To become the Master

Chapter 303

Learning is the difficult work of experiencing incompetence on our way to mastery. Godin

When I was studying Russian language at Rostov State University, deep in southern Russia, we had a saying, “the dogs understand verbs of motion better than we do, they know when to come, go, stop and roll over.” Verbs of motion are an especially difficult piece of Russian for Western minds to get, but Russian dogs seemed to have no problems with them. Experiencing incompetence. It is really painful, especially if you are coming from a previous place of competence.

I was highly successful in my industry when we moved to Russia, and boom! Overnight I was an idiot, less than a child, far less than a grade school kid, and unthinkably far from adult conversation. But two years later, and 1000’s of hours of experiencing incompetence, I could speak. Some. I could understand somewhat more than I could say, but I was far from a scintillating conversationalist. 

But in the third year three things happened, my efforts increased even more (out of pure desperation) the work expectations on my language increased far more, and guess what, my language ability soared. So much so in fact, I taught a college level course before the end of that third year. Yes I was the professor and I taught an entire college course in Russian. But what a painful road of incompetence.

Honestly I never did get to Mastery. Our work and lives in Russia were interrupted and we moved to another country and I started learning that language as a complete idiot again. But this is the nature of learning.

This is the path of the Master.