The video investigates the concept of mastery and the state of flow, where individuals perform at their best without conscious thought. It emphasizes how mastery goes beyond just being skilled; it's about reaching one's fullest potential through continuous improvement and the development of habits that lead to greatness. The discussion covers how skills are learned, factors enabling flow, and their roles in fostering creativity and remarkable accomplishments.

Listeners will find this talk compelling as it delves into the psychology of self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. It examines how these aspects combine to impact our performance, influence our perception of challenges, and dictate our levels of happiness and effectiveness. It ties success to being in the "right place" where one's unique talents align with their passions, using varied historical and modern-day success stories as illustrations.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. mastery [ˈmæstəri] - (noun) - The possession or display of great skill or technique. - Synonyms: (expertise, proficiency, competence)

mastery is more than just being good at something.

2. flow [floʊ] - (noun) - A mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed with a feeling of energized focus and enjoyment. - Synonyms: (stream, current, progression)

The rare state of flow, which is when you are performing at your best.

3. self-esteem [ˈsɛlf ɪˈstim] - (noun) - Confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect. - Synonyms: (self-respect, pride, dignity)

Your self-confidence is closely related to your self-esteem and how much you like yourself.

4. self-efficacy [ˌsɛlf ˈɛfɪkəsi] - (noun) - An individual's belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. - Synonyms: (self-confidence, self-assurance, self-reliance)

The flip side of self-esteem is what psychologists call self-efficacy.

5. euphoria [juːˈfɔːriə] - (noun) - A feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. - Synonyms: (elation, happiness, joy)

Peak experience is a form of natural euphoria that makes you feel absolutely fantastic about yourself.

6. competence [ˈkɒmpɪtəns] - (noun) - The ability to do something successfully or efficiently. - Synonyms: (capability, proficiency, skill)

Studies conducted on thousands of men and women who have gone from ordinary performance to extraordinary performance, and who have gone from average feelings of inadequacy to feeling good about themselves show that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between competence and mastery on the one hand, and self confidence on the other

7. optimal [ˈɒptɪməl] - (adjective) - Best or most favorable; optimum. - Synonyms: (ideal, best, prime)

Some of the most interesting work has been done in the area of peak performance or optimal experience.

8. incremental [ˌɪŋkrəˈmɛntl] - (adjective) - Relating to or denoting an increase or addition, especially one of a series on a fixed scale. - Synonyms: (gradual, progressive, step by step)

The law of incremental improvement is the key to an unlimited future of prosperity.

9. integrative [ˈɪntɪɡreɪtɪv] - (adjective) - Serving or intending to unify separate things. - Synonyms: (unifying, synthesizing, combining)

A wide variety of patterns in a given situation based on what they called a high level of integrative complexity.

10. corollary [ˈkɒrəˌlɛri] - (noun) - A proposition that follows from (and is often appended to) one already proved. - Synonyms: (consequence, outcome, result)

Perhaps the most important corollary of the law of accumulation is what is called the law of incremental improvement.

How To Practice, Build SKILLS & The Role Of FLOW STATE - Brian Tracy Motivational Speech

Today we are going to learn about the transformative power of mastering a skill and the rare state of flow, which is when you are performing at your best. Without thinking about it, imagine for a moment how thrilling it is to master a skill so well that time seems to stop and everything moves smoothly into the next skill. mastery is more than just being good at something. It's about reaching your full potential and being great at what you do.

A deep commitment to continuous improvement is the first step toward mastery. Whether you're a skilled athlete trying to be the best, an artist getting better at what you do, or a business leader looking for new ideas, today we are going to talk about the rules that set mastery apart from failure. These rules are not quick fixes. They are long term habits that people who are good at their jobs follow. Knowing how skills are learned and what makes flow possible gives you the power to get better at things, be more creative, and accomplish amazing things.

Please join me as we explore the core ideas of skill development and flow. Let's look into how these ideas can help you do better, have better experiences, and reach your full potential in the future. Every airplane, no matter how well made, has a limit to its capabilities. It can only go so fast and so high, and no faster or higher. Nothing can be done to expand the mechanical capacity of something made of metal by human hands.

The main difference between you and an airplane is that your envelope has no outer limit. As Emerson said, the power that resides in man is new in nature, and no one except him knows what he can do, nor does he know until it is tested. And Thomas Edison said that if we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves. Maxwell Maltz, author of Psycho Cybernetics, said that within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible.

This power will become available to you as soon as you can change your beliefs. In other words, the outer limit of your envelope, or the outer limit of your potential, is not fixed in time or space like that of an airplane. It is determined solely by your own belief and by your own confidence in what you believe is possible. Your self confidence is closely related to your self esteem and how much you like yourself.

Doctor Nathaniel Brandon calls self esteem the reputation you have with yourself. What determines how much you like yourself and how valuable you consider yourself, is how you feel about yourself and your abilities in relation to any situation. The flip side of self esteem is what psychologists call self efficacy. Self efficacy is a measure of how effective and competent you feel to engage in a particular act or perform a particular task. This is called performance based self esteem.

What it really means is that if your self confidence and belief in yourself are determined by your self esteem or by how much you like yourself, then your self esteem is determined by your actual ability in any given set of circumstances. For example, if a problem arises at work or at home and you are so familiar with it that you can solve it quickly and correctly, your self efficacy and self esteem increase. You feel more capable, confident and more willing to take on other challenges and difficulties.

You feel more positive and optimistic. You feel like a very good person. If, on the other hand, a problem or difficulty arises and you can't do anything to solve it, your self esteem will suffer and your self confidence will drop as well. You will tend to feel negative and might even get angry and irritated. You would feel more powerless than powerful. That is why they say in poker that winners laugh and tell jokes while losers just say shut up and deal.

The law of cause and effect applies to you and everything you become. If the effect you desire is high and unshakable levels of self confidence, then you only need to engage in the same causes that others with high and unshakable levels of self confidence engage in and you will get the same feelings or effects. Studies conducted on thousands of men and women who have gone from ordinary performance to extraordinary performance, and who have gone from average feelings of inadequacy to feeling good about themselves show that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between competence and mastery on the one hand, and self confidence on the other.

Some of the most interesting work has been done in the area of peak performance or optimal experience, or what some psychologists call the flow experience. Peak experience is a form of natural euphoria that makes you feel absolutely fantastic about yourself and gives you a wonderful overall sense of well being and happiness. The causes of this effect are now well known. To achieve this wonderful and healthy feeling of peak performance, you need clear goals, challenging standards or ways to measure the goals.

You need regular feedback, total concentration, step by step success, and the feeling that you are expanding your abilities to a new and higher level. When you have created a situation where you experience all of this, you feel like you are working at the outer edge of your personal envelope. You feel like you are progressively getting better at something you are ideally suited for and that although you are still working within the range of your capabilities, you are stretching yourself at every moment. When you are caught up in this type of experience, you often lose track of time, hunger, thirst or fatigue.

You feel calm and lucid and often euphoric. Sometimes while you are in this state of peak experience, the rest of the world seems to slow down, and things seem to operate with extraordinary clarity. You seem capable of accomplishing large amounts of work in a short period of time with great accuracy and few errors. Everyone has had this intensified experience, usually when under enormous stress, to do many things in a short period of time. But they had very clear goals and firmly believed they were capable of meeting the challenge. At this point, they began to flow and felt like they had taken off and left the ground.

You yourself have had this experience in the past, and it is often so extraordinary that you remember it for many months or even years. And here's the point. The men and women who achieve extraordinary things in life are simply ordinary men and women who have learned to flow and function at peak performance more often than the average person. And what another person has done, you can do as well.

In every study on success and self confidence, in every situation where a person enjoys high levels of self esteem, self respect and personal pride, we find that they all have one thing in common. And that one thing is that every high performing man or woman is in the right place at the right time, doing exactly the work for which they are uniquely qualified. These people are not only the happiest and highest performing men and women in our society, but you will never be truly happy and truly satisfied until you take your rightful place among them.

One of the greatest joys of human existence is finding your true place, the ideal job or occupation for you, and then dedicating your whole heart to it and doing it well. The luckiest people in our society are those who are so totally absorbed in their work that they don't know where their work ends and their play begins. If they could, many of them would do it for free, and many do. Emmett Fox refers to this as the desire of your heart.

He says that you are here on earth to do something special, something that perhaps only you can do. And you will never feel truly fulfilled until you find it and commit yourself fully to it. And the remarkable thing, says Fox, is that you almost always have an idea of what it is. When grandma Moses, as she came to be called, was a young farm girl, she had a desire to paint.

But her family and friends told her it was nonsense. They told her that as a farm girl, her role in life was to marry a farmer and have and raise farm children. So she set aside the desire of her heart and did what she thought she was supposed to do. She had children when she left her teens, and more children.

Throughout her twenties and thirties, she became a grandmother at six and a great grandmother. When she turned 75, her husband had died and her children were grown, and the doctor told her she was too old to continue working on the farm. She felt she didn't have much time left, so she decided to fulfill the desire of her heart and paint, something she had always wanted to do.

Before she died, she went to a nearby town and visited an art store. The person at the art store sold her some paints, canvases, and brushes. He showed her how to use them. She returned to her farm, sat behind the barn, and began to paint what came to be known as primitive american landscapes. Grandma Moses sold her first painting when she was 78 years old.

When she was 101, a major gallery in New York City held an exhibition of her works. In the last ten years of her life, some of her paintings sold for over $100,000 each. Now, here's the problem. When she was a child, she was told she couldn't paint because it cost too much and no one could afford it.

However, when she started painting, she made more in a year from her paintings than she and her husband had made in a lifetime of hard work on the farm. Not only was she a completely natural person, but she also had a completely original talent. It has been estimated that if she had started painting in her late teens, as she really wanted, and her paintings had been as commercially successful as they continue to be today, she could have become one of the richest women in America.

The history of the human race is written in the life stories of men and women who followed the desire of their hearts and did what they were especially qualified to do and did it with all their heart. And no matter what your situation is, this possibility is open to you right now. Another example is that of a 16 year old boy, one of my students, who got so excited about his potential that he started his own food service business.

He was successful and sold it at a profit when he was 18. His achievements and confidence as a result were so impressive that when he started working for a major supermarket chain, he was promoted up the ladder so quickly that before he turned 18, he became the youngest store manager of a major grocery store in the United States. He loves every minute of his work and follows the desire of his heart.

Countless men and women have written to me and returned to my seminars all over the country and told me that gathering the courage to do what they really wanted to do was the turning point in their lives. Some of them had spectacularly increased their incomes five to ten times although many had not. In all cases, they had to work harder than ever, but as a result, they were happier than ever. Their postures are strong and upright, their eyes shine, their voices are clear, and their language is positive.

It is obvious that they're really enjoying their lives. They have a quiet and calm confidence in themselves that is unmistakable and sets them apart from those around them. I used to think that setting goals and making plans was the starting point of success in life. However, after a while, I changed my mind because I realized that actually something else comes first.

The first thing is the acceptance of of total responsibility for yourself and everything that happens to you. True maturity begins when you finally realize that no one is coming to the rescue. Only when you have accepted 100% responsibility for yourself will you be ready to take the next step and decide exactly what you want and exactly what you want to do. Your sense of competence and mastery, and the self confidence that accompanies it actually begins with self analysis and self awareness.

In analyzing yourself to determine what is ideal for you, here are six approaches you can use. First, ask yourself what talents, skills, and abilities you seem to have naturally. What areas of school and work have you been naturally drawn to? Every person comes to this earth with a unique combination of ingredients and talents that make them different from anyone else who's ever lived. Only when you find the situation that can most benefit from your special abilities will you be able to make your greatest contribution and enjoy the greatest rewards, both tangible and intangible.

A second method involves dividing your activities into four quadrants, as recommended by Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy. The four quadrants are divided between what is easy to do and what is difficult to do and what is easy to learn and what is difficult to learn. In the first quadrant are jobs and activities that are difficult to learn and difficult to perform.

These are likely areas for which you have no natural aptitude and derive very little pleasure from. The second quadrant contains things that are easy to learn but difficult to do. Hard physical labor could fall into this category, such as digging a trench with a shovel. It is easy to learn but always hard to do.

The third quadrant contains things that are difficult to learn but easy to do. Driving a car or typing on a typewriter can fall into this category. They are difficult to learn at first, but once you have learned them, they are very easy and often become automatic. The fourth quadrant, in terms of what you should ideally be doing, is the most important.

These are jobs that are easy to do and are so easy to learn that you often forget that you learned them. These are invariably the types of jobs or the type of work in which you excel and which require almost no effort. Although it may be extremely difficult for others, this is probably what you should be doing with your life.

A third method of analysis is to look back over your life and ask yourself what activities, behaviors, or decisions have been most responsible for your successes in life to date. You'll probably find that less than 5% of the things you have said or done account for the majority of the progress you have made in your career. We often call these turning points or moments of truth.

You may discover that it was your unique ability to solve a particular type of problem or to see a particular type of opportunity. Thinking back, you may find that it was an interpersonal skill you had involving influencing and persuading other people at a certain time and place. Analyzing this, you may discover it was the ability to take charge and accept responsibility for achieving a particular goal. Anything that has been responsible for your successes in life to date may be a good indication of the direction you should take in the future.

A fourth method of analysis simply involves describing in detail the amount of money you would like to earn, the type of work you would like to do, the people you would like to work with, the type of clients you would like to serve, and the type of lifestyle you would like to have in relation to your occupation. Thinking about the type of work that would make you happy, you might find that it is a completely different field from the one you are in now.

A fifth method of analysis involves what I call return on energy. Leaders in all fields are very careful to apply their talents and energies where they can make the greatest difference and achieve the greatest return on the amount of energy they invest in any endeavor. They flatly refuse to take jobs or work in areas where they cannot perform at exceptional levels. They treat themselves as a valuable resource and expend themselves very, very carefully.

One of the things you could do is continually ask yourself if what you're doing is the highest and best use of your time and talents in any situation. Is this the most valuable thing you could be doing? Given your particular combination of skills, answering this question will help you see that there is a big difference between what you are currently doing and what you should be doing if you want to develop your potential further.

The 6th method of analysis for seeking the desire of your heart is probably the most important of all. Although not the easiest. It is simply doing what you love to do. Every truly successful and happy man or woman will say that the reason for their success is that they are doing what they love to do.

Unfortunately, there is an old myth in our society suggesting that work is a penalty, to be paid during the day, to enjoy other things in the evenings or on weekends. Sometimes work is seen as a punishment, but something inevitable. So you often do it with the greatest dignity and tolerance possible, but never really think about whether you enjoy it or not. This attitude is not for you. Your life is too precious and valuable.

You should devote every minute to doing things that you like, enjoy and care about, and that make you happy. The wonderful thing is that the highest paid people in America are often working in jobs they enjoy so much they hate going home at night. And the lowest paid people in America are invariably in jobs they do not like, where they are just going through the motions. Choosing the right work for you is fundamental to enjoying high feelings of self, self esteem and self confidence, not only in your work, but in all other areas of your life.

Once you have precisely chosen your ideal job or occupation, and this will progressively change throughout your life as you evolve and mature, your greatest responsibility is to make the decision to become very good, to become excellent at what you do. We have said that self confidence comes from positive knowing rather than positive thinking. And only when you know that you are excellent in the field you have chosen do you feel truly fantastic about yourself and enjoy high levels of self confidence.

Men and women who are good at what they do and who know they are good at what they do are very different from those who are average. They walk, talk, dress and behave differently. They have an attitude of assurance and certainty about themselves that allows them to stand out in any group. They have a deep sense of self esteem and self confidence that is evident to everyone around them.

I remember a young man in his twenties who approached me recently at a seminar in Pittsburgh. He said he had started in sales just over four years ago. He told me that in his first year in a highly competitive market, he earned $22,000. But as he read, listened to tapes and attended seminars, he improved steadily, and in his second year, he earned $48,000.

He fully committed to continuous professional development, and by his third year, he earned $94,000. In his fourth year, he had earned just over $175,000 selling the same products in the same competitive market, to the same customers, at the same prices, and under the same economic conditions. He had also come to the seminar in his new mercedes. Now, not everyone can experience such extraordinary financial results.

But what was most striking about this young salesman was his self confidence and personal pride from every poor he exuded a positive self image and high self esteem. Those around him admired and respected him, considering him a role model for what others could become if they worked hard enough on themselves and their work.

This leads us to a very important mental principle called the law of accumulation. The application of this law is a fundamental reason for success in all areas, including yours. This law simply states that every great life or career is an accumulation of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of efforts that no one ever sees or appreciates. Great success is the result of countless hours, possibly even months and years of preparation and hard work toward the goal of becoming very good at what you are doing.

This law of accumulation says that life is much like a balance sheet with credits and debits. Every time you do something positive to improve your skills and your life, you gain a credit on the credit side of the ledger. Every time you waste time or fail to take advantage of an opportunity to learn and grow, you incur a debit on the ledger side. And here's the key.

Everything counts. Everything you do or fail to do is recorded and adds up on your balance. A successful, happy, and self assured person is simply an individual who consciously and deliberately has accumulated a great many credits in their personal balance. An unhappy, negative, or insecure person is simply someone who has many debits on their balance, and since actions are all that count, it seems that every positive and constructive action you take adds to and increases your levels of self confidence and self esteem.

Perhaps the most important corollary of the law of accumulation is what is called the law of incremental improvement. This law simply states that a person becomes good in their chosen field by incrementally and continuously improving over a long period of time period.

In a study on the subject of mastery, published in Psycho Today magazine, researchers concluded that mastery consisted of the ability to recognize a wide variety of patterns in a given situation based on what they called a high level of integrative complexity. What this basically means is that, for example, a salesperson achieved a high level of confidence and ability in a sales situation by studying their profession and being in countless previous sales situations.

They had developed the ability to integrate their knowledge and experience, experience and recognize a particular pattern in the sales situation based on past experiences. Their conclusion was that it takes several thousand hours of research and practice to achieve and perform at exceptional levels in any complex field or in any difficult occupation or profession. Although prodigies and people who succeed quickly exist, they are very rare. On average, it takes several years for a person to become excellent in the field they have chosen.

Most people achieve great financial success after age 40 or 50, it takes that long to develop a repertoire of patterns extensive enough to be of great value to themselves and others. The law of incremental improvement is the key to an unlimited future of prosperity, success and self confidence. No matter where you start from, the only thing that matters is where you are going. As it was said, do what you can with what you have right where you are.

By applying the law of incremental improvement to yourself and your work, you can start to rise and join the greats in your field. If you are doing what you love and doing it wholeheartedly, engaging in continuous personal and professional improvement, you can begin to move forward at a pace that will surprise you. Your goal is to be the best.

Your aim is to be recognized by those around you as someone outstanding in your field. Your aim should be to pay any price, overcome any obstacle, and make every effort necessary to become excellent in the career you choose. Just as choosing the right job or career for you requires self analysis and self awareness, reaching the top of your field requires taking your current position and breaking it down into what we call your success factors or your core skills in every job and in every company.

In fact, there are a few factors, rarely more than five to seven, that determine the success or failure of the person or organization. Whenever a person has problems with their career, it is usually because they have deficiencies in one or more of these success factors or core skills. Whenever a person succeeds, they are strong in all key success factors. Your job is to break down your job into its component parts, its core skills, and analyze your level of competence in each of them, giving yourself a score on a scale of one to ten.

For example, if you are in sales, your success factors or core skills might be prospecting, relationship building, problem identification, solution presentation, closing and relationship maintenance or follow up. Weakness in any of these areas could be fatal to you, your success, and your income. Success begins by analyzing the individual parts of your performance and then making a plan to become very good in each area.

A good exercise is to ask yourself, what is my limiting step? What is the bottleneck or point of constraint in your work? What do you do or not do that determines the speed at which you achieve your other goals? Sometimes taking the time to alleviate the limiting step will accelerate your entire career.

And once you have identified your ideal job and then broken it down into its constituent parts, core skills, and then crafted a plan to become very good at each part of your job, then you will have the ultimate key to self motivation and a sense of growth. It is committing to continuous and perpetual personal and professional improvement. Make the decision right now to dedicate yourself to a lifelong process of personal and professional development.

Here are three simple rules that will change your life life first, invest 3% of your income in yourself. Spend 3% of what you earn on personal research and development, on improving your skills and abilities, and on enhancing the performance of the most important tasks required of you. If you invest 3% of your income in yourself, you will never have to worry about money again.

Second, read for 1 hour every day in your chosen field and take careful notes that that you can review periodically. A simple technique is to read and underline with a red pen and then go back and transfer all those key points to a spiral notebook. You will then have a synopsis of the most important ideas that you can reread five or six times until you memorize them. This method is used by some of the most successful men and women in the United States.

Rule number three is to listen to audio cassettes like this one in your car. Turn your car into a university on wheels. Never sit in your car without listening to audio cassettes. You spend between 501,000 hours each year in your car and if you turn driving time into learning time, you can become one of the best educated people of your generation.

One of the smartest things you can do is invest in your earning ability to continuously improve in everything you do. This ongoing investment in yourself will put you at the helm of your own life, ensure greater success and self confidence every day of your life and through the law of indirect effort, commitment to yourself will earn you self esteem, self respect, and the personal pride you desire.

Over time, you will reach competence and mastery in your field that generates feelings of self assurance that make you irresistible. There is no limit to what you can achieve if you know the direction you are heading and are willing to make the effort.

As we come to the end of our examination of the significance of skill mastery and the state of flow, I invite you to think about the deep insights we've gained. Collectively. mastery isn't just about getting better at things. It's also about having an attitude of constant improvement, tireless practice, and unwavering commitment.

Commitment to excellence. You've learned today that mastery and flow are not remote ideas, but states that anyone can develop. Engaging in careful practice, pushing the limits of your comfort zone, and keeping a laser like focus on your goals will help you achieve great results and deep satisfaction. Apply what you've learned right away, determined to improve your abilities with dedication and persistence, and enjoy the difficulties that come with exceeding your limits.

Surround yourself with mentors and friends who push you to be your best and create an environment that encourages creativity and new ideas. Thank you for showing dedication to growing personally and professionally. To make our lives full of meaning, achievement, and joy. Let's keep working toward mastery and using the power of flow. Let's motivate others with our perseverance and raise the bar for greatness in everything we do.

Mastering skills skills and finding flow are ongoing processes. Let's meet it with excitement, take advantage of the chances it offers, and change ourselves in the world for the better.

Education, Motivation, Inspiration, Self-Improvement, Peak Performance, Skill Development, Achievemore