and personal growth share both similarities and differences. So, the question still remains what is personal mastery?

This post answers the common question of “What is Personal Mastery”?

What Does Personal Mastery Mean?

An experienced veteran in his field (and beyond), Dr Peter Senge is best known for his formulation of the term “learning organization”. He goes into great length and detail in his book, ‘The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.

Sengen proceeds to define personal mastery as “a set of specific principles and practices that enables a person to learn, create a personal vision, and view the world objectively”.

Personal mastery is a way of life. Personal mastery is the process of working towards a definitive goal day in and day out. Self growth enthusiasts and motivational speakers usually encourage people to find their purpose in life. It is imperative to know your “why” they say. Well, Personal mastery is the journey (after) you discover your purpose in life. 

It is the journey an individual pursues in order to reach his utmost best version of himself. To reach his/her full potential while living a healthy balanced lifestyle.  

Why is Personal Mastery Important?

Believe it or not, personal mastery benefits your personal and professional lives. With the integration of self awareness and the ability to control your emotions/feelings you begin to grow as a person and as a colleague.

Furthermore, your perspective on life matters change drastically, you begin to acknowledge your strengths and accept your weaknesses. In doing so you start to work on weak links in your life and enhance your strong suits, not knowing that you have started your personal growth journey! 

As you begin to “master yourself” you immediately feel the urgency of continuous growth. This type of attitude touches and affects all aspects of your daily lives, both personal and professional. Moreover, you will find that your creative abilities will skyrocket and increase immensely as you program your brain to view opportunities and engage in consistent improvement. 

However, these are just some of the very basic benefits of personal mastery. We haven’t even scratched the surface just yet.

Other benefits of pursuing personal mastery include the following: 

•  Development of self awareness 
• Ability to identify strengths and weaknesses
• Enhance the ability to develop emotional intelligence
• You become more grateful and appreciative 
• Increase creativity and humility 
• You slowly become an excellent leader 
• Productivity is increased massively 
• Live in the present and enjoy the moment 
• Fulfill your potential in life

Related Article(s) – The Importance Of Personal Growth

Example of Personal Mastery 

Imagine this with me, you are a negative person that focuses on the “bad” things in life. You begin your university journey by having this attitude. A couple of months later you find yourself struggling in all your subjects while also having continuous doubts and negativity about yourself. With immense pressure you put on yourself you begin to lose interest and begin to flirt with the idea of dropping out. 

One day you hear the word “personal mastery” from your favorite tv show. Being interested in the word, you start googling and researching its origins. Fast forward a couple of months and now you have a whole new perspective on life.

Tough and negative challenges become opportunities for you to shine and grow. You start to have more self awareness and you feel your confidence boosting.

You observe, analyze and study what went wrong in your “negative phase”. Starting to implement continuous improvements to your old version while maintaining a positive outlook on life. This is personal mastery, you are now headed towards fulfilling your potential in life.

What Are The Elements of Personal Mastery?

Personal mastery is a broad and complex term as you may have imagined. Thanks to Dr Peter Senge, he divided the term into 5 smaller elements. These elements focus more on the professional (career/work)side of personal mastery 

• Shared Vision – In order to develop shared commitments and understandings, release people’s ambitions and dreams, and uncover hesitations and resistances, it is essential to allocate time for discussion regarding a shared vision and goal. 

• Mental Models – People’s thoughts and behaviors are influenced by their assumptions, values, and beliefs. It’s crucial to understand how people are currently conceptualizing change at work and in what manner they are dealing with it.

• Team Learning – occurs when teams begin “thinking together” by exchanging experience, ideas, information, and skills about how to do tasks more effectively.

• Personal Mastery – how much we are aware of ourselves and the effect our actions have on others. The ability to sensitively manage change relationships, to be open to having our own views and values questioned, and to make sure that our change interactions and behaviors are genuine, consistent, and principled are all examples of personal mastery.

• Systems Thinking – is a framework for identifying inter-relationships that drive complicated situations and interactions rather than simple  straightforward solutions.

Related Article(s) – The 6 Stages Of Personal Growth

What Are The 7 Pathways to Personal Mastery?

Breaking down the term further, there are 7 pathways that lead to personal mastery. These are “carved roads” used to empower people to pursue the art of personal mastery. These include the following 

• Personal Vision – The ability to pinpoint your life’s purpose and begin to implement daily incremental habits to get you closer to that definitive goal everyday.

• Personal Purpose – Knowing for a fact your “why” in life. Trying to live up to your utmost potential with love, passion, hardwork and dedication.

• Personal Values – Values you want to be recognized with in both your personal and professional life. What values do you bring to your family, work and community? If some values are ill matched with your personal mastery journal you could replace them with better healthier ones. 

• Personal Alignment – is the level of alignment between our personal vision, purpose, values, and behaviors. Large amounts of good energy and power can be released when these factors are tightly synchronized. We discover our creative ability to reinvent ourselves. 

• Personal Perception – is being conscious of the specific lenses through which you frequently experience the world, or the frames of reference through which you interpret other people, events, and circumstances. 

• Personal Awareness – is how much you are aware of (or eager to learn about) who you are as a person, including your needs, interests, desires, and motivations. Being able to take a step back and analyze who you really are, your thought, feeling, and behavior patterns, as well as how they affect other people and the effectiveness of your relationships. 

• Personal Transformation – It is the creative ability that we all have to re-shape, re-new, or re-invent ourselves in order to be more in tune with our unique vision, values, and purpose. One essential action component of personal mastery is the capacity to fill the inevitable gaps between one’s personal vision and the present.

How Do Personal Mastery and Personal Development Relate?

Personal mastery and personal development are very similar and closely related. As we explained earlier, that personal mastery is working continuously on a pinpointed goal you want to achieve. On the contrary, personal growth is the continuous desire to improve, to chase greatness in whatever field you work in. 

Personal mastery is a bi product of personal growth. You cannot practice and start your personal growth journey without having experienced personal mastery. Personal mastery is the first step in unlocking your potential and seeking your purpose in life. 

Personal mastery can be easily understood when compared to the precipitation cycle. As the sun heats the water, it turns into steam and thus creates clouds and lastly it begins to pour. Now, the sun heating the water is personal mastery which leads to the rain which is in this sense personal growth. 

Final Thoughts on What Is Personal Mastery

All in all, personal mastery is the process of working towards a pinpointed goal/achievement. Personal mastery is the first step one must take to start his/her personal growth journey. Furthermore, personal mastery is a crucial philosophy to inhabit for both your personal and professional lives.

This post answered the common question of “What Is Personal Mastery”?

References 

• Fateh, A., Mustamil, N. & Shahzad, F. Role of authentic leadership and personal mastery in predicting employee creative behavior: a self-determination perspective. Front. Bus. Res. China 15, 3 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s11782-021-00100-1

• García-Morales, Víctor & Llorens Montes, Francisco & Verdu, Antonio. (2007). Influence of Personal Mastery on Organizational Performance through Organizational Learning and Innovation in Large Firms and SMEs. Technovation. 27. 547-568. 10.1016/j.technovation.2007.02.013.

• Rutenfrans-Stupar, M., Hanique, N., Van Regenmortel, T. et al. The Importance of Self-Mastery in Enhancing Quality of Life and Social Participation of Individuals Experiencing Homelessness: Results of a Mixed-Method Study. Soc Indic Res 148, 491–515 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-019-02211-y

• Filipponi C, Schulz PJ, Petrocchi S. Effects of Self-Mastery on Adolescent and Parental Mental Health through the Mediation of Coping Ability Applying Dyadic Analysis. Behav Sci (Basel). 2020 Nov 27;10(12):182. doi: 10.3390/bs10120182. PMID: 33261110; PMCID: PMC7761085.

• Filipponi C, Schulz PJ, Petrocchi S. Effects of Self-Mastery on Adolescent and Parental Mental Health through the Mediation of Coping Ability Applying Dyadic Analysis. Behav Sci (Basel). 2020 Nov 27;10(12):182. doi: 10.3390/bs10120182. PMID: 33261110; PMCID: PMC7761085.