Saturday, June 14, 2008

Mastery Club Part II

Ok, so I didnt really get to the point last blog but I think it's going to take a while for me to get there anyways so if you're going to start reading, make sure you have a cup of coffee/tea/glass of wine and make yourself comfortable.

The idea behind the Mastery Club is pretty much the same as The Secret. The idea that you are in complete control of the world around you. Not in the pick-something-up-and-move-it kind of way, but in a seriously more dramatic imagine-it-believe-it-and-you-can-change-the-world kind of way.

Its actually a scary concept. One that I started thinking of when I heard the speech that Nelson Mandela or whoever gave (there are about 6 different ppl credited with it). You know the one where it starts "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure". That started me thinking then that we are all actually scared of our own potential. Even more than that, we're all scared to think that we're wasting our potential.

So we throw ourselves into our jobs, our families, our hobbies and say that we're all just so busy and so involved with everything that it's not our fault that we cant get to realising our full potential. We take time off for relaxing and time off to spend with the family and even take time off to move homes and redecorate. But nowhere does anyone take time off to change their lives... And when you read a book like The Secret or the Mastery Club where it explains in really basic terms what you have to do to change your life it makes you wonder why, if making such big changes are really that easy, why we arent all doing it on a daily basis??

And I think the answer is that we're scared. Not that it wont work and we'll be disappointed, but that it will work and we will be able to make huge changes in our lives. What could be the problem with that. Well think of the first thing that you would change if you could - lemme guess, it was something rather selfish wasn't it? That's not a bad thing, but we've been so conditioned by everything around us that we feel we should always be thinking of our spouses/children/parents/the next person and that to want something purely for ourselves is somehow wrong. But that's the part that doesnt get explained to us as we grow up or when we leave school or when we start working. No one says it's ok to be selfish in the beginning, to look after ourselves first so that we can look after others. We just trudge along with everyone else, we do what our parents did, what our teachers tell us we must do and what society has set out in the rules. We spend most of our lives trying to further ourselves the whole time we think of things in terms of who's 'fault' it is and spend so much energy trying to prove that things aren't our 'fault' even if that means putting the blame on someone else.

Now there is a new movement, one that says we make our own lives. Not just through hard work and being a sheep. But by being different and unique and special and standing out. That takes effort though, and that's the kind of effort that requires us to think and to decide, to learn and to take responsibility for what we do, what we think and most importantly, for who we are. And I know that that scares the living daylights out of me.

I want to try out this amazing trick or skill or whatever you want to call it, but I'm scared that if I do and it works, I'm never going to be able to go back to being ignorant again. You can't cross back over once you've crossed this line. I wont be able to say 'I never knew that' because I would have the knowledge of how to change things. That would then mean that it was up to me to actually do something about the world around me and, more importantly, do something about myself.

So what happens if I didn't want to, what happens if I didn't feel like putting in the effort, if I wanted a selfish outcome instead of the 'right' one? I could always say no, but then I would have to deal with the guilt and know that even though I could've made a difference - I didn't, and to understand that the consequence of that inaction was my doing. 

Now that scares me. I know I'm not perfect, but right now, I have all the reasons - or rather excuses, for not being perfect. I do this and there aren't any more places to hide....

So I know I will take that step, I think I'm just going to enjoy being ignorant for a little while longer.... 

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